Angel City FC’s New Non-Profit to Empower LA Youth
August 16, 2024
The NWSL’s Angel City Football Club (ACFC) recently unveiled its Angel City Impact Fund, the team’s non-profit arm. Through a partnership with the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks (LADRP), the fund intends to serve over 14,000 young people across Los Angeles. It will provide free and low-cost access to soccer, leadership training and a coaching pipeline.
The non-profit will support 7,000 Angeleno youth annually over the next two years. In year one, the Impact Fund will co-host seasonal programs, camps and clinics across 100 LADRP sites. For 2025, ACFC Coach Network will recruit, train and hire around 100 coaches representing LA’s diverse communities, targeting minority groups that are underrepresented in management roles.
“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,” said Jimmy Kim, the general manager of LADRP. The ACFC X GPLA Soccer Leadership Academy serves high-school girls and gender-expansive youth – growing from a single team in 2022 to now 22 teams with over 500 participants.
Since its inception in 2020, the club has funneled 10% of its sponsorship revenue towards community initiatives, resulting in over $3.5 million invested into 160,000 Angelenos. For its efforts, it was honored with the ESPY Award for Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year this year. Through the Impact Fund, ACFC intends to expand its community initiatives and tackle issues such as the lack of coaches from underrepresented communities, the high cost of youth sport and the lack of dedicated spaces and programs designed for girls and gender-inclusive youth. 
“Our sponsorship model has been groundbreaking and in just three years, has established the club’s fierce commitment to making impact a pillar of our identity,” said Catherine Dávila, ACFC head of community and marketing. “Now, with the launch of our own non-profit, we can amplify these efforts, empowering ACFC and our community to collectively expand our impact and drive systemic change in sports.”
In just 12 months, ACFC successfully increased girls' participation from 1,966 to 4,500 across two different youth sports programs serving female and gender-expansive youth in LA. The team also has offered over 1,000 collective hours of free coaching education to its ACFC Coach Network, along with access to an online resource platform for coaches.
The Impact Fund intends to continue this outreach without the use of corporate dollars to fund its programming. Instead, it is creating a ‘Starting 11’ group of likeminded individuals to fuel the funding with a minimum donation of $10,000 to join. Additionally, ACFC will allow fans to invest in the club for $24 a month or $24 a year. Dávilla said five supporters have already pledged $10,000 or more, but the funding model will allow for donations of any size. One of the current members of the ‘Starting 11’ is former San Jose Earthquakes player Justin Morrow. He is now head of sports partnerships and programs at the USC Race and Equity Center.
The Club is also encouraging the ACFC community to participate in its other programs, such as its Artist in Residence Program with Las Fotos Project, which provides paid sports photography workforce development. Another program is its SOAR Internship, which offers paid internships to girls and young women, as well as gender-expansive youth, who are interested in developing their leadership, communication and presentation skills.
Source: Sportico