Los Angeles isn't short on ideas or expertise. But, like many communities rebuilding after a disaster, it lacks the connections, systems, and capacity to bring them together at scale.
Three lessons from the Rebuilding with Resilience Summit
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Three lessons from the Rebuilding with Resilience Summit
By Jonathan Dromgoole, Contributing Author for The Epicenter and Strategy, Partnerships, and Operations Lead for Resilient LA, a program of The Resiliency Company.
On August 17 and 18, leaders from philanthropy, government, finance, insurance, construction, advocacy, and disaster recovery came together in Los Angeles. They gathered around a shared question: How do we turn the lessons from the Eaton and Palisades fires into a better way to rebuild?
Organized by The Resiliency Company and SoCal Grantmakers, The Funders Forum on August 17 focused on philanthropy’s role in supporting recovery and building long-term resilience. The Rebuilding with Resilience Summit on August 18 brought together a broader group of practitioners, community leaders, survivors, and experts for conversations about what it will take to move from ideas to action on rebuilding with resilience.
Across both days, one lesson became clear: Los Angeles does not have a shortage of ideas, expertise, or people willing to do the work. What we lack are what many communities rebuilding after a disaster lack: the connections, systems, and capacity to bring those pieces together and deliver at scale. Three lessons stood out.
Across conversations, participants described a recovery system that is fragmented even when individual organizations are doing exceptional work.
Survivors are navigating insurance, permitting, financing, contractors, design decisions, and government processes—often without a trusted person or organization helping them connect the pieces. Community organizations are filling critical gaps, but many are volunteer-led and lack the capacity to sustain that work. Government agencies have important authority and resources, but often face challenges coordinating across departments and moving from policy to implementation.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles already has an extraordinary network of community leaders, nonprofits, advocates, funders, technical experts, and practitioners working on these challenges.
Instead of standing up another organization or another initiative, we need better coordination of what already exists.
That could mean coordinating trusted hubs of existing resources, supporting more caseworkers, building mentor networks, creating shared tools, establishing stronger community infrastructure, or simply making it easier for organizations to find one another and work together.
One bright spot is the Eaton Fire Collaborative, which connects nonprofits, community groups, and government around shared recovery resources, disaster case management, and survivor-centered support. The opportunity is to build more of this connective infrastructure so residents can find trusted help and organizations can work together more easily.
Philanthropy has an essential and novel role to play, particularly in filling gaps that government and markets cannot. But grants alone will not rebuild thousands of homes, restore commercial corridors, harden infrastructure, and prepare communities for the next disaster.
The question, then, is bigger than, “How do we fund rebuilding one home or one community space?”
It becomes: “What financial structures can make resilient rebuilding possible at scale for an entire neighborhood and community?”
Participants discussed a range of opportunities that can help bring different forms of capital into the recovery system:
But financing innovation is only part of the equation. Capital needs somewhere to go. It needs clear standards, credible projects, trusted delivery partners, and incentives that make resilience a normal part of rebuilding—not an additional cost or afterthought.
That is where Resilient Los Angeles and our partners are focused. We are working to make resilient rebuilding easier to understand, implement, and replicate. Through pilot projects with builders, nonprofits, and community partners, we are testing what higher-resilience rebuilding can look like on the ground, while our Rebuilding with Resilience Manual translates technical standards and best practices into practical guidance that homeowners, builders, and communities can use. The goal is to turn resilience into a practical standard for rebuilding, and to build a growing network of partners who can help make that standard the norm.
Resilience cannot be designed for communities without being designed with them.
Survivors and residents have already built some of the strongest recovery infrastructure in Los Angeles. One example is the Department of Angels, a nonprofit ensuring that fire-impacted communities in Los Angeles lead their own recovery. It is connecting residents to one another, to vital resources, and to expert-informed solutions. Its approach reflects a broader lesson from the recovery: Community networks are proactively shaping what a more effective recovery system can look like.
The August 18 Summit was intentionally designed around this principle of survivors at the center. Participants worked together to identify barriers, opportunities, relationships, and practical next steps. The result was a set of relationships, ideas, and potential actions that can now be developed into real partnerships and pilots.
The fires exposed weaknesses in how communities recover. But they also showed what Los Angeles has to work with.
Los Angeles has community leadership. It has technical expertise. It has philanthropy, public agencies, financial institutions, nonprofits, builders, advocates, and residents ready to contribute.
The challenge is bringing those pieces together and building the infrastructure to move from good intentions to implementation.
That means connecting people who met for the first time. It means identifying who's already doing similar work—or who has the capacity to carry an idea through—and helping them advance it. It means testing new approaches through pilots built to prepare for scale. And it means creating partnerships that keep working long after the urgency of the current recovery fades.
Instead of rebuilding what was lost, our goal is to build a recovery system that is more coordinated, more accessible, more resilient, and better prepared for whatever comes next.
The conversations on August 17 and 18 were a starting point. Now we have to do the work.
Have thoughts to share on this piece, or want to add your voice to the conversation? Reach out!
Los Angeles isn't short on ideas or expertise. But, like many communities rebuilding after a disaster, it lacks the connections, systems, and capacity to bring them together at scale.
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We need to move beyond asking simply, How do we fund this project? and start asking, What financial risk does this community face, what outcomes could change that trajectory, and how should we invest accordingly?
