The single biggest way philanthropic organizations can reduce poverty is to fund advocacy and education work for state and local anti-poverty policy measures, which include not only higher wages, improved public education (pre-K through college) but also housing assistance and student debt relief. Additionally, they can fund research and development Read more…
Nonprofits in Southern California can play a pivotal role in reducing poverty by a) helping community members access and utilize public benefit programs such as Medi-Cal, CalFRESH, WIC, and SSI as well as programs that housing assistance or rental; b) conducting research that offers long term solutions, including positive changes Read more…
Large employers can increase their entry level wages and all other wages accordingly. They can also provide pay equity, ample sick and personal days, and access to quality childcare and preschool. Additionally, large employers should ensure that health benefits have little to no coinsurance or deductibles and copays. They should Read more…
In Southern California, we need much better public schools, universal healthcare and rent control. Local governments should not put additional funding into prisons, juvenile facilities or law enforcement (that conducts racial profiling, widespread surveillance and assists ICE in detaining and deporting immigrants), but should instead pay for proactive measures that Read more…
In Southern California, we need much better public schools, universal healthcare, public benefit programs and rent control and housing assistance. The State of CA should not put additional funding into prisons, juvenile facilities or law enforcement (that conducts racial profiling, widespread surveillance and assists ICE in detaining and deporting immigrants) Read more…
Philanthropic organizations can invest in community leadership and neighborhood development to address policy and systems change. Funding services but also long term integrated voter engagement for all communities, regardless of their socioeconomic levels are engaged and have access to making local systems and policy change. Philanthropic organizations can also bring Read more…
Nonprofits can go beyond providing services and basic needs. Nonprofits should be integrating nonpartisan civic engagement into their settings and support community and neighborhood leadership to help transform policies and systems that create barriers and challenges to get out of poverty. Also, nonprofits can help to develop the next generation Read more…
Large employers need to pay a livable wage for each local area and address the high cost of living in various areas. Large employers can also integrate support for their employees such as health care clinics onsite, English Language Learner classes, other educational classes and incentives, childcare onsite, sick child Read more…
Diversifying and hiring or appointing local community members who understand the impact of their systems on communities in poverty. City councils should appoint diverse planning commission members who understand the impact of permits, future neighborhood developments, the need for affordable housing, etc. Not just appoint those who have given more Read more…
State government can help to bring about policies to encourage local government to partner with communities and businesses to address poverty in a comprehensive manner. All stakeholders should be at the table to give their perspectives and strategies. Cities, affordable housing developers, labor, health care, education, and community need to Read more…
Philanthropic organizations are uniquely positioned to connect and convene individuals, nonprofits, businesses, and other community leaders to collaboratively tackle our community’s greatest needs. For example, the Orange County Community Foundation is piloting a new initiative to address poverty by building pathways to living wage employment for unemployed and underemployed OC Read more…
The most effective means of poverty include funding a strong public education system from preschool through college, increasing the minimum wage, providing universal healthcare and offering many more housing assistance vouchers and mandating some forms of rent control. To lift individuals out of poverty, we need many of those tools, Read more…
It is no longer a republican talking point that people are fleeing this state. Middle class Californians are voting with their feet and calling it quits. Many states across the country are seeing droves of Californians move into their neighborhood. It has gotten so bad in Boise, Idaho that a Read more…
As communities and policymakers, we need to work together to transform all the influences to the communities well-being. It’s not just giving a job and housing, its changing the environment and opportunities for community members. Accessible transportation, jobs in local neighborhoods not where you have to take four different buses Read more…
Philanthropic organizations should continue the great work that they already do and partner with other nonprofits organizations, such as BizFed to multiply their voice with local, state, and federal elected officials, and connect with other philanthropic organization to increase awareness. We also hope the philanthropic community seeks out the business Read more…
Non-profit organizations should not shy away from their right to advocate for policies that are in line with accomplishing their mission. Many organizations that provide direct services are in the best position to advocate for their clients and hold government accountable to spending our public dollars most effectively. Yet many Read more…
Large companies can help combat poverty by investing in all levels of workforce development to accelerate job growth and access to jobs while providing access to career technical training and industry-specific apprenticeships. Large companies may be more equipped to provide childcare services within their establishment or partner with childcare providers Read more…
County and local governments are at the forefront of our housing and homelessness crisis and are best able to work with housing developers to reduce the extreme cost of building affordable and supportive housing, which currently stands around $600,000 per unit. By reducing red tape, expediting the permitting and approval Read more…
There are three things state legislators must do now to fight the poverty crisis in California. First, they need to pass legislation that streamlines the construction of affordable and supportive housing while reducing development costs. Second, they should provide additional or reallocate funding for mental health and wrap-around services for Read more…
Each year, the Los Angeles County Business Federation, BizFed, a grassroots alliance of 180 business organizations representing 400,000 employers that employ 3.5 million Angelenos, conducts its “Pulse Poll,” meant to gauge the temperature of the business community and the issues affecting the industry. In the 2019 poll, BizFed members identified Read more…
California’s state government, and many of its local governments, particularly in its largest metropolitan areas, have largely failed to learn the lesson that economic freedom leads to economic prosperity – for all income brackets. While many have been able to generate a great deal of wealth in spite of California’s Read more…
People have struggled with how best to deal with poverty since the earliest societies, but the answer is apparent if we merely look to history. From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution to modern times, poverty has been most radically and rapidly alleviated whenever people are free to work in Read more…
Decades of public health research has shown that wealth is the strongest factor that influences health, but many Southern Californians face barriers to achieving financial security. For health funders like The California Wellness Foundation, investing our resources in efforts to reduce income inequality is one strategy to improve the health Read more…
Philanthropic organizations can provide funding to test innovative strategies to reduce barriers to employment for households in poverty. They can also provide support for advocacy to support systems change. Philanthropy should not be satisfied at only providing stabilizing supports.
Nonprofits can work to uplift the voice of the community to identify the critical needs that communities have and to help shape the changes that are needs in our existing political and economic systems. They can also provide stabilizing supports for community members in poverty
While a simple answer might be to say that large employers should pay higher wages, I think it is more important that they work to reduce the same barriers that policy needs to work on reducing. Employers can do much better in developing talent acquisition strategies that do not penalize Read more…
City and County governments can also work to reduce structural barriers in the systems that they oversee. They can make investments in transportation and housing infrastructure that allows better access to jobs City and County should not focus on economic development strategies with a narrow focus on increasing sales tax Read more…
The state government could increase the state EITC. The state should also consider providing a housing voucher to all households that are paying more than 50% of the income as rent to reduce the consequences of poverty. The state should provide more resources to enforce existing anti-discrimination legislation in the Read more…
A person’s most direct way out of poverty is to have a job that pays a living wage. Acquiring the skills and overcoming structural barriers for some will take time. Therefore policy must focus on these pathways. In the short run, a more robust Earned Income Tax Credit would reduce Read more…
Philanthropic organizations can help by sponsoring vocational and college scholarships for low-income students and supporting organizations that provide affordable child-care, mentoring, and other programs that give those living in poverty a hand up.
Nonprofits can play a pivotal role in helping reduce poverty by offering programs to help people learn about financial literacy and develop family, life and job skills they need to find and maintain employment. In addition, nonprofits such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Inland Empire connect at-risk young Read more…
It’s not always about finding a job. Sometimes it’s about creating one. We have many entrepreneurs here in the Inland Empire who want to start businesses and create a job for themselves and for others. Unfortunately, the venture capital needed to get start-up businesses off the ground is in short Read more…
Jobs lead people out of poverty, and California is chasing jobs and entrepreneurs out of our state every day with over regulation and excessive taxation. In my district, we are losing companies because of the high electricity costs in our state and the unpredictability of environmental regulations. These companies are Read more…
Education is critical to helping people avoid poverty. Not everyone needs a college degree to get a good job, but when they can’t read proficiently or do simple math, they are more likely to be impoverished, and when their children grow up in poverty, those children are more likely to Read more…
I can say from my perspective and from the perspective of my organization that we believe working to reduce wasteful spending on ineffective prisons and reallocating those dollars back into communities is certainly a key to ensuring communities are healthy and thriving. For far too long, mass incarceration has had Read more…
Most people would be very surprised to discover that in the state of California today, 90 of the 100 fastest growing occupations ban people with a past conviction. A statistic like that underscores just how difficult it is for the eoght million people in our state living with a past Read more…
Late last year, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles pioneered a pilot program that allows some people with a past conviction to live in public housing or in private housing as part of the Section 8 program. It’s a model that can and should be replicated in Read more…
California’s voter-approved Proposition 47 has successfully reduced incarceration, already saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars and reallocated that money back into local communities to fund proven crime prevention programs. Using Prop. 47 savings, programs have been created in communities up and down the state that are helping address Read more…
One of the best ways to keep people out of poverty is to position them so they have every opportunity to succeed and achieve financial security and family stability. Folks need employment opportunities, housing opportunities and opportunities to better themselves by getting an education. But more than eight million Californians Read more…
Philanthropy has actually been playing a positive role in this arena. For example, the Weingart Foundation commissioned an equity analysis of Los Angeles County and Orange County Grantmakers supported an equity analysis in the O.C. as well. The James Irvine Foundation has focused a large share of its recent philanthropic Read more…
Public-private partnerships are key – and so is sectoral targeting. There are many industries worthy of support, particularly those like advanced manufacturing, construction, and health care that provide strong pathways to the middle class. But many poor people are not in those sectors yet and we must look to see Read more…
State governments can allocate the monetary resources necessary to ensure that programs and services are set in place for all Californians to thrive. One major issue facing California’s poor is affordable housing, or in this case, unaffordable housing. In California, about half of very low-income renter households and about three-quarters Read more…
The first thing we need is a big shift in mindset: we tend to think of poverty as an unfortunate result of our economy instead of understanding the disequalizing forces that have caused California to become the fourth most unequal state in the union. Poverty is not so much a Read more…
Philanthropic organizations should support evidence-based, replicable program models, like employment social enterprise, that provide jobs, income, training and a path to economic mobility for individuals with extremely low incomes. Philanthropic organizations should consider using a portion of their endowments for social impact investing to provide growth capital to social entrepreneurs Read more…
California is the home of a large and forward-thinking private philanthropic and social impact investing sector. However, private philanthropic initiatives are rarely well-integrated with public sector objectives and resources. Government should partner with private-sector and local stakeholders to support effective, evidence-based, and replicable nonprofit-run program models for revitalizing local innovation Read more…
When the Business Roundtable announced in September 2019 a change in its Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation to include workers, suppliers, and communities in addition to shareholders, it was an acknowledgement that persistent income inequality and poverty will put pressure on the long-term prospects of the member companies. Read more…
City and County governments can replicate programs like the Los Angeles Regional Initiative for Social Enterprise (LA:RISE). LA:RISE is an innovative partnership that unites the City and County of Los Angeles to help people with high employment barriers get jobs, stay employed, and build a better life. LA:RISE connects employment Read more…
Given the role of employment in poverty alleviation, state government can incentivize employment by lessening the impact of the benefits cliff. After families’ employment income increases, state government can adopt a revenue neutral approach through earned income disregards or expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). EITC is one of Read more…
As the 2019 Nobel prize winning economists of the Poverty Action Lab found, job creation and access to employment are key factors in keeping low-income people out of poverty. Data from the Census Bureau showed the official poverty rate in the U.S. dropped to 11.8% in 2018, the lowest since Read more…
The philanthropic organizations can take a more general view; they tend to be a bit more removed from the pressures of delivering on daily needs for housing, medical care, training, or food. They are positioned to study best practices from other states and countries, to survey the academic literature, and Read more…
General job-skills training, shelter, and day care can be offered by non-profits. Their efficiency is much greater than that of government; so government should help with the financing, but not attempt to take over tasks being better performed by the non-profits. Non-profits should be exempt from many of the impact Read more…
Retraining is best done by the employers who know exactly what skills their workplaces need. The employee who has been downsized and is no longer young is at great risk of falling below the poverty level. Large employers can be incentivized by government matching a percentage of salaries they offer Read more…
Counties and cities should offer contracts to motels to provide shelter to those unable to get housing, or a place to shower, or to leave one’s possessions while looking for a job. Many people are one good interview away from a job, and then a route out of poverty–but having Read more…
Our proximity to Mexico is a huge plus. We need to facilitate the comparative advantage of each economy in collaborating with the other. The maquiladora programs are but one example. The Inland Empire is one of the greatest trans-shipment hubs in the world; it should be available to Mexican products Read more…
Creating a regulatory, tax, and governmental environment that welcomes job-creation in California is the best way to keep Californians out of poverty. Yet, in large part responsive to understandably compassionate instincts, our government tends to go directly to wealth transfers, without realizing the importance of wealth creation.Without wealth creation in Read more…
We need an economic development strategy to welcome homebuilders back to the state of California (and implement it). We can plan for all the transit-oriented housing the state desires in order to satisfy climate change rules, but if builders won’t build it because of cost, regs and litigation proliferation, then Read more…
Notwithstanding the state problems, local governments should not pile on their own. Cut red tape, grow jobs, approve new housing, shelter the most vulnerable and encourage supportive services to help.
Oddly, state government strategies seem to incentivize poverty: growing government and “free stuff” for residents while promoting by a thousand cuts the overregulation of small business (comprising 95% of the state’s economy), failure to fix systemic problems that result in lack of housing (CEQA, fees, regulations), burdensome public education regulations Read more…
Studies show that education is key–staying in school, graduating from high school, going on to community college and university–each level of academic achievement ensures opportunities for higher earnings and valuable skills for employment.
Philanthropy can help to fill funding gaps often left between various government funding sources. Gaps exist in social services, basic needs provision, health care, and the development of affordable housing, just to name a few. By listening to and partnering with on-the-ground nonprofits, philanthropic organizations can identify these gaps and Read more…
There are many outstanding nonprofits addressing the effects of poverty across Southern California. Like my own organization, the Hope Through Housing Foundation, it is important for nonprofits to address the multiple challenges facing families in poverty. Working with families in affordable housing, we recognize the need to (1) prepare at-risk Read more…
Offering living-wage compensation packages and benefits including child care, health care, and retirement savings are important tools that employers can provide to allow employees to compensate for high cost of living in SoCal. Employers can also partner with local nonprofits and government to help support, expand, and connect their employees Read more…
To help reduce the poverty across Southern California, state government should continue investing in programs that work upstream in preparing our next generation for self-sufficiency including education, stable living environments for children and families, mental health, and job creation. Recognizing the serious need for increased housing stock to address the Read more…
Poverty, like many societal ills, is a multifaceted issue. It does not result from one simple cause, which means there is no one simple solution. We also know that an individual or family typically does not find themselves living in poverty overnight and there are many factors that can keep Read more…
Philanthropic organizations need to invest in civil society organizations that are helping reduce poverty and advocating for the policies that will promote prosperity for all. Philanthropic organizations can use their platform and influence to engage with local, regional and state government towards joint investment. Philanthropic organizations need to provide resources Read more…
Non profits can help ensure that individuals are accessing the services that are available to them to get out of poverty. Non-profits should be advocating for the policies and budget allocations necessary to ensure that these services are available the community. Non-profits can also advocate to change policies that are Read more…
Large employers can pay their workers enough not to live in poverty. Large employers can provide the benefits that workers need to survive and incentivize or offer education opportunities for upward mobility within the workplace. They can also hold those employers that cheat their workers, commit wage theft or circumvent Read more…
Measure all policies by whether these policies are helping reduce poverty and increase economic opportunity for those in poverty. County and City governments need to hold themselves accountable to whether or not poverty is being reduced year by year. City and County governments should not abdicate their responsibility and shift Read more…
Help pass School and Communities First initiative in 2020 to inject new investments in our schools. Continue to stay committed to wage increases and rent controls. Support equal pay for equal work and incentivize the hiring of companies that demonstrate their commitment to their workers through good wages and benefits. Read more…
The most effective means of keeping people out of poverty begins with providing people with quality, government funded education pre school to colleges that prepares them for the workforce and opens up opportunities to economic opportunity. Prosperity comes from good paying jobs, supports for entrepreneurs and a robust safety net Read more…
Large employers can work with public schools and community colleges to sponsor extension or adult-education classes to teach skills that align with available jobs in the communities in which the businesses are located. They can also offer scholarship funding for the type of certification classes that are needed to qualify Read more…
Public safety is an often overlooked factor in economic analysis. Even a perfect plan for business development and public transit, for example, will fail if people don’t feel safe on the sidewalks and train platforms. Businesses with no customers go out of business, leading to economic hardship and poverty for Read more…
The state government should get out of the way. Every policy that raises the cost of doing business in California is contributing to an increase in poverty.
Job opportunities will lift and keep people out of poverty. Education and training can help people develop and maintain skills to get the jobs they want and to achieve income growth and advancement. A steadily improving economy and a relatively competitive labor market will provide many different opportunities, enabling people Read more…
1) Some of the answers for what nonprofits should do also apply here 2) Five to ten multi-year funding for non-profits with a proven track record of impact. 3) Fund collaborative evaluation initiatives between non-profits and academia to measure impact and reduce overlap and repetition.
1) Address the scarcity model of fundraising with philanthropy so that we can all focus on how to really pursue our mission rather than being constantly beset by how we can sustain our budgets at any given year. 2) Create and collaborate on joint capital campaigns that involves state funding Read more…
1) We need to look more deeply into the so-called gig economy, as well as the meaning and implications of a broader and more insidious utilization of deep artificial intelligence and its impact on the low-income, low-skilled workforce. 2) Large employers should reconsider where they set up shop, keeping an Read more…
Southern California’s intractable problems have been exacerbated by our inability to identify solutions that are multi-pronged and less siloed. A wholistic approach to what drives poverty in the first place, is an important factor in creating a comprehensive map of where resources should go, how to sustain these resources and Read more…
1) A cross-sectoral approach that looks at the nexus and connections between health care, including preventative care, housing, education, wage gaps and access to public transportation. 2) More public-private partnerships and a greater focus on regional disparities that addresses the unfair and inequitable distribution and access to resources in hard Read more…
These last two questions are almost identical. I will only answer once. Non-profits often promote a “victim agenda” that does no good for anyone but professional protesters. They need to focus on things such as training for jobs and also stand up to the regulatory state. There is much they Read more…
Employers should learn to say no and oppose some of the more absurd state regulations. Too often California business has sought to accommodate regulators and not challenge them. This puts companies in an impossible position to create jobs that might alleviate poverty.
The city and counties have to recognize that they have to accommodate housing and companies rather than chase them away. This means, for example, converting surplus retail to housing, and allowing non-profits to build workforce housing. Cities can also do, as Long Beach has, tailor their educational program to work Read more…
The state has to stop its climate jihad. There is no way we will be able to meet our housing and employment with the current regulatory regime. We can meet the Paris agreement levels without forcing up energy prices or adopting policies that other states will be slow to adopt. Read more…
High-paying blue collar work is the key. Right now we are producing some very high paid work (mostly in the Bay Area) but 80 percent of jobs pay below medium and half of those pay under $40,000. Those are essentially working poverty levels. There also needs to be more emphasis Read more…
Don’t give up on California. We’ve seen too many organizations raise the white flag and either support disastrous government schemes or simply declare California hopeless.
There’s no single top-down solution. It’s a big state with a lot of problems — and that will require many people voluntarily pursuing their own best goals. We’re working on creating workplace freedom for California’s public employees.
Stop playing nicely with candidates and public officials who are working overtime to make it impossible to conduct business. Refuse and shame all corporate welfare. Insist on top-quality education.
Many of the same opportunities available to state government are available in some way to local officials — emphasize low taxes and debt, limited/reasonable regulation, financial sustainability, build world-class infrastructure, and eliminate barriers to new home construction.
Liberate markets, reform criminal justice, eliminate CEQA, reform the public-employee pension system, create real school choice with an emphasis on vocational training, make state legislature part-time, end corporate welfare by clamping down on violations of the state’s gift clause, insist on state control over federal lands in California (and make Read more…
Liberate markets. Is it old news now that democratic capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty?
Philanthropies should do adequate due diligence on successful nonprofits providing services and trust them to effectively address the impacts of poverty. Too often philanthropies strictly design grant terms in ways that either do not address poverty or provide a “one-off” program that may provide short-term benefits to recipients but do Read more…
Nonprofits can focus their efforts on the neediest households in the community before providing programming to those who can afford to pay. Nonprofits can also collaborate with others serving the same populations to eliminate duplication of services and comprehensively meet the needs of those in poverty. ———————————— Additional thoughts Nonprofits Read more…
Large employers should increase wages for the lowest paid of their workforce; adopt down-payment assistance programs for longer-term workers and work to locate jobs in communities with lower housing costs that more closely match their wage scales. They can also advocate for affordable housing in those communities where they already Read more…
Adopt land-use and zoning changes for higher density housing, innovative housing designs and fee waivers for housing affordable to the lowest income residents in their cities. They should not zone the majority of their cities for single-family homes on large lots with minimum house sizes and required design features, like Read more…
State government can incentivize local governments to adopt policy changes that would lower the cost of housing so working people could afford the other necessities of life on their wages. Raising the minimum wage periodically is also important. ————————————- Additional thoughts State government is focusing on policies to encourage and Read more…
Providing a healthy, safe home at a price affordable to very low and extremely low income households. If families pay no more than 30% of their income for rent or mortgage, they have the majority of their income available for healthy food, health care, transportation and even a modest savings Read more…