How to Read This Book

The Giving List was created to make it easier for you to navigate the dizzying array of worthwhile causes and nonprofit organizations here in Los Angeles. To that end, we have distributed 100,000 copies of The Giving List Los Angeles to people like you: individual donors, staff within the region’s small and large private foundations, and to philanthropic advisors, wealth managers, and estate planners.  

As you dive into this book, we want to point out some of its unique features, and of The Giving List program as a whole. 

Curation

Before we started outreach to any of the nonprofits featured in these pages, we consulted with a wide variety of leaders working as executives in private and community foundations, leaders of nonprofit boards, wealth management firms, and philanthropic advisors to ensure that we included a balanced cross section of some of L.A.’s most important nonprofit organizations. We sought to understand which nonprofits were leading in recovery as we endure the long tail of the pandemic and racial justice awakening sparked by the murder of George Floyd. 

The result is that – unlike other giving guides – the list we present to you is made up of not just large, well-funded, and established nonprofits, but many smaller grassroots organizations with deep connections to the communities they serve.

If one or more motivate you to learn more or donate, just wave your phone’s camera over the QR code accompanying each in order to connect directly with that organization. 

Matching 

The Giving List was created to help nonprofits create predictable, unrestricted revenue through storytelling. One tried and true method to accomplish this is matching challenge campaigns. 

Thanks to the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, the Reissa Foundation, and the Zegar Family Foundation, you will find a number of matching opportunities, including challenges for 16 smaller nonprofits. In total, there is more than $270,000 in matching challenges being offered in The Giving List Los Angeles. Additionally, the Simms/Mann Family Foundation has set up a $6 million gift-matching fund to bolster the Simms/Mann-UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology’s endowment (see p.166). We hope that you will be sufficiently inspired to help one or more of these organizations meet its matching challenge.

Ongoing Support 

Our partnership with the nonprofits in these pages does not end with the printing of this book. Each profile will live on TheGivingList.com through 2022, where we will be updating each profile monthly, so that you can continue to track the important ongoing work of each and every Giving List organization. 

Staying Connected

We are building a community of people who care deeply about philanthropy and understand the vital role it plays in our world, and we want you to join. 

If you would like to be included in our newsletter “The Fifth Estate,” please visit www.TheGivingList.com and follow the prompts.