With anchor local nonprofit and public partners, the California Resilience Partnership (CRP) brings together multi-sector practitioners to increase investments in a pipeline of high-impact projects for the state. CRP is collaboratively led by Resilient Cities Catalyst, the Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation (ARCCA), and CivicWell.
By creating a new platform for partnerships to build resilience at the regional scale, CRP has delivered and supported:
Building on work in our first three regions — greater Los Angeles, greater San Diego, and greater Sacramento — CRP will soon expand to other regions statewide, bringing resources for local nonprofit and government partners to support project development–offering technical assistance, crowding in global best practices, and fostering collaborative knowledge exchange.
The Urgency
About the California Resilience Partnership
California’s regions are tackling unprecedented, urgent, and compounding resilience challenges, linked by common drivers including climate change, racial injustice, and economic forces. This unprecedented and complex time requires a comprehensive approach and collaboration across multiple sectors and at different scales.
At the same time, partners in communities across the state — from regional climate collaboratives, to local community-based organizations, to municipalities — are leading the way in building resilience, but require additional capacity and support to bring their resilience visions to fruition.
Yet the moment has never been more ripe to accelerate resilience building in California, with the passage of federal legislation and State budgets with historic levels of funding allocated for climate resilience, unlocking a once-in-a-generation amount of public resources that can be leveraged for resilience building.
CRP works at the nexus of this critical opportunity to help maximize these investments. By centering and learning from local actors and California’s wealth of statewide institutions, CRP works to build needed capacity in community based organizations and catalyze additional investment in state and local partners, while generating the most relevant and highest impact initiatives and projects.
CALIFORNIA’S REGIONS FACE MULTIPLE SHOCKS AND STRESSES
The Program
Within regions, CRP works to:
Support local partners to identify community-led local needs
Local nonprofit and public practitioners lead a process to identify resilience priorities and project opportunities ripe for CRP partnership.
Launch project development activities
Multi-sector partners collaborate on CRP-supported activities to develop projects that address the region’s urgent shocks and stresses. Activities might include:
Direct technical assistance
Tactical convenings
Funding & direct support
Policy guidance
Trainings
Support around philanthropic engagement and communications
Direct project preparation support in historically underinvested communities via CRP’s expanding project preparation program
Cultivate cross-sectoral partnerships
Cross-sectoral partnerships are critical to building lasting capacity at the regional scale, and CRP is focused on connecting environmental justice and equity-focused community organizations with one another and with the public sector.
Statewide, CRP works to:
Share best practices and accelerate collaboration through the CRP Network
Through convenings, knowledge exchange, development of learning materials, and sharing of best practices, the expanding CRP Network facilitates exchange of best practices.
Foster statewide resilience policy alignment among CRP practitioners
An aligned policy agenda can help inform State policies, philanthropic efforts, and other resilience efforts, and aims to reflect regional priorities and on-the-ground experiences.
Engage statewide philanthropies to catalyze funding for CRP projects and build capacity of CRP partners
By cultivating relationships with philanthropies statewide, mapping CRP projects and regions against funder priority areas, and convening funders, CRP activates new funding opportunities for priority projects and partners.
The Regions
CRP launched with two pilot regions in 2021
The program expanded to greater Sacramento in 2023. In the coming years, CRP will expand to new regions statewide.
Greater Los Angeles and Ventura Counties | Wildfire
The Resilient Cities Catalyst team has worked with local partners to surface and pilot innovative solutions to fire and urban heat in the greater Los Angeles region since early 2019. Emerging in the wake of the 2018 Woolsey Fire, this effort aims to strengthen the region’s preparedness for wildfire and extreme heat as well as other climate threats through coordinated efforts at the regional scale. RCC worked with local partners to identify replicable, bold ideas driven by both local governments and non-profit organizations that would strengthen critical capacities for absorbing, adapting, and even transforming in the face of current and future climate driven shocks.
Greater San Diego | Coastal Erosion
RCC and The San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative (SDRCC) convened global experts, along with key leaders in the region representing diverse community stakeholders, for the San Diego Region Coastal Exchange, a sequence of virtual immersive convenings and small group working sessions, in July 2020 to explore innovative approaches to address coastal erosion. Over the course of these sessions, participants gathered virtually to explore innovative design options that address coastal resilience challenges, and surfaced a set of viable projects and policies. These four approaches are now in stages of design and implementation.
Advisory Board
The CRP Advisory Board includes key leaders across sectors, including philanthropy, non-profits, the private sector, academia, and other critical stakeholders representing regions across California. Advisory Board members provide strategic guidance on CRP projects and programmatic activities, inform selection of future regions based on needs and opportunities, and identify opportunities for new cross-sectoral partnerships to support the CRP program. The Advisory Board meets quarterly and is a key partner informing ongoing development and implementation of CRP. CRP also has a State Liaison who coordinates participation by representatives of State agencies.
Darbi Berry, Chair, Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation (ARCCA) and Director, The San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative
Julia Kim, Climate Change and Energy Program Director, CivicWell
Erica L. Manuel, CEO and Executive Director, Institute for Local Government
Sona Mohnot, Associate Director, Climate Resilience, The Greenlining Institute
Kiara Reed, Executive Director, Civic Thread
Dr. Emily Young, Executive Director, The Nonprofit Institute, University of San Diego
Ex officio member
Robert Miyashiro, Program Officer, International Programs, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
State liaison
Dolores Barajas, Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Program Regional Resilience Grant Program Manager, Governor’s Office of Planning and Research
News & Resources
Partners
Anchor Partners
Founding Funder
Supporting Funders
Partner With Us
CRP is expanding to additional regions across California. If you are a funder, public sector representative, or non-profit interested in learning more about potential partnerships in future regions, please reach out.