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

Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro Leads $250 Million Latino Endowment Campaign

Former housing secretary Julián Castro believes the next decade will require a sustained commitment to building philanthropic support for U.S. Latinos, who he describes as facing a “five-alarm fire” with rollbacks affecting education, business, and immigration opportunities.

Castro, who took leadership of the California-based Latino Community Foundation in January 2024, announced Wednesday an ambitious plan to build a $250 million endowment and expand grantmaking across 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.”

This initiative addresses a persistent funding gap in the philanthropic sector. Despite Latinos comprising nearly 20% of the U.S. population according to Census data, organizations serving people of Latin American descent routinely receive less than 1% of all philanthropic funding, according to Hispanics in Philanthropy.

The disparity has grown more pronounced as nonprofits struggle to help immigrant communities navigate the Trump administration’s enforcement policies. The administration is expanding detention facilities with plans to potentially hold around 100,000 immigrants. Recent immigration crackdowns in cities like Minneapolis and Chicago have created a climate of fear in predominantly Latino neighborhoods, where residents regardless of immigration status hesitate to leave their homes.

In response to these challenges, the Latino Community Foundation launched its first national fund last month, allocating an initial $500,000 to support five organizations in Minnesota, California, and Nevada. These grantees focus on holding federal immigration officers accountable and protecting vulnerable families.

The foundation has evolved significantly since its 1989 origin as a San Francisco United Way affinity group. However, with an endowment of approximately $35 million – which Castro describes as “modest” by philanthropic standards – the organization cannot currently meet growing nationwide needs. While the foundation distributed about $10 million in grants last year, partly due to emergency response to Los Angeles-area wildfires, sustainable funding remains a challenge.

“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,” Castro said.

Castro, who served as San Antonio mayor before leading HUD during President Barack Obama’s administration, began laying groundwork for this expansion earlier this year with get-out-the-vote grants in Arizona and Nevada. This experience revealed both significant needs and untapped potential.

“There are a lot of great nonprofits rooted in their local communities doing excellent work,” Castro explained. “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.”

The current political climate has intensified Castro’s sense of urgency. “It feels like an imperative,” he said. “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. What I see happening in the country right now is the taking away of opportunity. Subtraction instead of addition.”

The endowment will provide sustainable support for grassroots organizations that traditionally struggle to access mainstream philanthropic resources. Castro noted many community-based Latino organizations lack grant writers and development staff, making it difficult to secure funding. Simultaneously, major foundations “still have a long way to go in terms of looking like the country and understanding the needs of the entire country,” he added.

Despite the Trump administration’s threats regarding identity-based grantmaking, which have caused some funders to retreat from explicitly naming communities they aim to serve, Castro remains steadfast in the foundation’s mission.

“We know that there’s a very strong need. We know that need is going to continue,” he said. “The investments that we’re making to Latino-serving organizations are consistent with the current law. It’s unfortunate that some have begun to scale back their investments in organizations that serve people of particular backgrounds, because we have so many 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.”