What's Next for the Weingart Foundation?

The Los Angeles-based Weingart Foundation has undergone significant changes since its inception in 1951. Originally, the foundation, like many others, focused on building regional infrastructure. Under Fred Ali’s 22-year leadership, which spanned from 2006 to 2020, it shifted its attention to funding social change.

“There was a very intentional effort to start responding to the inequities that exist in the region, the huge disparity in income, and access to education, access to healthcare and access to a vibrant way of life,” said Miguel A. Santana, who’s been serving as Weingart’s president and CEO since last year. “The foundation went from supporting bricks and mortar to supporting nonprofit organizations that were—or have been—working very hard to meet those inequity gaps.”

Several years ago, Ali and the Weingart board made a commitment to focus 100% of the foundation’s resources on responding to inequities in Southern California. This decision became a turning point in the foundation’s history—and in some ways, for philanthropy in the region.

Santana, whom we named Most Promising New Foundation President in last year’s Philanthropy Awards, said that he is looking to build on that work.

“My goal is not to change that,” Santana said. “In fact, my goal is to very intentionally build on that commitment and establish an organization that reflects the values and missions that we embrace.”

Building on a commitment to equity

Last year, the Weingart Foundation continued to lean into its focus on addressing inequality in Southern California. In December, the foundation announced it would give out more than $8.9 million to a total of 57 organizations working to build power in communities of color across the region. A full 65% of the foundation’s second round of funding for F.Y. 2022 provides nonprofits with unrestricted support.

Weingart also granted $300,000 to organizations helping to resettle Afghan families to California following the U.S. decision to withdraw from Afghanistan last year.

In 2021, the Weingart Foundation continued its collaboration with both private and public entities to support the Los Angeles Justice Fund (LAJF), which provides legal assistance for families and individuals who face deportation and removal proceedings. The LAJF, which had previously been a pilot program, has been adopted as a permanent program by Los Angeles County.

The Weingart Foundation also helped form the Committee for Greater L.A., a cross-sectoral group focused on the region’s COVID response, addressing homelessness, and on dismantling institutions and policies that perpetuate racism.

In addition, the foundation has continued its work to advance racial justice, supporting the California Black Freedom Fund and the Black Equity Initiative for the Inland Empire.

“Every day, we worked very hard to find opportunities to partner with communities who are advancing the issues that we most care about,” Santana said. That includes backing the Asian American community as it confronts an increase in hate and violence, as well as supporting the unsupervised minors who are migrating from Central America.

“It’s a lot of work and effort to partner with and identify these efforts, but it is critical to our own mission to do so,” added Santana.

Reconciling with the past

This year, as part of its continued commitment to racial justice, the Weingart Foundation will undertake a “truth and reconciliation” process, seeking to further align itself with its racial equity mission from the inside out. This process will begin by looking at “the origins of the foundation’s wealth in the context of Southern California’s broader history of real estate development, racial exclusion, and indigenous displacement,” Santana wrote in his letter on the program plan for the 2022 fiscal year.

Weingart will also examine the ways in which contemporary culture and practices continue to perpetuate racism.

“Why is it that this foundation is committed to racial justice? Because, in part, it is our responsibility. We have a duty to repair some of the damage that this wealth may have caused. But it’s also bigger than that. It’s also about this larger conversation that I think we haven’t had as Americans about reconciling our racist institutions… that we live in today and the kind of future that we want to have for tomorrow,” Santana said.

One of the issues the foundation plans to focus on is homelessness, which Santana describes as “a manifestation of all the systems that are broken,” including the child welfare, incarceration, mental health and justice systems.

Santana also points to policies grounded in racist ideals of segregation, and a racist history of segregation, as a significant impediment preventing people of color from buying homes and building wealth. These policies, Santana said, are designed to protect a segregated community.

“We’re now living in the legacy of that in the housing policies that exist today, and so it’s really become sort of a reflection of all of these broken systems. It has real cost: Hundreds of people are dying every year from experiencing homelessness,” Santana said.

The foundation’s own wealth may bear the imprint of urban segregation. Ben Weingart, the real estate developer and investor who founded the Weingart Foundation, was responsible for the development of numerous parts of Southern California, including the city of Lakewood. Lakewood was founded at a time when communities could still be legally segregated, which meant that people of color could not buy homes there and communities were marked as white-only.

The Weingart Foundation has partnered with Priscilla Leiva, a historian from Loyola Marymount University, to review the history of Ben Weingart’s legacy.

“I think we need to be honest about how the source of the wealth may have actually caused harm,” Santana said. This, he said, explains why the Weingart Foundation is now committed to racial justice. In essence, it has a duty to repair some of the damage that Weingart’s wealth may have caused.

According to Santana, this is part of a larger conversation that Americans need to have to reconcile our racist institutions with the world that we live in today and the world that we want to live in tomorrow.

“In some ways, this truth and reconciliation is not just about the Weingart Foundation, but it really is about Southern California and the country,” Santana said.

As part of its truth and reconciliation process, the Weingart Foundation will also be examining what its grantmaking will look like in the future—how it’s structured, what its relationship with the community is, and how it will ensure that it supports people of color. Weingart also wants to make sure that the organizations it partners with reflect the voices of the people from the most marginalized communities.

“The issues of inequity resonate with my own life story, with my own history, and so it is a real honor to be able to work [at] and meet a foundation that’s committed to meeting those [equity] gaps in the long term,” Santana said. (Check out our Q&A with Santana from late last year for more.)

“There really is no going back to the kind of philanthropy that was more traditional,” he added. “Our commitment to racial justice is here for the long haul.”

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