The LA84 Foundation's mission is to expand youth sports opportunities and play equity in Southern California.

Grant Making Priorities:

• Youth under 18 years of age, especially youth of color, low-income youth, and girls and young women.

• Overlooked and underserved youth, including those with disabilities, and LGBTQ or gender nonconforming youth.

• Organizations using a sports-based youth development approach and centering equity in their service model.

Guiding Principles:

• Sport can improve young people's lives through positive social-emotional, health, and educational outcomes, and has lifelong impacts.

• Coaching education greatly improves the sport experience for young people and youth development outcomes.

• The health and safety of young athletes is a top priority.

We are a learning organization and work with grantees to share successes within the SBYD ecosystem.

Supported Programs:

-School-based or school-linked sports programs in high-need communities (e.g., Title 1 schools, high number of free/reduced lunch participants).

-Programs that are free or low-cost and provide exposure to various sports rather than deep specialization.

-Programs that increase access to sports for girls and young women, focusing on sustaining involvement and increasing female coaches.

We give special consideration to organizations and efforts that can impact at scale children and youth. This includes school district-wide or multi-school efforts. We do not support single schools but rather look to systems level programming and approaches to support in our grantmaking.

-Programs that are free or very low cost and focus on providing exposure to sports and play. Because sport activities can become quite costly, we prioritize those programs that work to reduce or eliminate financial barriers completely. We also believe exposure to sport is more beneficial than deep specialization in any one sport. Finally, we pay particular attention to “non-traditional” sports that aim to expose children and youth of color in sports where people of color are underrepresented.

-Programs that increase access to sport and play for girls and young women. While much progress has been made to advance sport for young women and girls, there is still work to be done. Many girls begin playing sports and drop off around middle school which can lead to long-term negative educational and health outcomes. For young women of color, the drop off rate is even greater. Because we know the lifelong benefits of sport and play, we support programs that focus on girls engaging and sustaining involvement in sports. We also know how important an adult mentor or coach is for young women, and therefore support programming that works to increase the number of female coaches.

While we support youth exploring and engaging in all sport and play, LA84 Foundation will not provide funding to organizations or programs that offer to children 14 years of age or younger rugby, football, boxing, soccer or martial arts and allow, tackling or concussive injuries to the head. This is in response to increased understanding of the long-term impacts of head injuries. Organizations or programs applying for a grant to support any of the following sports soccer, hockey, lacrosse, boxing, rugby (non-tackle), martial arts, or flag football, must follow sport-specific standardized guidelines.