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Thuy Nguyen Kumar
Thuy Nguyen Kumar
As Communications Project Manager, Thuy provides project support for a broad ran
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Apr 01, 2013
In March 2013, the following published articles mentioned the work of the Foundation or our grantees:
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Amy Dominguez-Arms
Amy Dominguez-Arms
As Director of the California Democracy program, Amy leads strategies aimed at i
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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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Anne Vally
Anne Vally
Anne Vally was with The James Irvine Foundation from 2000 to 2013, last serving
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Mar 25, 2013
As the San Joaquin Valley’s economic, social and educational challenges have gained more national attention, it’s easy to get lost in the myriad of well-documented problems and issues facing the valley. However, we have also seen a groundswell of new energy and creative ideas bubbling up in the region. New leaders are harnessing the valley’s longstanding creativity and resilience, making instrumental strides towards a better future for the region. We see a unique opportunity to support these new leaders to bring the kinds of changes and social benefit they envision for the San Joaquin Valley. To do this, we are pleased to announce the launch of The James Irvine Foundation New Leadership Network. As a long-time supporter and champion of the San Joaquin Valley, I’d like to offer some personal observations on what makes the New Leadership Network different.
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Ray Delgado
Ray Delgado
As Communications Officer, Ray Delgado oversees various communications initiativ
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Mar 19, 2013
Our Board of Directors approved $3.2 million in grants at its quarterly meeting last week. Of the 10 approved grants, one is in the Arts, six in California Democracy, two in our Youth program, and one in Special Initiatives. I’d like to highlight some of the grants that we are excited about: MapLight — Our California Democracy program is supporting MapLight with a $400,000 grant to produce a comprehensive online voter guide, Voter’s Edge, with information through 2014 about state legislative candidates and state and local ballot measures. Voter’s Edge will include daily updates about state ballot measures, including arguments for and against each measure, lists of endorsers, links to commercials and media coverage and data about campaign contributions. MapLight plans to expand its site to provide such information about ballot issues in 50 California cities and counties, and also will provide nonpartisan information about candidates for state legislative and constitutional offices.
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Jim Canales
Jim Canales
Jim is Irvine’s CEO. A native Californian, he is passionate about the Foundation
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Mar 12, 2013
What does the Irvine Foundation learn by regularly gathering feedback from grantees and other constituents? And how do we integrate those lessons into our work?How does the Foundation think about “risk” in the context of its grantmaking strategies? What is the proper role of government in social innovation? In an interview last week on the Social Velocity blog, Irvine President and CEO Jim Canales discussed these and other questions with Social Velocity President Nell Edgington. The interview is one in a series of monthly discussions that Edgington conducts with leaders in the nonprofit sector. The interview is reprinted here: Nell: One of the four grantmaking principles of the Irvine Foundation is “Invest in Organizations,” meaning that you are committed to providing grants to build nonprofit organizations (evaluation, operating support, infrastructure). This is a pretty radical idea for most foundations. What do you think holds other foundations back from this kind of investment and what will it take to get more of them to embrace the idea of organization building as opposed to just supporting direct programs? Jim: This question of general operating support versus project support has been an ongoing debate in the nonprofit sector, and I’d like to suggest that we may be creating for ourselves a false dichotomy that may not be helpful. I’d suggest we focus on the end goal, not the means. Let’s start by asking the question: How can we maximize impact toward the shared goals of a foundation and its grantees? By asking the question in that way, we naturally have to explore whether we are investing sufficient resources, in the right ways, so that our grantee can have the impact we both seek.
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Alex Barnum
Alex Barnum
Alex Barnum was a Communications Officer at The James Irvine Foundation from 200
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Mar 07, 2013
 The 2013 Leadership Award recipients are making headlines. In the month since the awards were announced, media outlets across the state have been spotlighting the work of these extraordinary individuals who are advancing innovative solutions to some of California’s biggest challenges. Vida en el Valle, a weekly Spanish language paper serving the San Joaquin Valley, profiled recipients Aida Cardenas (Building Skills Partnership, Los Angeles) and José Quiñonez (Mission Asset Fund, San Francisco), noting that both "have dedicated a substantial part of their lives helping others build their own." The San Francisco Chronicle featured an op-ed by Quiñonez describing how Mission Asset Fund, through its Lending Circles program, helped a low-income family establish a credit score, build assets and start a small business.
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Thuy Nguyen Kumar
Thuy Nguyen Kumar
As Communications Project Manager, Thuy provides project support for a broad ran
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Mar 01, 2013
In February 2013, the following published articles mentioned the work of the Foundation or our grantees:
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Josephine Ramirez
Josephine Ramirez
As Arts Program Director, Josephine is leading the implementation of a new grant
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Feb 26, 2013
 A number of compelling conversations have been taking place over the last several weeks as a result of some very thoughtful blog posts about our Arts grantmaking strategy. (Nina Simon kicked it off with this post and then linked to related posts here.) What I find most exciting about all of this is the fact that a range of thoughtful leaders are engaging with ideas that are obviously important to Irvine, and their engagement will help make our grantmaking better. I’d like to take the opportunity to add to the dialogue as well as clarify a few points about our Arts strategy that were raised in the conversation so far. Irvine has funded the arts since our inception because we care deeply about the importance of a healthy arts ecosystem that connects people and builds communities. We have an interest and an obligation in strengthening the arts system as a whole and we believe that the system will thrive if it focuses on engaging Californians who so far have largely been absent as audiences, visitors and donors. In becoming an adaptive, relevant and responsive field, we become more able to address the fact that the majority of Californians don’t engage with our system---not responding to this situation is clearly not the answer. Our response then, the core focus of our grantmaking that launches later this year, will be to support sustainable, core operational shifts as arts organizations expand engagement.
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Josephine Ramirez
Josephine Ramirez
As Arts Program Director, Josephine is leading the implementation of a new grant
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Feb 19, 2013
Late last year, our board approved 19 new grants as part of our statewide Exploring Engagement Fund and another five grants as part of our more targeted Exploring Engagement Fund for Priority Regions (focused on the Inland Empire and San Joaquin Valley). We now have 52 grantee partners that are providing an array of exciting new arts engagement opportunities for Californians. What I find most exciting about this latest round of grants is that it creates fresh possibilities for the field to learn about how to effectively engage more Californians in the arts. Our goal of promoting engagement can only be successful if there is a robust, nimble, responsive group of nonprofits that are actively exploring how they can engage audiences and visitors. “Business as usual” has not been working for many arts organizations that are experiencing declining audiences and revenues, and it’s gratifying to see so many groups primed to learn more about engaging their communities through these grants.
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Jim Canales
Jim Canales
Jim is Irvine’s CEO. A native Californian, he is passionate about the Foundation
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Feb 13, 2013
 Dear Friends, Within the past few weeks, I have read with interest the observations of a number of active bloggers in the arts field whom I have come to respect and admire: Nina Simon, Diane Ragsdale, Clay Lord and Barry Hessenius. Each of them has blogged on aspects of the Irvine Foundation’s new arts strategy and, in doing so, has contributed to a robust dialogue that has played out on their respective blogs as well as on Twitter. And that’s what prompts my contribution to this discussion: I will comment only lightly on the substantive issues they have raised related to our Arts strategy as my colleague, Josephine Ramirez, who directs our Arts program, plans to post a more substantive comment on those issues in the next week or so. There is another aspect of this discussion that I do want to comment upon and invite others to engage on with me and my colleagues in philanthropy. From my early days as Irvine’s CEO, and with great support from our Board of Directors, I have placed a premium on transparency, both with regard to our work at Irvine and for the broader field of philanthropy. I have certainly not been alone in this quest (Brad Smith at the Foundation Center is probably our field’s leading champion), and I think it’s a fair observation to say that the field has come a long way in the past decade.
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Contributors
"As Senior Program Officer of the Youth program, Aa..."
"Alex Barnum was a Communications Officer at The Ja..."
"As Director of the California Democracy program, A..."
"As Director of the Youth program, Anne Stanton lea..."
"Anne Vally was with The James Irvine Foundation fr..."
"As a Senior Program Officer for the California Dem..."
"A native Californian, Daniel Silverman leads the F..."
"We occasionally invite outside writers to contribu..."
"Jeanne Sakamoto has worked at Irvine since 2004 an..."
"Jim is Irvine’s CEO. A native Californian, he is p..."
"As Treasurer and Chief Investment Officer, John di..."
"As Arts Program Director, Josephine is leading the..."
"Kenji Treanor has worked at Irvine since 2004 and ..."
"As Manager of Research and Evaluation, Kevin overs..."
"As Communications Officer, Ray Delgado oversees va..."
"Rick Noguchi has been with Irvine since 2008 and h..."
"Ted Russell has been with Irvine since 2005 and he..."
"As Communications Project Manager, Thuy provides p..."
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Apr 01, 2013
