Rosenberg Foundation

Background

The Rosenberg Foundation is a left-of-center grantmaking foundation established in 1935 based in San Francisco, California. The organization engages in grantmaking efforts through four programs: the Leading Edge Fellow program, designed to “seed, incubate and accelerate bold ideas from the next generation of progressive movement leaders in California;” Justice and Public Safety; Immigrant Rights and Workers’ Rights; and Civil Rights and Civic Engagement. ¹

Its news portal features an article about police abolition and claims that “police departments formed in the US to prevent enslaved people from rebelling, to aid colonialism, and to suppress workers movements.” ²

Funding

The Rosenberg Foundation has given money to the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), a left-leaning advocacy group based in Los Angeles, California that supports programs to aid former and current inmates in California state prisons and juvenile detention centers. The organization sponsors several programs and projects centered on providing outreach and education to inmates and reentry programs to ex-convicts. ³

In the years since its founding, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition has launched a large public policy advocacy effort to lobby for left-leaning criminal justice policy. Since 2012, the group has supported changes to California’s criminal laws including allowing juveniles sentenced to life sentences without parole the ability to obtain parole, prohibiting 14- and 15-year-olds from being tried as adults or being placed in adult prisons, and granting voting rights to nearly 50,000 ex-convicts who are out on parole. ⁴

The Rosenberg Foundation has also given money to the Women’s Foundation of California, including $6,000 as part of its Economic Security of Working Families program. ⁵ The Women’s Foundation of California is a left-of-center feminist-aligned foundation based in California. It is the fiscal sponsor of the Essie Justice Group, a left-of-center criminal justice policy group made up primarily of women with incarcerated partners or relatives. It is also partnered with multiple left-of-center organizations including the Open Society Foundations and the Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity. ^{6 7}

The Rosenberg Foundation has also given money to the PowerPAC Foundation, the 501(c)(3) affiliate of PowerPAC, a left-of-center lobbying organization based in San Francisco that specializes in voter mobilization founded by Steve Phillips. Phillips, a left-wing political operative and the chairman of the Foundation’s board of trustees, has argued that the Democratic Party should stop trying to win back white working-class voters and instead focus on building a coalition of African Americans, Hispanic voters, youth, and left-progressive white voters. ⁸