Blog

Operation Walk Gives Gift of Mobility to West Hollywood Nonprofit CEO

Lisa Gaeta, is the founder and chief executive officer of IMPACT Personal Safety-SoCal, a nonprofit whose classes offer assertiveness and awareness skills, boundary-setting, verbal strategies, and full-force physical assailant defense to people of all ages.

But Lisa was considering early retirement from a job—really a cause—about which she is passionate--due to excruciating pain, compromised mobiliy, and the fact that she had no medical insurance to pay for the necessary surgery.

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Operation Walk

Can you imagine forbidding your children to play in their yard due to poisons in the soil that could damage their brains? Or knowing that if you do allow the kids to play outside, they would likely suffer from learning disabilities or lower IQ? Of course not.

Yet, that is the life that the residents of 7,500 properties in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles.

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Environmental Injustice

There are apps to order a ride and food and apps to find dates and dog walkers. But what about an app to help the 42 million Americans who rely on food stamps, otherwise known as the Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP) to feed their families? Calling an 800 number to check one’s balance or maintaining an ongoing tally of purchases are cumbersome and time consuming.

Brooklyn-based Propel, a social enterprise that builds first-class software products for low-income Americans, is addressing this need.

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food

Two Los Angeles Hospitals Must Pay Millions to Meet Charity Obligations

Did you know that nonprofit hospitals in California are required to donate a certain amount of their profits to charity? No? We didn’t either. According to this Los Angeles Times article, “California’s attorney general can set specific charity care requirements for hospitals when a nonprofit hospital merges or is acquired by another nonprofit or for-profit hospital.”

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Health

Why LA Needs Impact Investing and Micro Financing

Los Angeles is brimming with social entrepreneurs who seek investors to fund businesses that promise to generate both a healthy return on investment and a positive social impact.

and...

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social impact investing

Plastic poisons our food chain, defaces our environment, and compromises our health.

The Plastic Pollution Coalition, profiled on this site under "Organizations," is committed to eradicating plastic's toxic impact on humans, animals, and the environment.

Through education and advocacy, the Coalition seeks to raise visibility of the problem and to promote sustainable solutions that we can incorporate in our everyday lives.

How is it that I, who didn't grow up watching Star Trek, am now a fan of its creator, Gene Roddenberry?

Though he died in 1991, Gene is a new force in the Southern California social enterprise and philanthropic communities through the Roddenberry Foundation.

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social enterprise

philanthropy