June 2025
Haynes Foundation awards major research grants on LA County reform Measure G and for improved metrics on LA homelessness
How can voters be assured that their recent vote to transform county governance will lead to good results? How can we know if the goals of addressing homelessness are being met?
The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation announces two major research grants to researchers at area universities to address these timely questions. Under its new Governance and Democracy Initiative, the Haynes Foundation supports research to improve the lives of the people and communities of the L.A. region. Funding for the G&D program began in 2024, with seven major grants awarded to date, totaling just over $1.3 million.
County charter reform has been a deep interest of the Haynes Foundation for nearly a half-century. Consistent with that mission, the foundation has made a major commitment to the success of Measure G, the reform approved by county voters in November 2024. The new county structure will include an elected county executive and a board of supervisors expanded from 5 to 9 members. The foundation has awarded a two-year grant of $314,863 to the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University to work alongside the county’s new Task Force on Measure G Implementation, bringing independent academic strength to the county’s work.
In November 2024, county voters also approved new funding (Measure A) to address homelessness in Los Angeles, with a requirement for clear metrics to measure performance. The foundation awarded a grant of $300,000 to the California Policy Lab at UCLA, which has developed a predictive model to identify people at risk of becoming homeless that has attracted great attention locally and statewide. Their Haynes grant will allow the Lab to partner with local government agencies to develop additional, innovative measures that could transform the effort to fundamentally address homelessness.
“These research efforts are timely, impactful, and create a sense of hope that we can make measurable, thoughtful progress in improving how government can make decisions and how the public can be best served,” noted Dr. Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation.
2024 grants made under the G&D program include:
- Preventing Election Misinformation and Election Crises in Southern California
R. Michael Alvarez, Ph.D., California Institute of Technology
$277,280 Research-to-Action Grant - The UCI OC Poll
Jon B. Gould, Ph.D. University of California, Irvine
$100,000 Planning Grant - Statistical Study of Alternative Representational Systems for the LA City Council
Sarah Cannon, Ph.D., and Evan Rosenman, Ph.D., Claremont McKenna College
$100,000 Planning Grant - Promoting Democracy through Local Engagement: Removing Barriers to Immigrants’ Involvement in Civic Initiatives
Susan Bibler Coutin, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine
$79,483 Planning Grant - Examining the City of Los Angeles’s Matching Funds Program: A Comparative Analysis of the Matching Funds Program
Mindy Romero, Ph.D., University of Southern California
$175,000 Research-to-Action Grant
Grants for the Governance and Democracy Initiative are considered on a quarterly basis. An initial letter of interest (LOI) is required. The next deadline for LOIs is Tuesday, July 15, 2025, by 11:59 p.m., which is an extension from the previously announced date of June 30th. In addition to G&D grants, the foundation has awarded faculty fellowships, dissertation fellowships, and archival grants in 2025 which you can view on our recent grants page. Instructions for applying to the Haynes Foundation Governance and Democracy Initiative can be found and downloaded on our homepage. You can contact us at info@haynesfoundation.org.