Vera R. Campbell Foundation is a grantmaking foundation located in Los Angeles, California. Its grants are allocated primarily to left-leaning Los Angeles-based organizations that focus on education, the arts, social services, and public policy. The foundation has no full-time employees. ^[1]

InnerCity Struggle

Vera R. Campbell Foundation is listed as a partner with InnerCity Struggle, a left-leaning advocacy and social services organization that advocates for changes to public policy, immigration policy, encourages community organizing, and conducts community training for children and students. ^[2] InnerCity Struggle worked to gain permanent renters’ protections in Los Angeles County that restricts evictions and rent increases and pushed for the elimination of “willful defiance,” defined as students disrupting school activities or defying authority of school staff, as grounds for suspension in public schools across California. ^[3]

In 2018, Vera R. Campbell Foundation gave $15,000 to InnerCity Struggle. ^[4] It has given at least an additional $10,000 to the group, which is part of the Check the Sheriff Coalition. ^[5] Check the Sheriff Coalition is a group of left-leaning organizations, including Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, ACLU of Southern California (ACLU SoCal), Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Reform L.A. Jails, InnerCity Struggle, and Brothers, Sons, Selves Coalition, that oppose the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. ^[6] The coalition accuses the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department of corruption and abuse, ^[7] demands that Sheriff Alex Villanueva (D) resign, and seeks an investigation of the department by the state’s Attorney General. ^{[8] [9]}

InnerCity Struggle is also a member of Brothers, Sons, and Selves Coalition, a left-leaning organization that helps young people of color. ^[10] Brothers, Sons, and Selves Coalition has worked to defund school police, reallocating those funds to black students, and to cut the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget. ^[11]

Finances and Grantees

In 2020, the Vera R. Campbell Foundation gave a grant to the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County for the acquisition of an 80-foot-long mural by Barbara Carrasco, “L.A. History: A Mexican Perspective,” ^[12] that was originally commissioned by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency in 1981 and was previously censored. ^[13]

During 2019-2020, the foundation allocated $270,000 to Inner-City Arts, an art program in Los Angeles that has also received support from the left-of-center Rosenthal Family Foundation and has a theatre named in honor of the family. ^[14]

In 2018, the foundation allocated money to several left-leaning organizations, including $10,000 to Whole Woman’s Health of Austin, Texas, which provides abortion services, and $17,500 to Community Partners, a nonprofit partnership between the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and the Los Angeles County Department of Health that helps entrepreneurs in Southern California focused on left-progressive civic and social change. ^[15] The foundation provided $200,000 to City Year, a member of the AmeriCorps program. It also gave $175,000 to Proyecto Pastoral Dolores Mission, an organization focused on community organizing, social policy change, and educational programs. ^[16]

The foundation supports the arts by allocating money to several organizations, including $80,000 to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, $174,500 to the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, $50,000 to the Getty Museum, and $287,500 to Inner-City Arts. ^[17]

Through the Vera R. Campbell Promise Scholarship, the foundation provides three students a year from California State University up to $4,000 in scholarship funds to attend an Institute for Field Research archaeological field school. ^[18]

The foundation is a Benefactor Fellow of the School for Advanced Research (SAR) located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, providing between $500,000 to $999,999 in cumulative giving. ^{[19] [20]}

People

Vera Campbell was the former president and owner of KWDZ Manufacturing, a Los Angeles-based children’s apparel manufacturing company, founded in 1982. It supplied clothing to large retailers, including J.C. Penney, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s, ^{[21] [22]} importing the products from China, Central America, or southeast Asia. ^[23] In 2007, Campbell acquired Mamba LLC, now La Mamba, a clothing manufacturer, located in Los Angeles. ^[24] In 2020, KWDZ Manufacturing was acquired by Byer California. ^[25]

Campbell was a founding board member of Inner-City Arts. ^[26] She has been involved with the Assistance League of California. She has participated on the executive board of VisionAware (formerly Junior Blind of America) and is a founding member of California Fashion Association and the California Fashion Foundation. ^[27]

Vera R. Campbell contributed $6,225,000 to the foundation in 2018. ^{[28] [29]}  Her contribution was the only contribution to the foundation for the year. ^[30]