Change, Not Charity

Ask Shane Murphy Goldsmith what Liberty Hill Foundation is, and she does not begin with its programs. “Liberty Hill Foundation is a home for people who want to invest in a more just future and make a difference through their resources,” says the president and CEO. “We are a laboratory for social change philanthropy.” 

The “laboratory” began at a picnic when four young people who had inherited substantial wealth – Sarah Pillsbury, Larry Janss, Win McCormack, and Anne Mendel – had a bold idea: philanthropy could do more than address the symptoms of injustice. It could help change the systems that created them.  

Central to this was the belief that the people closest to the issues should have a meaningful voice in deciding how philanthropic resources are used. They founded Liberty Hill Foundation in 1976 around a simple but radical principle: “Change, Not Charity.”  

It would be a foundation geared to strategically invest in local movements and leaders to shift systemic power. 

Impact in Partnership

For five decades, Liberty Hill has built something difficult to replicate: deep knowledge of the Los Angeles ecosystem – its communities, organizations, leaders, issues, and philanthropic landscape. 

This is all with the purpose of empowering community organizations and leaders to change the systemic conditions that affect their lives and those of their neighbors. As a public foundation that raises money and doesn’t operate from a large endowment – Liberty Hill does this by providing grant funding, training, and capacity-building to organizations working across its priority areas of racial justice, youth and transformative justice, LGBTQ and gender justice, environmental and climate justice, economic and housing justice, and electoral power-building. 

“A lot of funders keep an arm’s length away from the ground, but we’re in it,” Goldsmith says. 

That proximity shapes how Liberty Hill moves resources.  

Their Community Funding Board model brings donors, organizers, and advocates together to help make funding decisions – putting into practice the idea that communities should share decision-making power over resources intended to support and empower them. 

The model works. A National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy study of Los Angeles organizing groups, many of them Liberty Hill grantees, found a return of $91 in measurable public benefit for $1 invested. 

But Liberty Hill’s role has never been simply to move money. It is to bring people together around a shared vision for Los Angeles and invest in leaders and organizations with the potential to build a more just future for all Angelenos. 

As Liberty Hill enters its next 50 years, that pioneering spirit remains central. The Foundation’s Agenda for a Just Future, which is centered on tackling some of the region’s biggest issues like youth incarceration, housing and tenants’ rights, and toxic neighborhood oil drilling and pollution, is at the forefront of their work to build a more just future.  

While much has changed in the philanthropic and social justice landscape since Liberty Hill’s founders came together at a Topanga Canyon picnic, the conviction that came out of it has not.  

Supporting emerging movements, investing in grassroots leadership, and recognizing potential and possibilities before they become conventional wisdom is the foundation of Liberty Hill’s unique approach – along with an important conviction: philanthropy should not simply fund communities – it should share power with them. 

Fifty years later, the Foundation is looking toward the future and a new generation of donors who will join their community and carry that vision forward.