Skip to main content

California, United States

California, United States hosts 37 impact funders and capital providers in the Causeartist directory. Browse foundations, venture firms, accelerators, and grantmakers with published presence in California, United States. Profiles summarize thesis, sectors, stages, and application links where available.

Airbnb.org logo
Airbnb.org
Foundation, Corporate
Airbnb.org is an independent U.S. 501(c)(3) public charity that pays for free, short-term housing for people affected by disasters and other crises. The organization launched in 2020 after eight years of crisis-housing work through Airbnb's Open Homes program, which began when a host named Shell offered her home at no charge after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Airbnb.org is legally separate from Airbnb, Inc.; Airbnb covers the charity's operating costs, supplies access to its technology platform and services, and says it does not earn money from Airbnb.org-supported stays. The operating model is housing assistance rather than conventional grantmaking. Airbnb.org works with vetted local nonprofit partners that identify and refer eligible people, volunteers, first responders, refugees, and families traveling for medical care. Airbnb.org then funds bookings on Airbnb's platform. Hosts are generally paid as they would be for an ordinary stay and receive AirCover and specialized support; some separately choose to discount a stay, offer it free, or donate a portion of their payout. An Airbnb.org emergency-stay host should therefore not be described as synonymous with Airbnb's broader commercial-host community. Airbnb.org organizes its work around emergency-response stays, medical stays, and resettlement stays. Its official site says more than 60,000 hosts have helped provide housing to more than 250,000 people since the 2012 origin of the program. It separately reports 1.6 million nights of free emergency housing since Airbnb.org launched in 2020. Those are facilitated stays and nights, not a count of unique guests, grants, or dollars deployed. For January through June 2026, Airbnb.org reported 87 disaster responses, more than 28,000 nights provided, and 5,776 hosts who donated. It also reported that an Airbnb.org booking cost an average of US$110 per night globally over the preceding five years. These organization-reported operating measures show delivery capacity, but they are not assets under management, audited grant expenditures, or a committed funding pool.
Built EnvironmentCommunity DevelopmentHealth & Wellness
Beneficial State Bank logo
Beneficial State Bank
Bank, CDFI, Debt Finance, Grantmaker
Beneficial State Bank is an FDIC-insured, state-chartered community development financial institution (CDFI) headquartered in Oakland, California, with branches in California, Oregon, and Washington. Kat Taylor and Tom Steyer founded it in 2007 as a triple-bottom-line community bank and donated the capital to Beneficial State Foundation, a nonprofit that is now the majority owner of the bank’s capital. That ownership is the lock: the institution is meant to stay governed in the public interest rather than recapitalize through a conventional holding-company sale. Causeartist indexes it in the funders directory as a CDFI bank and debt provider, not as a venture fund. The product is credit: deposits become loans for affordable housing, nonprofits, small businesses, and environmental projects on the West Coast. CDFI rules require at least 60% of financing to low- and moderate-income or underserved communities; the bank reported that 100% of its 2025 loan portfolio upheld that community-development mandate. It will not lend to fossil fuels, private prisons, or weapons manufacturing, industries it calls “contra mission.” It has been a Certified B Corporation since 2012 (B Lab directory; the bank’s certifications page also cites 2013), is Fossil Free Certified, belongs to the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, and describes itself as the only unionized community bank in the U.S. As of year-end 2025 it reported $1.98 billion in assets, $1.67 billion in deposits, $1.47 billion in outstanding loans, and 15.4% net loan growth. Those figures are company-reported from the 2025 Impact Report, not an independent audit.
Built EnvironmentCommunity DevelopmentImpact Finance
Capital Impact Partners logo
Capital Impact Partners
CDFI, Debt Finance, Impact Fund
Capital Impact Partners is a nonprofit community development financial institution that lends to affordable housing, health, education, healthy food, cooperatives, and related community real estate. It traces to 1981–1982 federal cooperative-development roots and today operates as part of the Momentus Capital branded family with CDC Small Business Finance and Momentus Securities. The site frames Capital Impact as a mission-driven lender for projects banks often skip, with place-based clusters where staff know local partners. Affordable housing examples include preservation and mixed-use work such as a Redwood City project with HIP Housing that converted a small building into affordable studios in a high-rent market. Cooperative housing and ROC USA–style manufactured-home community resident ownership appear in long-running program history. Lending sits beside capacity-building programs for community-rooted real estate developers and co-op innovation awards. Growth-stage impact investments — venture debt, revenue or profit share, and preferred equity — target companies expanding economic opportunity, food and health access, or employee ownership. Investors can buy the Capital Impact Investment Note to fund the lending book while seeking a financial return. Borrowers apply through mission-driven financing and loan-offering pages for nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and community organizations. Because Momentus Capital is already listed separately in the Causeartist directory as the family brand, this profile keeps the Capital Impact Partners name and capitalimpact.org URL for operators who meet the CDFI as a housing and community-facilities lender. Capital Impact is a CDFI and community lender, not a housing-credit syndicator at NEF’s scale. Its edge is flexible debt and programs for housing, co-ops, health, and neighborhood facilities inside the Momentus continuum.
Built EnvironmentCommunity DevelopmentImpact Finance
Flexport.org logo
Flexport.org
Corporate, Grantmaker
Flexport.org is the social-impact and sustainability program of freight-forwarding company Flexport, not a separately presented corporate foundation. It applies Flexport's logistics technology, carrier relationships, freight expertise, and staff knowledge to humanitarian aid and lower-carbon supply chains. The public program dates its humanitarian funding activity to 2018. Donations to the Flexport.org Fund are managed by CAF America, an independent U.S. public charity, and pay transportation costs for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations; that sponsored-fund arrangement must not be described as a standalone Flexport.org legal entity. Its humanitarian work combines several forms of support that should remain distinct. The fund can pay freight costs, Flexport can provide its logistics platform free to fund recipients, staff can advise aid organizations on shipping, and the product-donation program can connect donated goods with nonprofit demand. A funded shipment is therefore not necessarily an unrestricted cash grant, and the retail value of donated goods is not the same as cash deployed. Flexport.org also supports commercial customers with carbon measurement, reduction, and offset-related services, which are corporate services rather than charitable awards. The 2024 impact report says donations had funded humanitarian-aid shipments to more than 86 countries since 2018. That is an organization-reported geographic/output measure, not a count of grants, unique beneficiaries, or independently evaluated outcomes. Current public pages direct prospective organizations to shipping and contact pathways but do not publish an always-open competitive grant application, a general award calendar, or a broadly applicable cheque range. This profile therefore leaves application and cheque-size fields empty.
Clean TransportationCommunity DevelopmentImpact Finance
Interledger Foundation logo
Interledger Foundation
Foundation, Grantmaker, Accelerator, Fellowship
The Interledger Foundation is a U.S. nonprofit working to make digital payments more open, affordable, and accessible. It supports open payment technology and funds the developers, researchers, educators, and organizations building on it. Its work began with the Interledger Protocol, created in 2015 by Stefan Thomas and Evan Schwartz. The goal was to help money move between different banks, wallets, currencies, and payment networks as easily as information moves across the internet. The foundation became a nonprofit in 2019 and began operating publicly in 2021. Briana Marbury serves as president and CEO. Stefan Thomas chairs the board, and Evan Schwartz remains a director. The organization is based in San Francisco but has a distributed international team. The foundation supports three main technologies. The Interledger Protocol moves value between different financial systems. Open Payments gives developers a standard way to add payment features to their products. Rafiki provides open-source software that banks, wallets, and other regulated financial institutions can use to connect. The foundation does not charge a fee for using the protocol and has no investors. Grantmaking is also a major part of its work. The foundation reports awarding more than $21 million to over 300 projects across more than 45 countries. Its programs support payment infrastructure, education, research, leadership, public policy, and creative work exploring how financial systems are built. Grants range from small campus awards of up to $5,000 to larger fellowships and accelerator programs offering between $50,000 and $92,000. The foundation reported $96.4 million in net assets and $10.6 million in charitable distributions for the year ending December 2024. This financial base allows it to fund open payment technology and expand access to financial services without relying on protocol fees or outside investors.
AI & TechnologyArts, Culture & MediaCommunity Development