Social Justice & Community
Institute for Social Transformation awarded $700k grant to support inclusive economic development throughout Central California
The James Irvine Foundation has awarded the institute a two-year community-level learning partner grant as part of its Priority Communities initiatives, which seeks to strengthen regional economies by empowering low-wage workers, families, and organizations to drive economic change.
The James Irvine Foundation has awarded the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz a two-year, $700,000 community-level learning partner grant as part of its Priority Communities initiatives.
Priorities Communities, established in 2020, seeks to strengthen regional economies by empowering low-wage workers, families, and organizations to drive economic change. This initiative engages six California cities—Fresno, Stockton, Salinas, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Merced—to foster inclusive economic development through sharing, learning, and partnership across a diverse network of individuals and organizations.
The Institute for Social Transformation has been a partner on this work since 2022, when the team won an initial $650,000 grant to conduct community-engaged research and community capacity-building work in the city of Salinas through the Salinas Inclusive Economic Development Initiative.
“We are excited to see our partnership with the Irvine Foundation’s Priority Communities initiative grow and expand,” said institute Faculty Director Galina Hale. “We’re very proud of what we have accomplished together so far, and our faculty and staff look forward to tackling the work ahead.”
In the past five years, the Priority Communities program has increased community investment, supported promising new projects that create jobs and pathways to employment, and created more equitable policies and practices that break down systemic racism. The next phase of community-engaged strategy building will continue to enhance workers’ voices and power while expanding economic development through strengthened ties with Black, Indigenous, and people of color community members.
Beginning this fall, Institute for Social Transformation faculty fellow Chris Benner, alongside co-awardee the University of Southern California’s Equity Research Institute, will oversee the development of learning communities for all six focus cities. The learning communities will serve as sites for capacity and trust-building work, facilitating the sharing of knowledge and the creation of recommendations to inform the foundation’s next steps in funding economic development.
The Institute for Social Transformation has longstanding community-engaged research in Salinas, the Salton Sea, and the northern counties that will serve as a foundation for this community-based work. The institute staff’s expertise in data analysis, capacity-building, organizing strategy, power mapping, and policy and pilot development for equity-centered initiatives allows the institute to help navigate the complex systems of inequity caused by generational disinvestment.
Through a combination of in-person and virtual learning sessions, this work will help create long-term, cross-sector policy and systems change that reflects the shared goals and principles of participants. As part of the two-year grant, the team will develop a comprehensive learning community framework with the creation of a needs assessment, resource repository, and outcomes and recommendations for future work.
Chris Benner, institute faculty fellow and professor of sociology, will lead the project. He says it will be essential to co-create a learning framework that is both sustainable and responsive to communities’ needs.
“Communities must organize to bring their concerns to economic decision-making tables, while also understanding what is feasible and what will promote inclusive economic development,” Benner said. “The solution lies in creating bridges between new allies in this work and addressing grief, burnout, and conflict between existing and new partners. This requires what we call ‘new inside-outside’ strategies, which mean economic development practices and approaches that balance the inner work—at the scales of the deeply personal and organizational—to the external work of structural change.”