A national network of funders supporting strategic, innovative, and effective solutions to homelessness

Alicia Lara

President and CEO of Community Partners

Funders Together Board Chair

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Alicia Lara is the President and CEO of Community Partners, a nonprofit fiscal sponsor and intermediary based in Los Angeles. Community Partners is home to creative ideas powered by the innovative leaders that seek our fiscal sponsorship and intermediary services to uplift their communities. Alicia leads the strategic vision, goals and initiatives that drive the organization’s impact and reach.

Before joining Community Partners, Lara served as United Way Worldwide’s Senior Vice President of Impact. She developed and led global strategies and initiatives to drive stronger outcomes for vulnerable communities and built national and international strategic partnerships with corporate, public-sector and nonprofit leaders.

Alicia has dedicated her career to changing and improving the lives of marginalized communities, most notably in the public health sector. Before working with the United Way Worldwide system, Alicia spent eight years with The California Endowment, a health-related philanthropic organization with a grant-making budget of $150 million annually. During this time, she held various positions within the organization, including Vice President of Programs, Director of Responsive Grant Making and Senior Program Officer.

Alicia began her career as a fierce advocate for the health and well-being of women of color. As a Director for California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, she cultivated and led a statewide network of advocacy experts from the Native American, Asian Pacific Islander, African American and Latino communities to influence health care policies around services, prevention and homelessness. She also worked closely with various health organizations to develop cultural competency, language and accessibility standards to reach these groups, respectively.

She currently serves on the board of directors for Ms. Foundation for Women, Funders Together to End Homelessness, and CADRE in Los Angeles. A lifelong learner, Alicia is a relentless challenger of the status quo and envisions a world grounded in racial equity and justice where all people live in strong and vibrant communities.

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  • Lauren Bennett
    published this page in Board 2023-12-08 14:45:43 -0500

We joined Funders Together because we believe in the power of philanthropy to play a major role in ending homelessness, and we know we have much to learn from funders across the country.

-Christine Marge, Director of Housing and Financial Stability at United Way of Greater Los Angeles

I am thankful for the local partnerships here in the Pacific Northwest that we’ve been able to create and nurture thanks to the work of Funders Together. Having so many of the right players at the table makes our conversations – and all of our efforts – all the richer and more effective.

-David Wertheimer, Deputy Director at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.

-President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 State of the Union Address

Funders Together has given me a platform to engage the other funders in my community. Our local funding community has improved greatly to support housing first models and align of resources towards ending homelessness.

-Leslie Strnisha, Vice President at Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland

Our family foundation convenes local funders and key community stakeholders around strategies to end homelessness in Houston. Funders Together members have been invaluable mentors to us in this effort, traveling to our community to share their expertise and examples of best practices from around the nation.

-Nancy Frees Fountain, Managing Director at The Frees Foundation


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