Rooted in the past, grounded in our present,
looking toward our future.
The words of queer Chicana activist Gloria Anzaldúa ring in my ears: “Though we tremble before uncertain futures, may we meet illness, death, and adversity with strength. May we dance in the face of our fears.”
We do not wait for hope to arrive. We make it, with our hands, with our budgets, alongside partners and communities who are still fighting for justice, long after the headlines have moved on to something else. Feminism is not a mood we’re in. It is the antidote we have, against fascism, against a politics built on scarcity and fear. Our people already hold the answers. They always have.
Letter from the CEO
Deep Roots Survive the Seasons
Our Grant Partners
Grantmaking 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 $3.5 million to 83 organizations helping the most marginalized among us.
- A La Defensa
- ACCESS Reproductive Justice
- Alliance for Girls
- Amplify Georgia Collaborative
- Arab Resource and Organizing Center
- Artist as First Responder
- La Defensa*
- Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective
- Black Feminist Future
- Black Women for Wellness
- Black Women for Wellness Action Project*
- California Black Women’s Health Project
- California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom
- California Latinas for Reproductive Justice
- California Partnership to End Domestic Violence
- Canary Resistance*
- California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative
- California Domestic Workers Coalition
- Canary Resistance Training Institute
- The Center for Cultural Power
- Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)
- Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse
- California Native Vote Project
- Community United Against Violence
- Community Water Center
- Community Water Center Action Fund*
- Courage California Institute
- Courage California Issues*
- Dolores Huerta Foundation
- El/La Para Translatinas
- Empower Tehama
- Equal Rights Advocates
- Family Violence Law Center
- Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation
- Forward Together
- FreeFrom
- Gender Justice LA
- Harness Community
- Healthy Alternatives to Violent Environments (HAVEN)
- Hmong Innovating Politics
- Human Options Inc.
- Inland Empire United*
- Inland Empire United Education Fund
- Jenesse Center Inc.
- Khmer Girls in Action
- Lyon-Martin Community Health Services
- Majdal: Arab Community Center San Diego
- Michigan Voices
- Mid-City Community Advocacy Network
- Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project
- Mothering Justice
- Mujeres Unidas y Activas
- Nevada County Citizens for Choice
- Organización en California de Líderes Campesinas Inc.
- Parent Voices
- People Power Action Fund*
- Power California
- Prism Reports Inc.
- Rainbow Services Ltd.
- SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective
- Sikh Family Center
- Sogorea Te Land Trust
- Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
- Spark Reproductive Justice Now
- Starting Over Inc.
- Strong Hearted Native Women’s Coalition
- Training in Early Abortion for Comprehensive Healthcare (TEACH)
- The League
- The Transgender District
- The Translatin@ Coalition
- The Women’s Building
- Time for Change Foundation
- Transgender Health and Wellness Center
- Transgender Law Center
- Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center
- United Women of East Africa Support Team
- URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity
- Vision First
- Voices for Progress Education Fund
- We Testify
- Women Engaged
- Women’s Health Specialists
- Young Women’s Freedom Center
*c4 organizations
Our Grantmaking in Action
Funding the Front Lines:
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.
A La Defensa
La Defensa*
Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center
Starting Over Inc.
The TransLatin@ Coalition
Time for Change Foundation
Young Women’s Freedom Center
Arab Resource and Organizing Center
California Native Vote Project
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)
Courage California Issues*
Courage California Institute
Dolores Huerta Foundation
Hmong Innovating Politics
Inland Empire United*
Inland Empire United Education Fund
Majdal: Arab Community Center of San Diego
People Power Action Fund*
Power California
The League
Voices for Progress Education Fund
Alliance for Girls
California Partnership to End Domestic Violence
Community United Against Violence
Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse
Empower Tehama
Family Violence Law Center
FreeFrom
Gender Justice LA
Healthy Alternatives to Violent Environments (HAVEN)
Human Options, Inc.
Jenesse Center, Inc.
Organización en California de Líderes Campesinas, Inc.
Rainbow Services, Ltd.
Sikh Family Center
Strong Hearted Native Women’s Coalition, Inc.
Transgender Law Center
California Domestic Workers Coalition
Equal Rights Advocates
Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project
Mujeres Unidas y Activas
Parent Voices California
The Women’s Building
Community Water Center
Community Water Center Action Fund*
Prism Reports Inc.
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
Artist As First Responder
Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective
California Black Women’s Health Project
Canary Resistance*
Canary Resistance Training Institute
El/La Para TransLatinas
Khmer Girls in Action
Lyon-Martin Community Health Services
Mid-City Community Advocacy Network
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
The Transgender District
Transgender Health & Wellness Center
United Women of East Africa Support Team
ACCESS Reproductive Justice
Amplify Georgia Collaborative
Black Feminist Future
Black Women for Wellness
Black Women for Wellness Action Project*
California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom
California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative
California Latinas for Reproductive Justice
Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation
Forward Together
Harness Community
Michigan Voices
Mothering Justice
Nevada County Citizens for Choice
SisterSong Inc.
Spark Reproductive Justice Now
Training in Early Abortion for Comprehensive Healthcare (TEACH)
The Center for Cultural Power
URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity
Vision First
We Testify
Women Engaged
Women’s Health Specialists
By the Numbers:
Grants by Primary Issue Area
Funding
Multi–Generational Feminist Funding
Just as a tapestry is nothing without each individual thread, we know we need each other now and in the future. The roots we deepen today will steady, ground, and secure our future. These funds are a radical act of love, trust, and hope – a multigenerational commitment to resourcing feminist leaders and movements who will continue to secure our feminist future long after we are gone. Through these memorial and legacy funds, our community and their loved ones entrust their commitment to future generations of feminist leaders.
Sofia Zosima Colosimo Memorial Fund
We launched the Sofia Zosima Colosimo Memorial Fund in memory of the fierce Sofia Zosima Colosimo in June 2026, in honor of Sofia’s 30th birthday. With important contributions from Sofia’s family and friends, the fund will support our youth leadership program.
The Draper | Paiva Feminist Legacy Fund for Bodily Autonomy
In 2024, Lee Draper and Thomas Paiva made a powerful planned gift, pledging half their wealth to establish the Draper|Paiva Feminist Legacy Fund for Bodily Autonomy. The fund will support movement organizations protecting bodily autonomy; in Lee and Tom’s words, “for these core issues, we will keep fighting.”
The Janis Adams Legacy Campaign
Jan was a co-founder of the Los Angeles Women’s Foundation who passed away in 2024. To honor Jan, and her dedication to women, girls, and gender justice, her husband John Lyons has seeded a five-year legacy campaign to raise $1M+ in the leadup to Women’s Foundation California 50th anniversary.
Partnership & Community Power
Over the past year, we affirmed what we already know: connection is the strategy and we know the power within each other.
Gender Equity Work Group
This past year, Women’s Foundation California gathered the California Gender Equity Work Group, uniting 12 of our state’s most brilliant grassroots leaders across diverse sectors. Together, they are confronting the systemic barriers to gender equity and advancing our movements towards a collective feminist future.
HOME
Homelessness gets talked about as a crisis of housing. Domestic violence as a crisis of safety. But these are not separate stories. This year, the HOME Cohort turned testimony into testament, completing their narrative change documentary, Domestic Violence, Housing, and the Cost of Inaction and hosting screenings across the state.
Culture Change Fund
Policy alone isn’t enough. To truly shift society toward gender, racial, and economic justice, we must transform the cultural narratives that shape how people think, feel, and behave. This year, we collected key lessons learned over six years of the Culture Change Fund and shared it in a new Culture Change Fund report, which we highlighted at Sundance Film Festival.
Programs & Impact
The Next Generation of Policy Changemakers Is Here
In a year marked by ICE’s continued attacks on immigrant communities, the defunding of resources for all social services, and the ongoing effort to erase trans people from public life, our partners, including more than 900 Solís Policy Institute (SPI) adult and youth alums, remain not just essential, but indispensable. Over nearly 25 years, SPI fellows have passed 61 bills into law.
Solís Policy Institute (SPI) State: Feminist Policy in Action
Our Solís Policy Institute State fellows worked under a tight State budget and still delivered profound victories. Together, they expanded their toolbox of skills and championed four feminist-rooted bills – including one signed into law by Governor Newsom:
- AB 969 (Rodriguez) reforms how our welfare system treats survivors of domestic violence. Survivors who rely on CalWORKs to rebuild their lives often face program rules that unintentionally punish them for the very circumstances they are trying to escape. AB 969 fixes that. It gives survivors the right to waive requirements that would put them at risk. It standardizes the process statewide so survivors aren’t left at the mercy of local bureaucracy. And it ensures that counties cannot deny someone protection because they’re in counseling or recovery programs.
Solís Policy Institute (SPI) Local: Power at the Ground Level
In July 2025, Women’s Foundation California relaunched our Solís Policy Institute (SPI) Local program in Los Angeles County with 17 incredible fellows, following a two-year pause for assessment and program redesign.
SPI Local Class of 2025 teams and their achievements include:
- San Gabriel Valley TGI (transgender, gender-variant, intersex) Wellness and Justice
- TGI Countywide
- Housing Security
- Crimmigration
In November 2025, we celebrated these fellows’ accomplishments with a hundred friends at a community event featuring SPI Local alum and LA City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. As SPI Local Class of 2025 fellow Jovan Wolf put it: “Change moves through relationships, not paper.”
Announcing Solís Policy Institute Youth: More Than a Fellowship. A Movement.
The world is splitting at the seams. Power is consolidating. And young people — queer, trans, Black, Brown, immigrant, gender-expansive — are rising to meet it. Not with patience. Not with permission. With strategy, solidarity, and everything they’ve got.
Last summer, 25 youth fellows gathered with us in Sonoma and proved what we already know: the next generation of movement builders is here, alive, and unstoppable. They come carrying anger, love, grief, and joy. They leave with a community, a toolkit, and the kind of clarity that only comes from being in a room full of people who refuse to let the world stay broken.
Their commitment to justice changed Women’s Foundation California’s trajectory: they prompted us to convert the Summer Leadership Institute into the SPI Youth program as a mirror to the adult fellowships, deepening youth fellows’ leadership and policy advocacy skills. As a result, we are pleased to announce the new SPI Youth fellowship that consists of an intensive week together and eight monthly sessions online. These are not the ‘leaders of tomorrow’—they are leading today.
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.
Looking Ahead & Invitation
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.
FINANCIALS
Financial stewardship as an act of accountability and care
We are committed to funding gender justice grassroots movements where they are. Especially in a yet another year defined by political repression and continued uncertainty, Women’s Foundation California focused on strengthening critical connections with our individual and institutional supporters. In a season built to isolate us, connection is the strategy that lets us meet this moment.
| Revenue, gains & support | $10,497,444 |
| Investment income | 1,122,349 |
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|
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| Total revenues, gains & support | 11,619,793 |
| Expenses | |
| REDISTRIBUTE: Grantmaking | 6,943,757 |
| MOBILIZE: Policy Institutes | 1,855,066 |
| AMPLIFY: Strategic Comms | 1,073,210 |
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|
|
| Total expenses | 9,872,033 |
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|
|
| Change in net assets | 1,747,760 |
| Net assets, beginning of year | 17,305,761 |
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| Net assets, end of year | $19,053,521 |