Thursday, January 23, 2025

Altadena, Palisades Residents Establish Community Wildfire Relief Funds

CITY NEWS SERVICE

In response to the devastating impact of the Los Angeles County wildfires, residents of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades have established community fund-raising efforts to assist in local recovery, officials announced Wednesday.

The Altadena Community Fund and The Palisades Community Fund aim to support immediate relief efforts and long-term recovery initiatives, said Tracy Lawrence, founder and CEO of The Lawrence Advisory and former executive-in-residence at USC’s Marshall School of Business.

Lawrence will chair a committee to oversee the selection of the boards to ensure equitable distribution of resources, driven by the voices and regional leadership of Altadena and the Pacific Palisades.

The community funds were founded by a group of local residents who saw an opportunity to empower Altadena and Pacific Palisades residents to have control over their own fund-raising and rebuilding efforts, officials said.

“Our role is to ensure these funds serve their communities effectively and transparently,” Lawrence, who will help establish the governance framework, said in a statement.

“We’re committed to selecting board members who represent and understand their communities’ needs, and we will determine where we either have existing community stakeholders that can benefit from the dollars we raise in this moment of need or where we need to create new community stakeholders and organizations.”

Officials will host a joint fundraising event in March with details to be announced in the coming days.

The funds will operate as fiscally sponsored projects of the Edward Charles Foundation, a public charity, ensuring tax-deductible status for all contributions. Community members, businesses and organizations interested in contributing can visit altadenacommunityfund.org and palisadescommunityfund.org.

Among the funds’ founding members, Bill Fishel, an executive vice chairman with the real estate company Newmark and current chairman of the board for Make-A-Wish Greater Los Angeles, said the founders are using their collective prior experiences in the nonprofit area to quickly benefit the communities in need.

“We have all been overwhelmed by the earnest, immediate offers of support we have received from friends and family across the globe,” Fishel said. “Our goal is to convert that goodwill into tangible resources that we can reinvest at the direction of these communities today and on into the future.”