California · Nonprofit
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation (California) receives grants from 40 organizations whose IRS filings report $12,724,366 to it, the largest being THE CALIFORNIA ENDOWMENT ($6,321,145). 22 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $7.0M
- Funders on record
- 40
- Grants received
- $13M
- Net assets
- $9.5M
What California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation does
Mission
The mission of CRLAF is to achieve social justice and equity in partnership with farmworkers and the underserved in rural communities through community, legislative and legal advocacy. Our vision is for all farmworkers and their families to be treated with dignity and respect. CRLAF helps increase the capacity of rural immigrants to advocate for themselves, to develop leadership, and to become more engaged in their communities as stakeholders driving the agenda for improved economic and social conditions. We work in the areas of immigration and citizenship, labor, housing, education, community health, worker safety, and environmental justice.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
CRLAF's Immigration Project: Collective work is organized across three different project areas: Affirmative Legal Services, Removal Defense, and San Joaquin Immigrant Empowerment. The Immigration Project provides community education, legal training to qualified legal services providers, assistance to eligible immigrants applying for affirmative immigration benefits, and representation before USCIS and the Executive Office for Immigration Review. The Removal Defense Project provides direct representation in detained and non-detained court cases. The AOD program provides training, technical assistance, and scheduling support to pro bono attorneys to increase their capacity to represent individuals who otherwise would lack representation in Immigration Court. The San Joaquin Immigrant Empowerment Project's work centers around the complex intersection of public health, immigrants' rights, and immigration law. During this fiscal year, we focused especially on providing immigration legal services, advocacy, education and outreach, and legal training. The Immigration Project also provided technical assistance to other community partners addressing two major challenges facing immigrant…
$1,889,636 spentof which $1,261,651 as grants38% of program spendingSustainable Rural Communities (SRCP): CRLAF's Sustainable Rural Communities Project works to ensure equal access to healthcare for California's farmworker and rural indigent population through a three-part strategy of health data development, analysis and dissemination; public policy analysis and discussion; and community outreach, education, capacity building, and advocacy. This project addresses the systemic causes of our communities' poverty, poor health, and degraded environments due to lack of regulatory enforcement and generational disinvestment. We coordinate with other advocates on a local, regional, and statewide strategy to craft large-scale solutions around healthcare for all, environmental justice issues (land use, unmet transit needs, water quality), foster more accountable and inclusive governance, and direct financial resources to rural, farmworker, migrant, immigrant, and disadvantaged communities. Safe Drinking Water: Since 2015, our team has administered an Interim Emergency Bottled Water program to the two unincorporated farmworker communities in western Fresno County with over 700 residents. CRLAF continues to advocate with Cantua Creek and El Porvenir…
$708,969 spentof which $134,829 as grants14% of program spendingLegal Services Support: (State Trust Funding): CRLAF's primary purpose is to serve as a statewide support center. CRLAF advocates provide training, technical assistance, and advocacy support to qualified legal services projects to increase their capacity to represent low-wage workers and their families with labor and employment, health access, housing, public benefit and disaster relief eligibility. CRLAF also engages in class action litigation, co-counseling, and direct representation of indigent clients who are ineligible for federally-funded legal services due to immigration status.
$799,485 spent16% of program spendingLegal Services Support:CRLAF is unique in that we primarily operate as a statewide legal support center, where we provide training, technical assistance, advocacy support, and resources to QLSPs and other partners across California. Key subjects include labor and employment, health advocacy, pesticide and worker safety, rural housing, and education advocacy. We provide education, consultations, and co-counseling, including advancing referrals from partners who are unable to represent undocumented individuals and mixed-status families. We are additionally involved in a couple of statewide projects working to prevent homelessness.
$1,609,316 spent$189,727 earned by the program32% of program spendingCentral Valley Partnership:The Central Valley Partnership is a project of CRLA Foundation that provides training, technical assistance, and advocacy support on immigration, health, and education equity. CRLAF received funds from the Paycheck Protection Program to support the organization's work due to the unprecedented effects of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Field Services:The Field Services Project provides legislative and administrative advocacy on labor and education, rural housing, rural health, pesticides and worker safety; training, technical assistance, and advocacy support to qualified legal services advocates on issues affecting farm worker and other low-wage worker issues; and co-counseling on labor, employment, and civil rights matters.Field Sanitation:Now called The Pesticide and Work Health and Safety Project works to shed light on and reduce agricultural work hazards and pesticide exposures faced by California's agricultural workers and other rural residents. The Project maintains an ongoing dialog with Cal-OSHA and local, state and federal pesticide regulatory officials to encourage more thorough investigations and stricter enforcement of existing laws and regulations, improvements in regulations, and increased use of safer and more sustainable pest control alternatives. We also provide technical assistance to legal services programs and community organizations on developing outreach materials, accessing and understanding pesticide and work safety laws and regulations and public records and responding to pesticide…
Rural Housing Project:This project engages in legislative and administrative advocacy on low-income rural and farmworker housing issues, publishes a quarterly newsletter on state housing issues, and conducts training on housing issues throughout the state. In response to COVID-19, our housing policy team worked in the State Capitol and with the Judicial Council of California to halt evictions to keep families safe from homelessness. From the Governor's orders calling for an eviction moratorium to the Judicial Council's adoption of an emergency protection rule preventing summonses from being issued in nearly all "unlawful detainer" eviction cases, our housing policy efforts helped to halt a potential massive wave of evictions across California.Our team continues to advocate at local and statewide levels to establish adequate protections for renters facing potential pandemic-related evictions. We are also working to develop a legislative response that would provide longer-term protections from eviction for non-payment of rent due to COVID-related loss of income.
The 7 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $5,007,406.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2023 to 2024, from $9.6M to $15M (+56%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 33% · 2018 92% · 2019 82% · 2020 50% · 2021 46% · 2022 41% · 2023 28% · 2024 80% · 2025 88%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 2 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Amagda Perez
Executive Director
Board chair
Virginia Villegas Esq
Board Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 6 funders to 18 funders, grant income rose $659k → $2.2M.
10 of 40 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 5% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 40 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation leans on a few funders — its largest provides 50% of grant income and the top three 62%; half comes from just 2 funders.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 2 funders to its left
38% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 63% · 2018 51% · 2019 60% · 2020 50% · 2021 20% · 2022 63% · 2023 65% — broadly stable.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
67% of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 55% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
92% of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's grant income comes from California funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $594k arriving through sponsors registered in 4 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Organizations like California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In California
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
84% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
86%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation?
- California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation (California) receives grants from 40 organizations whose IRS filings report $12,724,366 to it, the largest being THE CALIFORNIA ENDOWMENT ($6,321,145). 22 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation have?
- IRS filings report 40 organizations giving $12,724,366 in grants to California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, 22 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation?
- THE CALIFORNIA ENDOWMENT is the largest funder on record, with $6,321,145 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 40 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing