Who We Are
OUR MISSION
The Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation is committed to "Initiating and Supporting Signs of Hope for the City" by empowering people, achieving social justice and economic development and promoting the well being of communities as envisioned by Christian faith.
OUR VALUES
We believe:
In the power of small, grassroots organizations to re-imagine and creatively transform their communities.
In the wisdom and knowledge of our partners in the urban community.
In taking risks with urban social service agencies where other foundations might not be willing to do so.
That it is as important to support sustainability as it is to give grants to urban community organizations.
That adding the spiritual dimension creates enhanced solutions.
HISTORY
In 1983, the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Los Angeles made a generous, lasting gift to the people of Los Angeles by creating the Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation.
With proceeds from the sale of a downtown L.A. church property in 1983, the congregation set aside two million dollars to establish an endowment for the Urban Foundation. Earnings from half of the endowment were earmarked to support an urban ministry program at the Claremont School of Theology (CST). Since its founding, the Urban Foundation has provided more than $1.6 million toward urban ministry education and training at CST, which has provided hands-on urban internship experiences for seminary students.
Claremont School of Theology
In 1993, the link between the Urban Foundation and the Claremont program was confirmed by the naming of the professorship in urban ministry after Mildred Hutchinson, a long-time member and chair of the Foundation's Board of Directors. The Mildred M. Hutchinson Chair of Urban Ministry has been held by Cornish Rogers, Grant Hagiya, Michael Mata, and most recently by Helene Slessarev-Jamir.
Dr. Helene Slessarev-Jamir
Earnings from the other half of the Urban Foundation’s endowment were designated to help fund faith-based community projects throughout the Los Angeles urban area. Since 1983, the Urban Foundation has provided support to hundreds of faith-based social service organizations and community projects in Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, and Long Beach.
Rakestraw Community Education Community Center at Wesley United Methodist Church
Throughout the past decade, we have developed more of a capacity-building role with some of our grantees and have provided formal training and informal coaching along with funding to help strengthen emerging programs. For more information, see our Grantmaking page.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Stewart Kwoh, J.D., Chair
Asian Pacific American Legal Center
Ms. Sheri Dunn Berry, President
Urban Foundation
Byron Hayes, Jr., L.L.B., Vice President & CFO
Attorney (Retired)
William Renfroe, Ed.D., Corporate Secretary
Los Angeles Unified School District (Retired)
Mrs. Addie Clark
Wesley United Methodist Church
Ms. Sandee Furuta
United Methodist Ministries, Los Angeles District
Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez
Urban Ministries, California-Pacific Annual Conference
Ms. Alicia Lara
United Way of Greater Los Angeles
Ms. Jane Matsumoto
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Rev. Sandie Richards
First United Methodist Church- Los Angeles
Rev. Lily Villamin
United Methodist Ministries, Riverside District
Rev. Dr. Cornish Rogers, Chair Emeritus
Claremont School of Theology (Retired)
STAFF
Urban Foundation Staff L-R: Anne Hawthorne, Sheri Dunn Berry, Greta Silva
Sheri Dunn Berry, Executive Director
sdunnberry@gmail.com
(213) 749-0212 ext. 2#
Throughout her 20 years in the nonprofit sector, Sheri Dunn Berry has worked to empower people: by bringing them together to learn from each other's struggles and successes, by equipping them with data to help inform community planning and action, and by building their skills to become stronger advocates for healing fractured communities.
Before joining the Urban Foundation, Sheri worked as an independent consultant, assisting community-based groups with nonprofit incorporation, strategic planning, board development, program development, and grant writing. Immediately prior to joining the Urban Foundation, Sheri consulted with the RCNO Training Center, a faith-based leadership training and advocacy organization, which later hired her to strengthen its development capacity.
Before she began consulting, for nearly seven years Sheri was the executive director of the now disbanded National Community Building Network, a national peer-to-peer learning organization whose members worked to improve economic conditions and solve community problems in low-income neighborhoods across the country. She also held a number of other research and policy positions throughout California and Washington, DC. She holds a B.A. in public affairs from UC Berkeley and an M.P.A. with a concentration in intergovernmental management from the University of Southern California.
Sheri currently serves on the boards of PolicyLink, a national research and action institute focused on advancing economic and social equity, and California Tomorrow, a research, technical assistance and advocacy organization working to create an inclusive multiracial and multicultural society. A lifelong Methodist, Sheri also serves on the board and investment committee of the California-Pacific United Methodist Foundation and attends Holman United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
Greta Silva, Executive Assistant
info@urbanfoundation.org
213-749-0212 ext. 0#
Greta Silva is the Executive Assistant for the Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation and also serves as the Executive Assistant for First United Methodist Church of Los Angeles. She has worked as an elementary school teacher in the Pasadena School District and prior to that, as an English teacher in Havana, Cuba. Greta was born in West Virginia but grew up in Cuba. She has a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Havana University. She enjoys reading, bike riding and cooking Cuban food. Greta attends La Trinidad United Methodist Church in East Los Angeles.
Anne Hawthorne, Program Consultant
Anne Hawthorne serves as a Program Consultant to the Urban Foundation, and brings a broad array of skills and experience to her capacity building work with the Urban Foundation’s Partnership Grantees and Kid City South Park youth development program.
As a young person, Anne attended a United Methodist Church in Yorba Linda that was concerned with social issues such as ending the war in Vietnam and supporting mission trips to Mexico. Throughout her life, she has worked with diverse groups of people to help them find and use their voices to empower themselves and strengthen their communities. She has a special passion for child and youth development, and was involved in forming the child education center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. As an adult resource person for Kid City/Youth in Action in Santa Monica in the early 1990s, Anne helped young people develop advocacy and media projects that facilitated their involvement in civic affairs. Her wide ranging work experience also includes management and development positions with the Social and Public Art Resource Center and with Skid Row Housing Trust.
Since 2005, she has served as the Co-director of the Teaching Learning Collaborative at Antioch University Los Angeles. The Collaborative uses popular education principles to improve the instruction of English learners in Los Angeles schools. Anne also holds an adjunct faculty position at Antioch, instructing undergraduates in academic writing and writing for social change. She is an adjunct faculty member at St. Mary’s College of California as well, and teaches in the college’s internationally recognized Liberal Education for Arts Professionals program.
Anne earned her B.A. in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College, an M.A. in Applied Psychology from Santa Monica University, and an M.F.A., Creative Non-Fiction Writing and Poetry, from Antioch University Los Angeles.
DONORS
Generous contributions from foundations, organizations and individuals help sustain the Urban Foundation. These gifts, in addition to our endowment income, allow us to assist faith-based community organizations across Los Angeles County. For a complete list of recent donors, click here.
FINANCIALS
The Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation is committed to complete fiscal transparency and accountability. The Urban Foundation was granted federal tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service in 1984. We are exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. We are not a private foundation within the meaning of section 509(a) of the Code because we are an organization described in section 509 (a)(3) and have been properly classified as a Type I Supporting Organization. Our employer identification number is 95-3888111.
The following documents are the Los Angeles United Methodist Urban Foundation federal tax exemption letter and our two most recent Form 990 federal information tax returns.
Urban Foundation Federal Tax-Exemption Letter
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