Photo Credit: Power CA
About PIVOT
PIVOT aligns funders and organizers to learn and act together to strengthen our state’s power-building ecosystem. We invest in the organizations, coalitions, and networks that are building enduring power in communities of color to advance racial justice and win lasting structural reform. PIVOT:
- Disrupts traditional philanthropy to reverse widening wealth and economic inequality, protect our democracy, increase co-governance, and advance racial justice in California.
- Resources power-building at scale to fuel transformative innovations in voter organizing across issues and geography not just during election cycles – but also year round.
- Aligns funders, raises and leverages resources, and provides learning opportunities to strengthen the power-building ecosystem at the regional and safe level across California.
By investing in voter organizing beyond election cycles, PIVOT gives 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.
Why We Exist
Our shared well-being is dependent on a multi-racial democracy. Protecting the enduring health and inclusiveness of our democratic system is the most important challenge facing us today.
Democracy forms the bedrock on which all our freedoms and opportunities rest; yet, today, our democracy is in crisis — a rise in rightwing, extremist ideologies is threatening to reverse any progress toward a just and equitable future for all. To protect democracy, now and into the future, we must strengthen the power of people and communities long denied a seat at the decision-making table.
Building an inclusive, multi-racial democracy requires that we expand people’s power over decisions that most affect their lives and communities. Workers deserve a say in their workplaces. Women and LGBTQ+ individuals should have autonomy over their own bodies and identities. Black and Indigenous people, young people, people of color, and immigrants must feel empowered to fully participate and exercise their political power and voice. Communities stay strong when more people help make decisions and replace unfair rules with equitable ones. When people who have been denied power gain decision-making influence and voice, they can shape policies, practices, and systems that support vibrant self-determination and long-term well-being.
California, with the world’s fifth-largest economy and the most diverse population in the U.S., serves as an ideal setting for PIVOT – and is uniquely positioned to demonstrate how a multi-racial democracy can be protected and expanded. While organizers and power-builders have pushed California towards a progressive agenda over the past 30 years, there remains more to be done to center the leadership and policies that meet needs for Black, Indigenous, and communities of color. Now is the time for bold, large-scale investments to achieve structural reforms and shape an equitable and racially just California.
How PIVOT Started
PIVOT grew out of the California Civic Participation Funders table in 2020 when funders and organizers came together to coordinate and share best practices to increase investments in power building and voter engagement. 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. Our collective 2020 campaigns to engage California’s electorate provided a pathway to putting governing power into the hands of the people:
- Evolving the model and practice of base building,
- Expanding multi-issue and multi-sector coalition building,
- Increasing narrative power, and
- Investing in political infrastructure.
PIVOT Team
PIVOT is spearheaded by organizers for organizers, and supported by aligned funders. We create opportunities for organizers and funders to learn and act together, creating a new form of participatory grantmaking where power is shared with organizers.
Through PIVOT, funders have a better understanding of exactly what organizers need to build and sustain power, not just around elections but year in and year out, and fuel long-term systems change. Our steering committee members become key decision makers in our grantmaking, programming, and overall strategy. Together, funders and organizers are co-creating shared visions for structural reforms and long term power-building infrastructure.
This is a unique type of trust-based philanthropy, a model that centers open, honest relationships and shared power, bringing both practitioners and funders together to shift culture and practices. In the long-run, we envision a philanthropic landscape that is practitioner-informed and guided by the needs of the field.
PIVOT Steering Committee
Judith Bell
Chief Impact Officer
Jessamyn Sabbag
Senior Director, Power Pathway
Cielo V. Castro
Vice President of Public Policy and Civic Engagement
Luis Sanchez
Executive Director
Andrea Guerrero
Executive Director
Marisol Inzunza
Program Officer, Leading Power and Change
Kimi Lee
Executive Director
Christina Livingston
Statewide Executive Director
Raul Macias
Program Director, Democracy
Joseph Tomás McKeller
Executive Director
Pablo Rodriguez
Executive Director
Angelica Salas
Executive Director
Amado Uno
Director
Jung Hee Choi
Managing Director, Power Infrastructure
jonathan Tran
Senior Program Manager, Statewide Power Infrastructure
Lucas Zucker
Co-Executive Director
Jose Delgado
Senior Program Officer
Virginia Mosqueda
Initiative Director
PIVOT Staff
Diana Colín
Director, PIVOT
Lauren Uy
Manager, PIVOT