Angel City Football Club (ACFC) of the NWSL has launched the Angel City Impact Fund, the LA-based women’s professional soccer team’s philanthropic arm.
The nonprofit’s inaugural initiative will expand ACFC’s community partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. The goal is to serve over 7,000 youth annually across Los Angeles, providing no-cost and low-cost access to soccer, leadership training and a coaching pipeline.
Angel City will not take corporate dollars to fund the non-profit. “What’s most important now is that we find a group of people who understand the mission of this fund and are brought in on helping us make this community led,” ACFC head of community and marketing Catherine Dávila said in a phone call.
“We are calling our inaugural impact roster the ‘Starting 11,’ and we are asking a minimum donation of $10,000,” she said. One of the Starting 11 will be Justin Morrow, a former soccer player who played for the San Jose Earthquakes and for Toronto FC and now heads up the DEI sports initiative at USC.
While the dollars that go through the non-profit will not be Angel City dollars, the launch of the the non-profit will amplify the club’s sponsorship model which has reallocated 10% of all sponsorship revenue to community initiatives and programs. Through that program, Angel City has invested more than $3.5 million directly into the Los Angeles community, impacting nearly 160,000 Angelenos, according to the team. “But there may be programming intersections,” Dávila said. “A program that we’re working on with our 10% initiative may also be a part of what we’re doing through the fund.”
In establishing its nonprofit arm, ACFC aims to expand its community impact initiatives and tackle critical issues such as the lack of coaches from underrepresented communities, the high cost of youth sports and the lack of dedicated spaces and programs designed for girls and gender-inclusive youth.
As a first step, the nonprofit will launch expanded no-cost soccer programming for girls and gender-expansive youth, ages 5-17, across more than 100 Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks sites, which will include seasonal programs, camps and clinics in 2024. The following year, ACFC Coach Network will recruit, train and hire a minimum of 100 coaches who represent the communities in which they work.
“This partnership represents a significant milestone toward our shared commitment to gender equity and further builds on the City’s Girls Play LA Program (GPLA), which has been dedicated to breaking down barriers for girls in sports for the last 25 years,” Jimmy Kim, the general manager of the Department of Recreation and Parks, said in a statement.
The ACFC x GPLA Soccer Leadership Academy presented by BMO Bank serves high school girls and gender-inclusive youth, growing from a single team in 2022 to 22 teams in 2024, serving over 500 participants.
Additionally, the Angel City Impact Fund aims to engage the expanding ACFC community by encouraging them to take part in Angel City’s other programs, including the Artist in Residence Program with Las Fotos Project, which provides paid hands-on sports photography workforce development, and the SOAR Internship Program, which provides a paid internship to female and gender-expansive youth interested in further developing their leadership, communication and presentation skills.
In the fund’s first two years, the plan is for flagship initiatives to serve over 14,000 youth across Los Angeles.
