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The Community Prosperity Initiative

What it is?

The Community Prosperity Initiative (CPI), led by United Way of Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA), is a community-centered, asset-driven approach to economic development that empowers historically underinvested neighborhoods to build and control their own economic futures. CPI is grounded in a simple premise: communities already possess the ideas, skills, relationships, and cultural traditions needed to build thriving local economies. What is often missing are the resources, shared infrastructure, and partnerships needed to help these assets grow and circulate locally.

The Challenge

Across Los Angeles County, many communities continue to experience the impacts of long-standing disinvestment, racial wealth gaps, and structural barriers that limit access to capital, ownership opportunities, and economic decision-making.
  • Residents are often excluded from economic decision-making affecting their own communities.
  • Local wealth is extracted rather than retained.
  • Entrepreneurs and residents face limited access to capital and ownership pathways.
  • Community economic assets are overlooked and undervalued as economic drivers.

Shared Wealth, Local Ownership, and Economic Power

Recognizing that residents are the true experts of their own neighborhoods, the initiative focuses on uplifting community leadership, scaling existing economic practices, and investing in shared infrastructure that allows local enterprises to grow. 

Building on Existing Community Assets

CPI combines systems-level engagement, place-based experimentation through neighborhood pilots, and catalytic investment through the Prosperity Fund to build on existing community assets and support neighborhoods in building shared economic power. Rather than funding isolated projects, CPI integrates these components into a coordinated model that moves beyond traditional grantmaking to support long-term community ownership and economic resilience.