As Director of the California Democracy program, Amy leads strategies aimed at improving state and local governance and at fostering inclusive public decision making. She also directs the annual James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards. View full bio »
At Irvine, we believe a healthy democracy depends on decision making informed by the views and experiences of a broad cross-section of our communities. That’s why we’re heartened by the many public officials and civic leaders who place a high value on public participation and are interested in exploring new strategies to engage the public in decisions affecting their future
A new study, commissioned by the Irvine Foundation, shows that public officials and civic organization leaders have much more in common in their views of public engagement in local decision-making than we might assume. In the study of more than 900 elected and nonelected public officials and more than 500 leaders of civic and community-based organizations across California, Public Agenda found the following:
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May 08, 2013
The USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration just released a new report titled What's at Stake for the State: Undocumented Californians, Immigration Reform and Our Future Together. Funded in part by the Irvine Foundation, the report calculates the potential economic gains to California overall and in specific regions through national immigration reform. The researchers provide as a conservative estimate that the state’s economy could grow by $4.5 billion annually once undocumented residents have access to the greater educational and economic opportunities afforded by authorization and citizenship. The report authors call for California to plan ahead and to learn from existing regional cross-sector collaborations for effective integration of all residents into our society. One of the report authors, Dr. Manuel Pastor, made the case for reform in a compelling op-ed column in the Sacramento Bee. Here is the beginning of Dr. Pastor’s column:
Viewpoints: Why immigration overhaul matters to state By Manuel Pastor
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Apr 04, 2013
A new report by Harder+Company Community Research on Irvine’s Families Improving Education (FIE) initiative offers fresh insights into the impact of parent and community involvement in educational policymaking. The report highlights how equipping parents with data, engaging them in discussions with school officials and connecting them with others in their region can transform school policies toward better educational outcomes for students.
The James Irvine Foundation launched the FIE initiative in 2008 to support parental involvement in K–12 educational policymaking. The Foundation partnered with Families In Schools to build the capacity of organizations in the San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire to engage parents and families in local and state decision making for education policies that affect their children.
Once the initiative was well-established, the Foundation and Families in Schools recognized the opportunity to evaluate the work and assess the most promising practices in FIE. We then contracted with Harder+Company to gauge the initiative’s impact on parents, organizations and school policymaking.
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Mar 29, 2013
As my colleague Tim Silard of the Rosenberg Foundation wrote so eloquently earlier this week, Californians have a tremendous stake in the national discussions underway on immigration reform. We are a state of immigrants, with immigrants and their children comprising 40 percent of California’s population and immigrant workers totaling over one-third of California’s labor force. Of the estimated 11 million undocumented persons in the United States, approximately 2.8 million live in California.
The James Irvine Foundation Board of Directors recently approved our making a set of grants this year to organizations facilitating the engagement of California immigrants and their allies in the critical policymaking occurring in the year ahead. Among the initial grants approved are one to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles and one to support the California Immigrant Policy Center. Both organizations, in collaboration with many others, are working to assure that the experiences and views of California immigrants inform national and state decision making on immigration policy and the effective integration of immigrants into our communities.
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Oct 25, 2012
Between 2000 and 2010, the Asian American population grew faster than any other racial group in California, increasing by nearly one third to comprise 13 percent of the state’s population. Yet public surveys often do not distinguish the views of this fast-growing population. As Irvine’s California Democracy program is dedicated to advancing public policies that reflect well the preferences of all Californians, understanding the perspectives of different communities is an important component.
Earlier this year, the National Asian American Survey probed the policy priorities and issue preferences of Asian Americans nationally. With support from Irvine, researchers at the University of California at Riverside and UC Berkeley probed further into the policy priorities and preferences of Asian Americans in California. Their report, released earlier this month, highlights interesting findings about how California’s Asian American population views the economy, health care reform, affirmative action, immigration policies and other issues.
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Aug 16, 2012
Tim Carpenter, a 2011 James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award recipient and founder of EngAGE, is featured in a New York Times article, one of its “Fixes” series, which looks at solutions to social problems. The feature also includes the Irvine Leadership Award video about Tim’s work. The James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards recognize and support Californians who are advancing innovative and effective solutions to significant state issues. To learn more about Tim and other Leadership Award recipients’ effective approaches, visit here. To receive updates about Leadership Award alumni and their work, subscribe to Leadership Award News.
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Jul 03, 2012
As we gather this week to see fireworks and enjoy picnics, we also might pause to reflect on what it means to celebrate the Fourth of July in California. In many ways, our state epitomizes the vision of America: a land of immigrants, a place of opportunity, an openness to change and innovation. While the state of California possesses the diversity — in people, landscapes and economies — of a large country, we’re also a place with residents who share many of the same aspirations and values.
A recent series of reports, Looking Forward, from USC’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) and the California Immigrant Policy Center provide an interesting snapshot of California’s population. I was struck by two facts in particular: 48% of California’s children have at least one immigrant parent and 43% of Californians speak a language other than English at home. It’s also notable that immigrants comprise more than one-third of California’s labor force (34%), they are more likely to be employed than non-immigrants, and they are more likely to create their own jobs through self-employment than native born workers.
On a related topic, CSII’s new report on young adult immigrants engaged in civic organizations reveals that they share the educational and employment aspirations of other young Californians, while expressing greater optimism about their own potential to “make a difference in the broader society” through their civic involvement.
As we celebrate where we live this month, it seems our trademark optimism and entrepreneurial spirit not only endure, but also regenerate.
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May 09, 2012
Social justice organizing is a complex undertaking every step of the way. And as we look back at victories, figuring out which factors contributed to success can be difficult. So, I and many others welcomed the clear, succinct and compelling account of two decades of organizing in Los Angeles after the 1992 civil unrest recently published by the University of Southern California Program for Environmental & Regional Equity and Liberty Hill Foundation.
Their report, “L.A. Rising: The 1992 Civic Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today’s Movement Building,” captures how organizing strategies and institutions evolved during these decades, and distills ten innovative elements of the organizing approaches that were critical to their success. While these elements emerge from the realities of Los Angeles, they certainly can be applied to today’s public engagement efforts in the Central Valley, Inland Empire and elsewhere in California. I also was gratified to see that the authors shared implications for funders of social justice organizing, identifying practices that best sustain the ongoing involvement of residents in shaping their communities.
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Apr 18, 2012
Two years ago, the Irvine Foundation joined a group of nine other foundations in a collaborative effort to increase civic participation among communities of color and other underrepresented populations in four California counties – San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside. The work, led by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, aligns closely with Irvine’s focus on civic engagement.
The collaboration, called the California Civic Participation Funders, has several unusual aspects. For one, its members are quite diverse. Participating foundations run the gamut from large to small; focus on a wide range of issues, from community health to economic justice to women’s rights; and include both 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations. Another distinctive aspect is its approach, which allows a high degree of autonomy among participating funders, while pursuing a common strategy and goals.
As of January 2012, the California Civic Participation Funders had invested $1.2 million to support nonprofits in the target regions so that they can more effectively mobilize and engage underrepresented populations in public decision-making. A new report, Bolder Together, examines lessons from this ongoing effort that other funders might apply in their work.
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Feb 14, 2012
“Everybody needs a spark,” observed Senate President pro TemporeDarrell Steinberg, as he kicked off the seventh annual James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards luncheon ceremony in Sacramento. For a capacity crowd of over 200 guests, in the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel ballroom, there was plenty of inspiration to go around, as we honored the five 2012 award recipients, whose path-breaking solutions are addressing problems in the fields of health care, education, youth development and agriculture. As Steinberg noted, the annual award ceremony offers lawmakers and policy experts “a chance…to get together and reflect on all that is good in California.”
The day of celebration for our five honorees began in the state Capitol, where state AssemblymembersPaul Fong, David Valadao and Sandré Swanson presented each award recipient with a framed Assembly resolution honoring his or her work. (Assembly SpeakerJohn Perez and AssemblymemberBill Monning authored two of the resolutions but were unable to attend the morning presentation.) During the event, Assemblymember Fong told Christa Gannon, head of Fresh Lifelines for Youth and one of this year’s awardees, “Thank you for saving the state a bunch of money by doing the work that you do!”
More commendations came at the luncheon, in remarks from a distinguished group of public officials:
