2025 Grants and Partners
Reflects Giving from January – July 2025
Building College Success: Building College Success will launch the Futures Project, a certification, career exposure and pathways program for over 400 students. While TBF’s first grant to BCS focused on supporting student success in STEAM, the Futures Project will build a career pathway program to support college graduates for successful career launches by facilitating career readiness training, credential attainment and paid internship opportunities.
Cambiar Education: Cambiar Education will develop and scale their micro-internship program to reach 1,400 L.A. students with an in-person, 30-hour, classroom-based consultancy experience. By providing a structured, scaffolded and short-term learning opportunity in a teacher-led classroom and connected to a local business, micro-internships can help students master durable skills and prepare for more intensive work-based learning experiences like traditional internships and apprenticeships.
Campaign for College Opportunity: The Campaign for College Opportunity is an advocacy organization with over two decades of experience working to ensure all Californians have an equal opportunity to attend college. TBF will support their work in developing new structured and simplified STEM transfer pathways within community colleges to CSUs and UCs. This work will allow a larger and more representative student body to enter health, science and other high-demand STEM fields, meeting statewide workforce demands. This initial grant is one step towards better connecting the education-workforce ecosystem within Los Angeles and California.
Center for Employment Opportunities: Operating in 31 sites across 30 cities in 12 states, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) provides immediate and comprehensive employment services to people newly released from prisons and jail. Since TBF’s first grant in 2023, CEO has enrolled nearly 600 participants into transitional employment opportunities upon release, with more than half then connected to long-term employment and/or advanced training opportunities in several high-demand fields. With renewed TBF support, CEO will continue this critical work of helping justice-involved populations access the necessary training and credentials to secure family sustaining careers in L.A.’s inclusive economy.
Coalition for Responsible Community Development: TBF renewed its partnership with the Coalition for Responsible Community Development (CRCD) to increase their capacity as a workforce development intermediary in Los Angeles. This grant will support their work in strengthening pathways to apprenticeships and employment; continuing their multi-craft curriculum (MC3) construction readiness program; and participating in thought leadership in regional discussions related to construction and in 2025 L.A. fires recovery efforts. Since TBF’s first investment in 2022, CRCD successfully recruited 120 individuals and enrolled 60 individuals into the MC3 Apprenticeship Readiness Program. Of those enrolled, 97% completed training and 95% earned an industry-recognized certificate (or MC3 credential). TBF and CRCD are successfully creating a pipeline to the construction and labor trades for individuals who have the highest barriers to education and living wage careers.
Fly Compton Aeronautical Education Foundation: Launched in 2020, Fly Compton is committed to increasing the number of underrepresented pilots and aviation experts by providing opportunities for South L.A. youth to explore and pursue their passion in aviation. TBF support will enhance Fly Compton’s operational capacity and programmatic offerings to provide aviation education and career exposure to over 2,000 youth per year and to position Fly Compton as a key leader in the local aviation workforce ecosystem.
Inclusive Action for the City: For more than 15 years, Inclusive Action for the City has been fighting for working people in Los Angeles. Founded in 2008 and based in Boyle Heights, this certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) has remained committed to building an inclusive economy, expanding economic opportunity by offering small business loans, coaching and workshops that help entrepreneurs and small businesses owners in historically marginalized communities achieve their dreams. With support from TBF, Inclusive Action for the City is strengthening its small business coaching and advisory services to ensure that business owners have timely access to information and resources in the aftermath of the L.A. fires and an evolving landscape.
Internationals Network: Internationals Network’s vision is to ensure that all multilingual learners have access to a quality education that prepares them for college, career and beyond. With TBF support, Internationals Network will deepen its work in Los Angeles by focusing on the transformation of Belmont High School into an exemplar for educating multilingual learners, with a strong emphasis on advancing literacy development.
Larta Institute: Larta Institute is expanding and enhancing its Heal.LA and Venture Fellows programs, which support local startups and small businesses tackling local health and environmental challenges. Larta provides personalized mentorship, a comprehensive learning curriculum, networking, technical assistance, opportunities to pilot innovative solutions and access to funding. With support from TBF, Larta Institute will grow both programs through the recruitment of additional social entrepreneurs into both programs as well as tailored support to ensure the growth and sustainability of local startups and small businesses.
LAUSD Education Foundation – Career Readiness: LAUSD’s Career Technical Education department will double the number of paid summer internships for students enrolled in the following high-priority STEM career pathways: health science and medical technology, engineering and architecture, and information and communication technology. These 82 additional internships will increase LAUSD’s overall summer internship participation by 10%. Additionally, LAUSD’s Division of Adult and Career Education will expand their summer Career Empowerment Program to offer five weeks and 100 hours of skills training for up to 155 high school students across four sites in the fields of aerospace and aviation, healthcare, logistics and construction.
LAUSD Education Foundation – Priority Schools: LAUSD’s Priority Schools initiative provides intensive, targeted support to the District’s highest-need campuses—serving nearly 70,000 students—to improve outcomes in areas such as attendance, state assessment performance, completion of college-required courses and success for English learners. Support from TBF enables two dedicated central office teams to strengthen school-based instructional leadership at all levels, expand data-use capacity, reinforce accountability and advance best instructional practices. This ecosystem of support is already helping to close longstanding opportunity gaps and drive sustainable improvement across the district.
Linked Learning Alliance: The Linked Learning Alliance will support the implementation of nearly $130 million in state funding for L.A. County districts and charter networks from the Golden State Pathways Program. These funds are dedicated to expanding high-quality K-12 career pathways in high wage, high skill, high growth industries, particularly in technology, health care, education and climate-related fields. Within LAUSD alone, the Linked Learning Alliance will support skills training and career pathways for approximately 36,400 students.
Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation: In response to the devastating 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires that displaced over 205,000 residents and caused up to $8.9 billion in economic losses, LAEDC received funding from TBF to support short and long-term fire recovery efforts. Building on their previous support from TBF, this initiative will provide direct technical business assistance to hundreds of fire-impacted small businesses by helping them secure capital and improve financial resilience. The funding will also strengthen L.A.’s small business support ecosystem by coordinating key stakeholders including CDFIs and community banks to create unified responses and streamline service delivery, while supporting proactive fundraising, alignment of regional partners around grant proposals, exploration of public finance models and advocacy for regional economic equity policies that enhance long-term resilience for the county’s most vulnerable communities.
Magpie Literacy: Magpie Literacy’s mission is to unlock the great reader in every child. Magpie is developing a research-based, K-8, tech-enabled literacy solution to help every child master the foundational reading skills needed to become strong, confident readers. TBF’s funding will accelerate the development of a digital literacy tool to support the foundational reading skills of adolescent readers, with a particular focus on multisyllabic word decoding and accommodating for a student’s linguistic patterns by automatic speech recognition. Additionally, Magpie will work with 250 L.A. students to co-design and pilot an early prototype of a Grades 3-5 tool, while also delivering digital instruction to 2,000 early elementary students with their completed K-2 tool, reaching students ranging from K-8.
Public Works Alliance: Founded in 2021, Public Works Alliance (PWA) works to mitigate the shortage of first responders while creating pathways for underrepresented young adults to pursue careers in pre-hospital care (e.g., EMTs and paramedics), allied health and wellbeing. TBF funding supports PWA’s EMS Corps program operations and staffing in Los Angeles County, upskilling and training for EMS Corps graduates, including Peer Support Specialist certification and EMS instructor training.