JA Community Foundation

Our mission is to identify and invest in solutions that meet the needs, interests and concerns of the Japanese American and broader Asian American communities and promote programs that benefit the Japanese American and broader Asian American communities.

The JA Community Foundation was born out of the Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL) Health Insurance plan, which was founded in 1965 to help those who couldn’t buy insurance due to discrimination. Through the following decades, the plan was carefully managed as its own separate group, building an internal Premium Stabilization Reserve Fund to help mitigate the effects of large claims and increases in health insurance costs.

Due to the Affordable Care Act, the plan was reformed into the JACL Health Benefits Trust (dba JA Health Insurance Services), to comply with the rules of the new Healthcare system. The JA Community Foundation was created as a nonprofit foundation in September 2015 by the Trust to use the remaining reserve funds to benefit the community that was served by the health plan, and who paid premiums into the plan for more than fifty years.