California is home to a large number of philanthropic institutions and many of them take unapologetically progressive stances, together serving as models for social justice grantmaking across the country. But few of them have been in the progressive philanthropy game as long as the Rosenberg Foundation, which tends to fly under the radar despite having been around for almost 90 years.
Not to be confused with the Rosenberg Fund for Children, the Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation or the Laura Rosenberg Foundation, this Rosenberg Foundation was established in 1935 thanks to Max L. Rosenberg, a California businessman who, along with his brothers, founded and ran a fruit and nut distribution company. Rosenberg never married or had children, and as such, decided to leave his wealth to the foundation, which bears the distinction of having been the first staffed foundation west of the Mississippi River.
The Rosenberg Foundation “always gravitated toward things that may be considered controversial or groundbreaking or areas that others in philanthropy weren’t addressing or maybe [weren’t] ready to address,” said Rosenberg’s president, Tim Silard. He added that the foundation has consistently “been very willing to be the first funder of an organization or movement, or a very early funder.”
Throughout its 89-year history, Rosenberg has been on the front lines of support for a variety of progressive causes in the Golden State. One of its earliest grants, for example, was to support reproductive rights for women farmworkers. That work continues to this day. After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022, which effectively ended Roe v. Wade, Rosenberg joined the California Wellness Foundation to support a coalition of governors working to protect reproductive rights.
During World War II, the foundation was one of only two foundations — the other being the Columbia Foundation — to oppose the internment of Japanese Americans in camps, and later, once the war ended, it provided direct support to Japanese-American families.
“For most of them, all of their property and assets and everything else had been taken,” Silard said. “So the foundation provided what support it could to help them reestablish their lives.”
The foundation’s progressive work has brought with it government pushback. It was blacklisted by J. Edgar Hoover. Its phones were tapped and it was audited by the IRS. That didn’t not stop Rosenberg from continuing its work, which has included early funding for the organization that would eventually become the National Council of La Raza (now known as UnidosUS); providing a grant to the Migrant Ministry, which would go on to join the National Farm Workers Association and help organize the grape pickers strike of 1965; and start-up funding for Legal Services for Children — the first nonprofit law firm for children in the U.S. — as well as what would become the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Before the terms were in vogue, Rosenberg was playing the role of venture philanthropy, donor organizer and more, helping fledgling organizations and movements grow to a scale where they can engage with larger funders. Although it’s a smaller foundation with assets totaling $54.2 million, Rosenberg has been able to make introductions and encourage some of the state’s bigger funders to support emerging organizations.
“For large California and national funders, it’s often harder for them to support very small organizations and to provide the kind of hands-on capacity building, help with board development and all kinds of things,” Silard said. “But once we can help grow an organization or a body of work, then it can be better positioned and ready to seek and get and absorb larger amounts of funding from the funders.”
Silard also mentioned that Rosenberg has always been a patient funder, understanding that movements, as well as advocacy organizations, take time to grow and evolve.
Civic engagement, immigrant rights, workers’ rights and more
The foundation’s progressive funding, as well as its longstanding collaborative approach, are in full swing today. Recently, Rosenberg supported the Legal Education, Advocacy and Defense (LEAD) for Racial Justice Initiative. Led by the California Black Freedom Fund, LEAD will provide nonprofits and foundations with legal education, resources and tools to navigate a complex legal landscape after the Supreme Court’s anti-affirmative action ruling last year.
Rosenberg’s investment in LEAD is just one part of its ongoing work in civil rights and civic engagement, one of the foundation’s main areas of focus and “the heart of [its] overall aim to improve the lives of Californians in every way.” In addition to its support for LEAD, the foundation also backs other California-based civic rights groups, builds capacity for the young leaders of these institutions, and seeds efforts to increase voting accessibility.
Like other progressive civic engagement grantmakers, Rosenberg focuses on increasing civic participation among underrepresented populations, particularly communities of color and low-income communities. It is one of the founding members of the California Civic Participation Funders Collaborative, which launched in 2010 with that aim in mind. Led by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, the collaborative also seeks to ensure that civic engagement doesn’t “come and go with elections.”
Another of Rosenberg’s areas of focus is immigrant rights – fitting, since Rosenberg and his brothers were born to German immigrants. Its work in this space includes supporting immigration reform, funding grassroots advocacy, strengthening immigrant rights advocates’ communications capacity and ensuring voting and language rights. Rosenberg also supports the Dreamer movement in the state.
The foundation helped launch the California Immigrant Policy Center and was one of the first funders of the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, which is also funded by the Haas Jr. Fund and Unbound Philanthropy.
Workers’ rights are also a focus for Rosenberg, with the intersection of economic justice and migrant rights being a priority since the foundation’s early days. Many of the farms that grew the fruits and nuts Rosenberg’s company packed and sold were located in California’s Central Valley. “So the needs of workers in the Central Valley and low-wage workers generally… and farmworkers in particular, has been a consistent priority for Rosenberg throughout,” Silard said. This work evolved into broader support for immigrant rights, which is especially important given the majority of the state’s farmworkers are immigrants.
Current efforts include support for pathways to legalization for the state’s undocumented farmworkers, strengthening labor protections for agricultural workers, and challenging unfair wages and unsafe working conditions. It also supports labor organizing, impact litigation and policy advocacy to improve conditions and wages for workers (such as those who work in the garment, restaurant and car wash industries, as well as domestic workers).
For example, Rosenberg has supported the California Domestic Workers Coalition, which launched a campaign that led to the adoption of the California Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which now includes wage, health and safety protections. The foundation also supported a lawsuit that sought to take on the exploitative practices of the gig economy. Gig workers are routinely classified as contractors, not employees, and are therefore denied standard workers rights, such as minimum wage, sick leave and workers’ compensation. The lawsuit argued that these workers are also entitled to these same protections.
Finally, Rosenberg is also focused on justice and public safety and considers ending mass incarceration to be “one of the most urgent issues of our time,” according to Silard. The foundation seeks to advance sentencing reform, promote alternatives to incarceration, end youth incarceration and reduce recidivism through reentry, which includes supporting job opportunities for those who were formerly incarcerated.
The foundation is part of a criminal justice reform affinity group, the Funders for Safety and Justice in California. And back in 2013, it joined other major funders, including Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, The California Endowment and The California Wellness Foundation, to launch a new campaign called Californians for Safety and Justice, which supports efforts to “shrink the state’s prison and jail system and invest the savings in treatment, reentry and crime prevention,” Silard said. Since then, the campaign has expanded to become the Alliance for Safety and Justice.
The next generation of progressive leaders
According to Silard, Rosenberg’s work is largely divided into two buckets. On one side is its role as an early funder of new and emerging movements and groups, and on the other side is its support for “the next generation of progressive movement leaders in California.” The foundation does the latter through the Leading Edge Fund, which launched in 2016 and seeds, incubates and accelerates ideas from these new leaders.
Leading Edge Fellows receive $250,000 in general support over a three-year period, technical assistance in program development, fundraising and strategic communications, as well as coaching, trainings and retrainings. The current class is focused on causes like ending the incarceration and criminalization of young people of color, building economic hubs led by and for transgender people, and creating alternatives to police response, among others. The Leading Edge Fund also receives support from Hellman Foundation, Akonadi Foundation, The California Endowment, The California Wellness Foundation, Meadow Fund and Heising-Simons Foundation.
California, Silard acknowledged, is a progressive state, but that shouldn’t be taken for granted. “It didn’t just happen by some natural way. It happened by the… hard work of thousands and thousands of leaders and organizers and lawyers and communities and narrative buildings and every[one] else,” he said, adding that the earlier problems the foundation sought to address “haven’t gone away… they’ve evolved.”
At 89 years old, Rosenberg’s work is just getting started.
