Fueling Transformative Innovations in Voter Organizing
PIVOT is a first-of-its-kind partnership between California’s leading organizers and funders. Together, we strengthen our state’s power-building ecosystem, advance racial justice, and win lasting structural transformation in California.
Join UsAbout PIVOT
Powerful Innovations for Voter Organizing and Transformation
PIVOT resources power-building at scale to engage and mobilize communities of color across issues and geography not just during election cycles – but also year round. We raise and distribute millions in new dollars to strengthen innovations in voter organizing. We build power to shape a progressive California where people of color can create thriving futures for themselves and their families.
California holds significant power and influence over the nation. The state can lead the way in fostering organizing and movement building across geography, race, and lived experience with innovations locally, regionally, and statewide. But reality is the state’s policies have failed to meet the needs of far too many Black, Indigenous, and communities of color. It is time for bold ideas and action to protect our democracy, win economic equity and advance racial justice.
PIVOT invests in voter organizing beyond election cycles, giving leaders, organizations and movements the ability to build vibrant, creative, and long-term approaches and strategies to win structural reform – now and into the future.
PIVOT grew out of the California Civic Participation Funders table. Beginning in 2020, funders and organizers came together to coordinate and share best practices to increase c4 dollars. Amid the crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the nation’s reckoning with its history of racial injustice, we recognized the need for new and deeper investments in power-building to advance structural reforms.
The Pooled Fund will be housed at California Community Foundation.
About Our Grantmaking
PIVOT Pooled Fund: Betting Big on People Power
PIVOT addresses the underinvestment in year-round organizing and voter engagement for California’s communities of color. We fund new and large-scale investments that are necessary to sustain power-building experiments and innovations to win structural change. We provide long-term, multi-year funding to established and emerging organizations, leaders and coalitions; we support both “shovel-ready” and early stage projects that engage, educate and mobilize communities of color and win campaigns for the long haul.
In our first round of grantmaking from PIVOT’s Power Building Pooled Fund, we are thrilled to award more than $7 million in multi-year grants to 14 organizations, coalitions and networks reaching more than 70 organizations around the state. These organizations are leading breakthrough strategies to empower communities that have long been denied a voice in elections and government. The 14 grantees include eight regional and six statewide groups working to make sure that California’s democracy reflects its population – engaging AAPI, Black, and Latinx communities as well as young people, immigrants and rural communities. Our inaugural grantees reflect our approach to building local infrastructure and strengthening statewide organizations – both are important to California’s power-building ecosystem. Grants range from more than $250,000 to $1 million in size over two years.
Central Coast Civic Engagement Table
MOVE
the valley
We proudly support these efforts and their critical work on the ground so communities that are most directly impacted by inequality have the power to design and advocate for policies that reflect their needs; play decision-making roles in the policies and systems that impact their lives; and exercise power to win systemic change through advocacy, direct action, voter organizing, and mobilization.
Grantmaking Announcements:
Our Funders
Learning and Acting Together
PIVOT creates opportunities for organizers and funders to learn and act together, shaping a new form of participatory grantmaking where power is shared with organizers. Through our funder education work and ongoing learning sessions, we provide opportunities for funders to deepen their understanding of power-building as a driver of long term structural change.
Through PIVOT, funders gain understanding of what organizers need to build and sustain power, not just around elections but year round, and fuel long-term systems change. This is a unique type of trust-building philanthropy, a model that centers open, honest relationships and shared power, bringing both practitioners and funders together to shift culture and practices. We envision and are making possible a philanthropic landscape that is practitioner-informed and guided by the needs of the field.
Together, funders and organizers are co-creating shared visions for structural reforms and long term power-building infrastructure.
PIVOT Team & Steering Committee
PIVOT Team
Diana Colín
Director, PIVOT
PIVOT Steering Committee
Judith Bell
Chief Impact Officer
San Francisco Foundation
Cielo V. Castro
Vice President of Public Policy and Civic Engagement
California Community Foundation
Jung Hee Choi
Senior Advisor/Narrative & Strategic Initiatives
Power California
Andrea Guerrero
Executive Director
Alliance San Diego
Marisol Inzunza
Program Officer, Leading Power and Change
The California Wellness Foundation
Kimi Lee
Executive Director
Bay Rising
Christina Livingston
Statewide Executive Director
Alliance of Californians For Community Empowerment (ACCE) Institute
Raul Macias
Program Director, Democracy
Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund
Joseph Tomás McKeller
Executive Director
PICO California
Pablo Rodriguez
Executive Director
Communities for a New California
Angelica Salas
Executive Director
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)
Amado Uno
Director
Million Voters Project
Dr. Sandra Witt
Managing Director, Power Infrastructure Statewide
The California Endowment
Lucas Zucker
Co-Executive Director
Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)
Join Us
PIVOT aligns funders and raises and leverages resources to fuel power-building innovations and strengthen the power-building ecosystem at the regional and state level across California. We grow resources to benefit all regions of the state, from LA and the Bay Area to the Inland Empire, Central Coast, and Central Valley.
New and large-scale investments are necessary to win bold structural reforms and achieve a truly equitable California for all. Together, we can build the people power necessary to shape a multi-racial democracy and advance racial justice in California.
We invite you to contact us today to learn more about our work.
