2025: A Year of Advancing Community-Centered Action

As 2025 draws to a close, the year has been marked both by disruption — federal funding rollbacks, escalating climate impacts and growing wildfire threats — and by courageous, collaborative action across the field.

Thanks to the commitment of funders, community-centered organizations and policy partners across the state, we have made meaningful progress toward building more equitable and climate-resilient communities. Below, we highlight key efforts and lessons learned during a tumultuous year.

Amid these overlapping crises, TFN’s Smart Growth California (SGC) brought funders together to make sense of the moment and coordinate their efforts from land use to transportation, climate resilience to housing, conservation, parks, wildfire, inclusive economies and more. At each convening, we facilitated connections across issue areas to deepen understanding of California’s complex challenges. These cross-cutting conversations helped increase investment in land conservation, stewardship and resilience, while fostering collaboration that strengthened impact in wildfire recovery, community land ownership and equitable access to parks and open space. SGC spaces also served as on-ramps for funders new to philanthropy or exploring new issues, while offering seasoned funders opportunities to share lessons learned and bring others into their work.

As our working groups reflected on the year, we heard four themes about what they appreciated about participating in Smart Growth California:

Community: Funders appreciated the strong sense of community and trusted space to connect, noting that in-person gatherings — especially site visits — deepened relationships and understanding of local contexts.
Shared Learning: Funders valued learning across regions and issues — from ecological challenges to the realities of local government. These insights benefited new and seasoned funders alike.
Collective Action: Funders welcomed opportunities to collaborate and align around shared goals, as noted below.

Below are seven key highlights from our network:

Statewide Steering Committee
The Statewide Steering Committee remained a hub for shared learning, networking, and alignment to advance healthy, equitable, and sustainable communities. We started the year off with an in-person gathering in Oakland in conversation with ClimatePlan’s leadership, where we also visited one of the city’s first resilience centers. Later in the year, discussions centered on equitable implementation of public funding for climate-resilient communities and landscapes. In July, members met virtually to discuss Proposition 4, California’s Climate Bond, and its implications for climate resilience, natural and working lands, and community-focused investments. The September meeting focused on recent changes to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), exploring the potential role of philanthropy in supporting communities and organizations impacted by these reforms.
San Joaquin Valley Funders’ Collaborative
This year, the San Joaquin Valley felt significant impacts of the new federal administration, from intensified ICE activity to immigration-related shocks that rippled through families, workplaces, and local economies. Funders used our time together to compare rapid-response strategies, share what they were seeing on the ground, and support one another in navigating fast-changing conditions. We also highlighted new community-rooted funds from our funders that are channeling aligned dollars into grassroots efforts. The year closed with an in-person learning tour in Merced, grounding funders in community-led projects and strengthening alignment for what’s ahead.
Los Angeles Funders’ Collaborative
The LA Funders Collaborative facilitated peer learning on parks, transportation, land use reform policies and wildfire recovery. In September, LAFC convened in person at the California Community Foundation to reflect on its achievements, including the Link LA initiative, which has informed RPOSD’s 2025 Competitive Grants Program, highlighting the power of philanthropic–public partnerships. Throughout the year, several funders also lifted up the EJ Ready Initiative and continued to refine collective opportunities to deepen support for grassroots and nonprofit leaders across Los Angeles County that have been impacted by federal funding cuts.
Rural Funders Working Group
The Rural Funders Working Group spent much of the year exploring a core question: Who benefits from “community benefits” in California’s green-energy buildout? Through examples from Humboldt Bay to the Salton Sea, funders examined how to ensure frontline and Tribal communities see real gains from major projects. After the election, as federal cuts to jobs and healthcare hit rural regions hard, we shifted to a candid discussion about how these communities are faring and where philanthropy can help stabilize essential services and long-term resilience.
Great Communities Collaborative
The Great Communities Collaborative’s (GCC) work underscores the importance of community-driven solutions and inclusive, cross-sector engagement. From housing and transportation to climate resilience and racial equity, GCC has consistently brought together diverse stakeholders to align resources, share knowledge and advance collective action. GCC celebrated its 20th anniversary and funded multiple organizations for coordination of multisector collaboratives in their respective counties.
Climate Funders’ Collaborative (Baja/Imperial/San Diego Region)
The Climate Funder Collaborative convened in-person gatherings in both April and September to share updates, discuss year-end priorities and chart the road into 2026. Funders explored opportunities to mobilize resources toward high-impact, achievable projects, with discussions covering binational resilience, solar/decarbonization funding, Imperial Valley, and nonprofit capacity-building. Participants deepened regional connections and explored ways to align investments in community-led climate solutions.
Webinars and Peer Learning
Smart Growth California continued to co-present numerous opportunities for online learning and connection in partnership with various philanthropic networks. These sessions either lifted up work taking place in California and/or tracked how changes at the federal level are impacting California.

Looking ahead to 2026, we’re excited to host Smart Growth California’s 2026 Funder Summit in Sacramento, March 16–18 — registration is now open!

As we move into the new year, we welcome your involvement in any of our working groups; just reach out to me to get connected. And if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay informed about upcoming gatherings, funding opportunities, and collaborative efforts across the state.

For more details, check out the blog posts we shared in 2025: