Annual Report 2025 - Women's Foundation California

✨Power on the Ground: Explore Our 2025 Annual Report✨

Power on the Ground

A Call to Action

In a year when grassroots communities face mounting attacks and our country tilts toward authoritarianism, what holds us steady are not merely abstract ideals, but the profound connections we sustain, the vibrant communities we build, and our shared conviction that justice and love can guide us forward. This is a time to draw close, to hold each other up, and to share our strength, our dreams, and our vision of a future where we all flourish. Together, we are the antidote to fear, and together, we hold the power to shape our future.

At Women’s Foundation California, our mission has always been to build a feminist future where everyone can flourish in health, safety, and prosperity. We know that change is not determined by one election alone. Our movement is multigenerational and cross-cultural, built by the people who envision systems operating with love and justice, rooted in dignity and liberation for all. We believe that California can lead with radical creativity, where every person has the space to rest, recharge, and experience the joy of our collective power.

From the CEO

Grantmaking & Partnerships:

Sustaining Movements Under Attack

Grantmaking, at its best, is not just about dollars—it is about taking a stance in a world that seems determined to make some lives more expendable than others. This year, we directed $3.3 million to 77 organizations, each one a hive of resistance, care, and imaginative power. From immigrant-rights defenders facing ICE raids to trans-led groups fighting erasure, to reproductive justice leaders safeguarding our right to bodily autonomy, our grant partners are lifelines in a landscape of systematic attack. What we fund is what we believe: that our communities under siege are not victims, but the architects of a future that refuses to be extinguished.

*c4 organizations

Our Grantmaking in Action

Funding the Frontlines:

Funding these movements now is not optional; it is a lifeline for survival, dignity, and the possibility of systemic change. Don’t just read this list—take action and join us in investing in these organizations, supporting their work, and helping to build the power, resilience, and vision that will protect our communities and create the feminist future we all need.

By the Numbers:

Grants by Primary Issue Area

Criminal Justice Reform:
$648,000 (10 grants)

Democracy:
$270,000 (9 grants)

Domestic Violence/GBV:
$1,067,698 (30 grants)

Economic Security:
$210,000 (13 grants)

Environmental Justice:
$122,000 (8 grants)

Health and Healing Justice:
$391,000 (21 grants)

Reproductive Health Rights Justice:
$591,500 (21 grants)

Total: $3,300,198.00 over 112 grants

Programs & Impact:

Building a Feminist Future

In a year marked by LA fires, ICE raids terrorizing families, and escalating attacks on trans and reproductive rights, our partners, including more than 835 Solís Policy Institute and Solís Policy Institute Youth alums, remain not just essential, but indispensable.

Solís Policy Institute (SPI) State:

Feminist Policy in Action

Our Fellows at the Solís Policy Institute worked under a tight budget and still delivered profound victories. Together, they expanded their toolbox of skills and championed four feminist-rooted bills, three of which were signed into law by Governor Newsom:

AB 2136: Addressing the Overdose Crisis – Expands evidence-based drug-checking equipment and programs to save lives.

AB 2759: Protecting Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence – Strengthens gun restrictions for convicted perpetrators of domestic violence.

AB 2527: Incarceration: Pregnant Persons – Requires access to nutritious food and clean water for incarcerated pregnant people.

These bills reflect our community’s insistence that dignity and health are non-negotiable—even behind bars, even in the face of violence, even in moments of profound crisis. Every policy win is a building block toward the feminist future we refuse to stop imagining.

Solís Policy Institute (SPI) Local:

Rooted Power, Real Change

If you want to understand power in this country, don’t look only at the federal government—look at city halls, county boards, and neighbors organizing on their blocks. In Los Angeles, where housing insecurity, police violence, ICE raids, and harassment of trans and gender-expansive communities collide, we relaunched SPI Local to equip grassroots leaders with the tools to fight back. The 2025 SPI Local teams are already shaping bold, community-driven policy on:

Crimmigration Systems – Challenging the criminalization of undocumented communities and building pathways to justice.

Housing Security – Fighting for safe, stable, and dignified housing for all.

Transgender, Gender-Variant, and Intersex (TGI) Wellness & Justice – Advancing wellness, safety, and liberation for trans, gender-nonconforming, and intersex communities across LA County.

San Gabriel Valley TGI Wellness & Justice – Centering local trans, gender-nonconforming, and intersex leadership to build community-based care and justice specifically in San Gabriel Valley.

What passes at a city council meeting today is the seed of statewide and national change tomorrow. SPI Local is where blueprints for justice are drawn.

Summer Leadership Institute:

Shaping Leadership Pipelines for Long-Term Resilience

The twenty-six 2024 Summer Leadership Institute (SLI) fellows embodied collective power.

Through an intensive week together and eight monthly sessions, the fellows built deep connections, shared stories of power, and sharpened their skills in policy and advocacy. At SLI, participants explore self-care, art, poetry, and hone advocacy and leadership skills, nurturing storytelling that fortifies our movement across generations. 

With lived experiences spanning cultures and struggles, they revealed the strength of solidarity as both practice and strategy. They are not the ‘leaders of tomorrow’—they are leading today, carving out pathways for young women and gender-expansive people to rise and thrive.

Subversive Pages Collective:

Narrative as Resistance

ERASED: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us

This spring, we joined Board Member Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs at Getty House with Mayor Karen Bass to launch Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us. Dr. Tubbs laid bare how erasure itself is political—and how remembrance and storytelling are strategies of survival and change, reminding us that narrative is policy.

FINANCIAL ACTIVISM 101: Reclaiming Money as Power

With author and activist Jasmine Rashid, we reimagined money itself as a tool of justice. Our Financial Activism 101 series challenged participants to wield financial power with intention, making economic resistance part of feminist strategy.

LIBERATING ABORTION: The Future Of Reproductive Freedom

As attacks on abortion escalate nationwide, we hosted Renee Bracey Sherman, author of Liberating Abortion, who reminded us that reproductive freedom is not only about the right to terminate a pregnancy, but also the right to parent, the right to safety, and the right to thrive.

Events & Community Moments

Our events are more than gatherings—they are spaces of strategy, imagination, and collective power. Each one reflects the urgency of this moment and the brilliance of communities rising together to create a feminist future.

California’s Innovative Blueprint

“We are living in the reality that someone imagined 50 years ago… So, what can happen if we imagine a different world?” This question set the tone for a dynamic conversation with Mother Jones on California’s role as both a progressive leader and a testing ground for conservative attacks on democracy and reproductive justice. Click here to watch the full recording.

Our Money, Ourselves

As we entered the new year amidst relentless attacks on bodily autonomy and civil rights, we gathered for Our Money, Ourselves—a workshop and a call to action, inviting women and gender-expansive people to rethink money as energy and wealth as possibility. Participants explored how love, rage, and imagination can reshape the way we move resources, grounding financial activism in collective liberation.

Commonwealth Club X WFC

As part of our ongoing work to confront hate and expand justice, Women’s Foundation California partnered with the Commonwealth Club to center safety, healing, and belonging. We participated in two events: Summit: United Against Hate Day and the 2nd Annual SF Pride Human Rights Summit.

Legislative Reception 2024

Our annual Legislative Reception is a joyful celebration of feminist advocates and changemakers. The evening pulsed with gratitude, courage, and the fierce reminder that our togetherness is a strategy in itself. Every embrace, every voice raised affirmed our collective strength; our power lies not only in our shared goals but in the diversity of our lived experiences. 

Looking Ahead & Closing

The attacks are real. The stakes are high. But the communities and movements we fund are resilient, and with your support, they will endure. Now is the moment to double down, to invest, to fight back—not tomorrow, not later, but today.

At Women’s Foundation California, we know that California has always been a testing ground—for both progress and backlash. That is why our strategy must be collective, intersectional, and bold. The next year will bring challenges, but it will also bring possibility: for feminist policy wins, for cultural shifts that change narratives, and for the strengthening of movements that refuse to yield.

We close this report with an invitation: don’t just read about the future we are building—fund it, fight for it, and imagine it with us.

Stewarding Resources for a Common Purpose

FINANCIALS

Guided by feminist funding principles, our commitment is to provide enduring, sustainable financial support that encompasses administrative costs, flexibility, and multiyear durations. We prioritize transparency and accountability in our grantmaking processes, ensuring simplicity and learning-focused reporting.

Revenue, gains & support $7,746,237
Investment income $815,168
Total revenues, gains & support $9,415752
Expenses
Program services $6,725,125
Management & General $837,269
Resource Development $2,099,276
Total expenses $9,661,670
Change in net assets $245,981
Net assets, beginning of year $17,253,690
Net assets, end of year $17,007,772

*Financials are based on numbers that are currently under audit

This work is powered by you.

The feminist future we are building together in California is going to be built by all of us sharing our time, our money, and our skills.  Please consider contributing today.

Together We Are Unstoppable.

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