Julián Castro plans to build a $250M endowment for Latino community groups across the US Southwest

NEW YORK (AP) — Former housing secretary Julián Castro sees at least one constant throughout the next decade.

That’s the need to build lasting philanthropic support for U.S. Latinos — who are among the country’s fastest-growing racial or ethnic groups and who he sees facing a “five-alarm fire” with rollbacks to education, business and immigration opportunities.

So, the one-time presidential hopeful is working to increase the assets and footprint of the California-based nonprofit he has led since January 2024. In a Wednesday announcement, the Latino Community Foundation pledged to build a $250 million endowment and expand grantmaking across the southwestern states.

“The destiny of the United States is intertwined with the destiny of the Latino community like never before,” Castro told The Associated Press. “We’re confident that by helping to ensure that the Latino community does well, we’re helping to ensure that the United States does well in the years to come.”

Philanthropic support for organizations serving people of Latin American descent routinely falls below 1% of all funding, according to Hispanics in Philanthropy, despite U.S. Census data that nearly 20% of the U.S. population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.

That disparity has become clearer as nonprofits help immigrant communities navigate President Donald Trump’s sweeping enforcement policies. The administration is expanding the number of detention centers and could eventually hold around 100,000 immigrants. Crackdowns in cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago have chilled predominantly Latino neighborhoods where some residents, regardless of their immigration status, are afraid to leave the house. They’ve also prompted neighbors to step up for one another in new ways.

The Latino Community Foundation responded last month with its first national fund. An initial $500,000 supported five grantees in Minnesota, California and Nevada with aims to hold federal immigration officers accountable and protect families from harm.

The foundation has come a long way since its 1989 beginnings as a San Francisco United Way affinity group. But Castro aspires to give at least $10 million annually, like last year when the Los Angeles-area wildfires pushed overall grantmaking above the norm.

Its roughly $35 million endowment — “modest,” Castro said, “as philanthropies go” — can’t meet the growing need nationwide.

“Now is the moment, under these unique circumstances that we face, to go bigger and to seek to make a real, lasting impression on philanthropy,” he said.

Castro, who served as San Antonio mayor before leading the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during President Barack Obama’s final years in office, spoke with AP exclusively about his vision for the foundation. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You set the stage for this move with Spring 2024 get-out-the-vote grants in Arizona and Nevada. What did you learn from that experience that you’re taking into this expansion?

There’s tremendous need just about everywhere in the country. Over the last couple of decades, the Latino community has grown enormously. Not only in the usual suspect places that we think of, but in smaller communities — in the Southwest, in the Midwest, in every part of the country.

What I saw in Arizona and Nevada is there are a lot of great nonprofits that are rooted in their local communities doing excellent work. We have a lot of great work happening on the ground to register voters, mobilize voters, to create more access to capital for small businesses, to empower the Latino community. But it’s chronically underfunded.

What does it mean to be making this announcement given the current political climate?

It feels like an imperative. The moment that we’re going through gives me and the LCF team an added sense of purpose and of urgency to serve our community. All of us on the team have an immigrant story. We all feel very fortunate to have been blessed with a lot of what America has to offer and have been able to pursue our dreams and aspirations.

And that’s what we want for everybody in the country — of course, including other Latinos, whether they’re recent immigrants or they’ve been here for five generations. And what I see happening in the country right now is the taking away of opportunity. Subtraction instead of addition.

How would you explain what an endowment can do for an organization like this to someone who questions how this endowment will help them or their community?

It’s a source of investment for nonprofits that oftentimes don’t receive dollars from mainstream philanthropy. LCF was born in part because a very small percentage of mainstream philanthropic dollars go to Latino-led or Latina-led organizations.

This endowment will help ensure that if somebody is doing excellent grassroots work to serve the Latino community, they always have a place to look.

Why is mainstream philanthropy so hesitant to support Latino-led or Latino-serving organizations?

Many of these organizations are very rooted in their own local communities. They are short staffed. They don’t have grant writers. They don’t have experts in drawing down philanthropic resources. Also, big philanthropy still has a long way to go in terms of looking like the country and understanding the needs of the entire country. So, I think it goes both ways.

Many in philanthropy have retreated from naming the communities they want to serve because of the Trump administration’s threats to identity-based grantmaking. What heartens you in the face of that pushback as you move forward with this commitment?

We know that there’s a very strong need. We know that that need is going to continue. And that the investments that we’re making to Latino-serving organizations are consistent with the current law.

It’s true that some have begun to scale back their investments in organizations that serve people of particular backgrounds. That’s unfortunate. Because we have so many of the inequities that we’ve seen for generations that still exist. The Latino Community Foundation is absolutely committed to our mission. And through thick and thin, we’re gonna have the community’s back.

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