LAist is tracking LA fire donations and where that money is going. Here’s how you can help

The charitable response to the January fires that devastated more than 50,000 acres across L.A. County has been among the largest in history.

Money raised by people, corporations and nonprofits has helped people move into temporary housing, replace lost possessions and start to put their lives back together.

LAist wants to track — as best we can — where that money came from and how it will be spent, or has been spent, so far. To do this, we’re launching a voluntary survey for nonprofits and private companies. We’ll use the survey to help inform our reporting and share the results with the public.

What’s the backstory?

Charitable giving is a key part of disaster recovery. While the federal government has pledged about $185 million to support the recovery in Altadena and the Palisades, early estimates from about a month after the fires cited by the Los Angeles Times expected charitable contributions to exceed $650 million.

But that generosity is not centrally coordinated. There’s no way to track the money flowing in and out of disaster zones. Unlike public spending by local governments, charitable giving falls largely in the private sphere. Details of donations and spending by corporations and certain nonprofits are sometimes not accessible, and usually maintained by various stakeholders, making them hard to track.

That’s where our survey comes in. LAist hopes to capture a snapshot of the contributions at this point in time. We know it won’t be perfect. We can’t track every dollar spent on L.A.’s recovery, but we can work to provide some answers.

How does the survey work?

We’re sending this survey to nonprofits and private companies we’ve identified that play some role in the fire recovery efforts. In the coming months, we’ll publish our findings in a public facing database. We’ll also write about stories we come across along the way.

Our approach has been informed by the Honolulu Civil Beat’s Maui Fires Tracker. Civil Beat is a nonprofit newsroom tracking the money going toward recovery after the 2023 Maui fires. They’ve published data findings and several narrative articles based on what they found. Take a look at their work for some idea of what we’ll be doing.

How you can help

If you know of an organization that’d you like to see included in our work, let us know via email so we can send it their way.

We also invite direct contributions. If you represent a nonprofit or company raising or contributing money for fire relief, we invite you to fill out the survey below.

And if you have questions or story ideas about the charitable response to the Eaton and Palisades fires, don’t hesitate to reach out to tips@laist.com or jbennett@laist.com.