About Us

HISTORY

LCF was founded in 1989 as an affinity group of United Way of the Bay Area to increase workplace donations to Latino organizations. In 2003, Sandra Hernandez, then President and CEO of The San Francisco Foundation (TSFF), established the Foundation as a supporting organization of TSFF, appointed new leadership, and expanded the work of LCF. Since then, Board Chair Aida Alvarez and Vice Chair Arabella Martinez have placed LCF on a growth trajectory. The Foundation led multiple initiatives to improve the health and wellbeing of thousands of Latino families in the Bay Area between 2006 and 2015.

In 2016, LCF became an independent statewide foundation on a mission to unleash the power of Latinos in California.

Uniquely positioned at the intersection of corporate, political and grassroots power, LCF creates and nurtures relationships designed to accelerate impact in unprecedented ways.

To date, LCF has created the largest network of Latino philanthropists in the country, invested over $25M into 375+ grassroots, predominately Latino-led nonprofits across the state, and launched one of the largest campaigns to mobilize the Latino vote in California. LCF hosts the Latino Nonprofit Accelerator, a groundbreaking capacity building initiative that gives grassroots nonprofits access to world class branding and fundraising support. This initiative has already helped 18 organizations level up their communications, double their fundraising confidence, and leverage $7M in new funding.

LCF’s most recent Get out the Vote and Census campaigns reached over 31M Latinos. Through strategic grantmaking and a multimedia effort to educate and mobilize Latino communities for major civic events, LCF played a role in ensuring that California achieved its highest Latino voter registration rate in history: 73%.