Reflections on My First Year as Director of the California Youth Power Fund (YPF).
It took me five months of reflection, listening, and planning before I decided to take on the role as California Youth Power Fund’s (YPF) inaugural director in August of last year. Not because I was hesitant, but because I understood the gravity of what I was aiming to take on and wanted to make sure I came into the role clear about what it meant both for me personally and for our communities.
This past year has been anything but expected. The philanthropic landscape is constantly changing, the actions of the current federal administration have taken a real toll on working, immigrant, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ young people and their families, and rights fought for and won over the last several decades are being targeted and rolled back across the country.
Yet all of this has made my role, and the role of YPF, that much clearer: fund an ecosystem that historically, in California and around the world, generates our society's strongest leaders: youth. If you’re reading this, you probably were one of these young people at some point, leading you to the role you hold today.
From the Civil Rights era all the way through the DREAMer and Black Lives Matter movements, young people have consistently been among the boldest, most courageous, and creative leaders pushing our society forward. Yet, youth leadership and power building remain chronically under-resourced. There are still prominent notions that young people don’t care and aren’t engaged, which is a missed opportunity to explore first whether we've built and funded the infrastructure required to support their engagement.
In other words: Don’t confuse a lack of infrastructure with a lack of engagement. (Note: especially, in underrepresented communities and regions).
Young people are paying attention and care deeply. They organize around issues affecting their families and communities, imagine solutions, and step into leadership. But engagement alone does not build durable power. It takes organizations, organizers, relationships, resources, and places to turn that energy into sustained action.
Something I’ve been thinking about more recently: for many young people, the organizations we fund are among the first places where they experience real agency. In these orgs, youth play an active role in deciding which issues matter, what campaigns and issues their organizations take on, what happens at community events, and how their communities respond to the challenges around them, and get access to the trainings and support necessary to execute and win on these decisions. These experiences don't just lead to a campaign or an event; they lay the groundwork for a lifetime of civic engagement, agency, and voice. That is the infrastructure YPF plays a significant role in resourcing. This work is building the bench of leaders current and in the future, that our state desperately needs.
And I believe it’s long past time for philanthropy to stop funding youth power only from the periphery and on the margins, when there is discretionary funding, a special initiative, or money left over, and start treating it as a central strategy for building thriving communities and a healthy, sustainable civic infrastructure. Funding this work is not only the right thing to do; it just might be the best strategy we have.
Investing in YPF means investing in a grantmaking model where people closest to the issues and communities we fund have real power in deciding where resources go. Our statewide and regional grantmaking processes bring together organizers, young people, and philanthropic partners to make decisions collectively, rather than using their insight simply to advise decisions ultimately made somewhere, and by someone else. Through this shared decision-making, YPF has often prioritized moving resources to smaller and historically under-resourced organizations, including those in rural communities and outside the state’s primary metro areas, and organizations with annual budgets under $1 million.
Nearly 90% of the resources we raise move back out our doors to directly support young people and the organizations and infrastructures that are building youth power across California. That includes our grantmaking, but increasingly it also means investing in the people who will shape the future of this sector.
Earlier this year, I talked with Glen Galaich on the Breaking Fake Rules podcast about the need to rethink who gets to participate in philanthropy and make decisions about resources. Over the coming year, with support from Stupski, and in partnership with Northern California Grantmakers (NCG) and Youth Organize! California (YO! Cali) we are preparing to expand our Youth Field Leaders work, creating more paid opportunities for young people to work within philanthropy, learn how resources move, build relationships across the sector, and bring their lived experience and organizing knowledge into spaces where funding decisions are made.
If we believe young people should have power over the decisions affecting their communities, that should include decisions within and about philanthropy, where a great deal of power and resources are held, too.
One year into this role, YPF’s work is gaining momentum
We’ve currently reached 60% of our $5 million fundraising goal, while bringing new institutional funders and individual donors into YPF and the broader work of investing in youth power across California. This goal total is 2.5X what YPF has traditionally mobilized and reflects our commitment to statewide expansion, especially in underrepresented regions, and to ensuring emerging and historically under-resourced youth organizing groups have greater access to philanthropic resources that they might not otherwise have access to.
We’ve grown YPF’s capacity, while remaining thoughtful about overhead. In January, we welcomed Olivia Nava as YPF’s Head of Strategy and Impact and have sustained Hawi Desta’s role as YO! Cal’s) YPF Program Coordinator. Alongside my role, this gives us significantly more capacity to support our grantmaking, further develop relationships across the state, and build the next phase of YPF, which includes the expanded young people in philanthropy field leaders program mentioned above, while still maintaining just a 10% overhead cost. This level of capacity is only possible through a real people-power effort: countless hours contributed by Program Officers and foundation staff from across the state, the staff, network, and infrastructure of YO! Cali, and many others who contribute to the work and want to see it succeed.
We launched The Boldest Among Us: Youth-Led Movements Transform Society, a statewide funder convening series. We started in Oakland, continued in Long Beach, and at the time of writing this are now headed to Fresno and the Central Valley. This series has brought philanthropy into deeper conversation with young people, organizers, researchers, and regional leaders about what it actually takes to build youth power across the state.
We’re deepening YPF’s statewide infrastructure. Building from what YPF and our partners have developed in Northern California over the last five years, by bringing together a core group of Southern California funders to deepen investment in youth power across the region. At the same time, with our partners at YO! Cali, we’re exploring how our grantmaking can better connect across regions.
Thank you, as I head into year two
I'm proud of the upward trajectory we've built, while knowing there is much more ahead of us. We’re continuing to build toward our $5 million goal ahead of our 2027 grantmaking, deepen relationships and regional partnerships, and learn alongside the young people, organizers, and funders shaping this work. YPF exists to fill gaps in funding for youth power across the state, while adding more cross-pollination and connective tissue between regions and grantee organizations, all while holding that how we get there, and who gets to make the decisions, is just as important.
BIG appreciations to the amazing, brilliant organizing staff at YO! Cali; our Core Team of funders, who supported this work long before we had dedicated staffing; always the vision and perspectives of our Youth Field Leaders; and Alejandro Foung, whose investment made this role possible.
Amidst everything going on, the good news is that young people are already doing their part. They’re organizing, imagining, building, and leading. Think of what becomes possible when there is enough infrastructure and investment to match the scale and impact of young people’s leadership.
