July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023

Systems failures require people-focused solutions

The Need

As a statewide coalition, one approach we take to build equity and justice is systems change. When we generate this macro-level transformation, it is important to keep in perspective why, or rather who, we do this for — survivors and individuals in communities across California are at the heart of our solutions and the systems we aim to change for the better. Institutions including the criminal legal, education, financial, and housing systems fail domestic violence victims and Californians when they don’t prevent violence in the first place.

To change these systems, our policy, prevention, and communications strategies aim to undo this harm.

SB 975 Implementation

This year, our priority bill we developed with Senator David Min went into effect, establishing relief for individuals who have been coerced into taking on debt without their knowledge or consent. SB 975 will help break cycles of financial abuse and put protections in place for not only survivors of domestic violence but also foster youth and those experiencing elder abuse.

During our Orange Day rally at the Capitol, seven youth leaders from across California advocated for funding to interrupt generations of violence and create safe and healthy communities.

This was an important opportunity for legislators to hear from youth why this budget funding is so crucial. While the Governor and legislature failed to include the full $42 million request for funding, these efforts helped lead to the allocation of $2.3 million to sustain prevention work across the state.

46 articles were published after an Ethnic Media Services media briefing on teen dating violence prevention.

During our Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month campaign, we supported four youth leaders as they educated reporters about their strategies to prevent abusive relationships. To end this violence, it is important that those who are experiencing and vulnerable to it are at the heart of the conversations and solutions to prevent it.

The Learnings

• Storytelling is an effective method for understanding the challenges of larger systems and how they impact individuals every day. Whether they are being told to legislators who have the power to enact policy changes or to reporters who can help influence public opinion, the voices of folks at the center of our systems help to humanize the issues.
  
• Those with lived experience have the best perspectives to create holistic solutions.
  

Building a sustainable & equitable movement

The Need

How can we bridge the gap between invisibilized communities and the dedicated domestic violence staff serving them? To increase access to safety, healing and justice, we’re taking an intersectional approach to recognizing the identities and experiences of Black, Indigenous and Native, and Practitioners of Color, who often support these communities.

We’ve begun addressing the intertwined problems of organizational exploitation and marginalization. It is harmful to individual well-being and staff culture to overextend staff: according to a global Gallup survey,

people are over 25% more likely to be disengaged when they reported feeling stressed the previous day. The Partnership redoubled our commitment to building equity in the field, looking inward to become a workplace that prevents burnout and protects staff well-being.

Building Inclusive Spaces with Practitioners from the Field

The Community-Based Strategic Engagement and Impact (SEI) Team conducted seventeen trainings rooted in critical analysis of power imbalances in the domestic violence field. They prioritized an intersectional lens to filter the needs they heard across the state, ensuring the inclusion of the nuanced aspects of diverse identities. These efforts fostered collaboration, empowered organizations, and promoted positive change toward more effective and culturally sensitive services for survivors and families.

Creating New Pathways to Leadership

The Community-Based Strategic Engagement and Impact (SEI) Team and Impact Strategies Team launched the Black, Indigenous & People of Color Leadership Project. With healing and systemic barriers at the center, members felt supported stepping into their power. The Mentorship Program for Prevention Workers who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color—led by our Prevention Team—paved the way for leadership opportunities and deeper organizational commitments to inclusive, liberated spaces.

3 Strategies to Protect the Well-Being of Partnership Staff

The Culture and Trust Strategies and Practice Team led the work to add six summer holidays to the organization’s holiday schedule, increase pay across the organization by $300,000, and support more equitable distribution of responsibilities. These are just a few ways we have strived to nurture work-life balance, fair compensation, and burnout prevention at the Partnership, which we recognize as central to our own economic justice and sustainability efforts.

The Learnings

The federal Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) has enabled raises and other staffing investments in the field, allowing advocates to provide essential services that crime victims need to be safe and heal. Impending cuts beginning next year would lead to major staffing reductions and seriously impair the work of supporting people in crisis after experiencing domestic violence—and especially more damaging impact on smaller, culturally specific organizations supporting Black, Indigenous & Native, Immigrant and Refugee, and Survivors of Color.

Join us in urging policymakers to prevent catastrophic funding cuts!

• Our organizations are the first places we can put our values of equity into practice. We must learn from Black, Indigenous and Native, and People of Color what barriers exist to leadership, define what success looks like, and create supportive policies and practices.
  

Planning for possibilities

The Need

What does a world with radical love look like? This is one of the key questions we asked ourselves throughout the year.

Instead of thinking of solutions to end domestic violence, we envisioned what we wanted to create – a just, safe, and liberated California.

We then asked ourselves what organization we needed to build to make it a reality. What do we focus on to make an impact? How do we practice this vision internally?

This year we, along with partners and stakeholders, strategized about the overall vision of the Partnership and ways to implement it.

4 Phases

We are pivoting to become a social justice, systems change, movement organization with impact at the core. With this goal in mind, we embarked on a multi-month organizational strategic planning process where we defined beloved community (Phase 1), defined our purpose (Phase 2), reimagined justice and ourselves at a retreat (Phase 3), and cast the vision (Phase 4). Internally, we selected new department names that incorporate our aspirations to center strategy and impact.

Focusing on Impactful Strategies

To align our projects with our purpose of ending domestic violence, the Impact Strategies Team supported each department as they created goals, objectives, and impact statements. These grounded each of the departments to pursue projects that will be impactful. They also helped staff evaluate their work and the work of their departments.

Shifting the Narrative of Domestic Violence

To make long-lasting change, the narrative of domestic violence needs to shift. The Strategic Communications Team has tripled in the past few years, and with the added capacity we began planning how we could be more intentional with our priorities and the ways we create impact. The team has been working on developing a strategic communications plan to define our purpose, develop messaging, and create consistent branding.

The Learnings

• We can’t build “a precise map to a vague destination” as Dr. Shawn A Ginwright put it. Building a clear vision of a world with happy, healthy, thriving communities will help us to do work that aligns with our purpose and values.
  

Discovering and strengthening connections with partners

The Need

The story of the Partnership’s organizing begins with learning about the oppression that causes domestic violence. Knowing that it cannot be prevented by any single organization or field, nor can it be successful without multi-sector collaboration, we set out to elevate marginalized and small programs; bring partners who are normally not invited to funding tables; and increase invisibilized programs’ and communities’ voices at policy tables. We expanded our work with partners in three areas:

the deadly epidemic of gun violence—which also instills fear and trauma even if a gun is never fired, the erosion of reproductive health rights—which removes survivors’ autonomy, and the legal system’s practice of silencing survivors in court after being unjustly charged.

Building a Movement to End Domestic Violence and Gun Violence

The Partnership distributed 42 grants across the state to develop local campaigns that addressed gun violence—three quarters of which went to culturally responsive organizations. With survivors, social justice partners, and legal experts, we built endinggv.org: a practical guide to support survivors of gun violence in their safety and healing and provide vital resources to domestic violence service providers.

Acting in Followership for Reproductive Justice

To support survivors’ bodily autonomy, which is under threat from people who harm and federal policies, our Executive Team took steps toward movement building with organizations with roots in this area. This involved nurturing trusting relationships and shared goals and amplifying their voices among the domestic violence field. We were proud to feature our partners in a panel on privacy rights and reproductive justice at our Statewide Domestic Violence Conference.

Together, We’re Stronger

We collaborated to address injustices, standing with the Justice4Survivors coalition to advocate for criminalized survivors’. Alongside the California Work and Family Coalition, we addressed economic insecurity, a root cause of domestic violence. Californians only receive 60% of their wages when using paid family leave. We helped pass SB 951, increasing that to 90% for lower income Californians—disproportionately women and Black, Indigenous and Native, and People of Color.

The Learnings

• The more we listen to survivors, the more we must learn strategies from other social justice movements leading the way to dismantle oppression.
  
• Building collective power is rooted in relationships and takes time.
  

Revenue

Expenses

Balance sheet

Grantors

Krista Colón

Lisa Sica, PhD, SHRM-SCP

Matthew White**

Megan Tanahashi

Melodie Kruspodin

Mercedes Tune**

Partnership Board

• Colsaria Henderson, President
• Amanda Jancu, Vice President
• Gayle Guest-Brown, Treasurer
• Aiko Pandorf**
• Alejandrina Carrasco*
• Chelcee Thomas*
• Cristal B. Gleason**
• Dina Polkinghorne *
• Elizabeth Eastlund**
• Geoffrea Morris*
• Gina Roberson**
• Hisham Alibob**
• Jeanne Spurr**
  

• Jobi Wood*
• Julie Golston**
• karen kaur*
• Leticia Campos* **
• Makayla Chacon*
• Matthew White**
• Melissa Luke
• Patricia Duncan Hall* **
• Rebecca Nussbaum**
  
• S. Suresh**
• Saara Ahmed
  

* New board member who joined in Fiscal Year '23

** Former board member who transitioned since June '22

LOOKING ​TOWARD THE ​FUTURE

Protecting Victims’ Access to Safety and Healing

In 2024, Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) funding could see devastating reductions in California. As the backbone to our state’s response to crime victims’ needs, this would have significant impacts on the ability to find a safe place to live, receive counseling, obtain legal services, and more—especially for historically marginalized communities. We will work with policymakers to avert any cuts and prioritize equitable access to funding.

Working Together with Survivors and Communities

Our Capacity Building Team is now the Community-Based Strategic Engagement and Impact (SEI) Team. This reflects our transition from solely supporting membership programs in enhancing their capacity, to actively and strategically involving communities, stakeholders, leaders, organizations, and, most importantly, survivors in decision-making and implementation processes. In 2024, our work will acknowledge and value communities’ expertise, knowledge, and experiences while empowering and equipping our members to inspire change and foster growth.

Survivors Creating Social Change

Instead of measuring our success with numbers, we will begin evaluating the progress we are making towards our vision. We’ve begun capturing this progress through listening sessions. The Impact Strategies team will release the results of listening sessions, which will be used to improve responses to health crises like the pandemic, and enhance safety net programs like cash aid, Cal Fresh, CalWORKs, and Section 8.