OVERVIEW: La Vida Feliz Foundation is the philanthropic organization of Wall Streeter Aaron Sosnick. Its grantmaking in the Los Angeles area includes support for arts and culture, education, and community projects.
IP TAKE: The foundation does not have a website, and provides no clear guidelines for grant seekers. The foundation, though, holds significant assets and engages in substantial grantmaking.
PROFILE: La Vida Feliz Foundation was created by MIT graduate Aaron M. Sosnick, who runs A.R.T. Advisors, a statistical arbitrage fund that operates from the offices of Caxton Associates. Sosnick keeps a very low profile and has ties to both the east and west coasts, where both Los Angeles and New York have been significant sites of philanthropy. The foundation held some $478 million in assets and made grants of close to $26 million in a recent year.
Grants for Los Angeles and SoCal
La Vida Feliz Foundation's Los Angeles grantmaking supports several funding areas including arts and culture, though most of this work takes place in New York City. Recent arts and culture grants in Los Angeles include a $25,000 grant to Friends of the Junior Arts Center. Grants also support Los Angeles Conservancy, a historic preservation organization, and Southern California Institute of Architecture.
It also supports education. Past grantees include University of Southern California, Math for America Los Angeles, and Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.
Sosnick is an avid biker who appears to be particularly interested in tapping into urban issues such as alternative transportation, civic space, and the environment. One example of this work is grantee Community Partners, whose vision is a "vibrant society in which individuals and institutions use knowledge, resources, and relationships to build equitable, democratic and thriving communities." A grant of $75,000 to Community Partners in a past year supported its Move LA project, whose mission is to build a broad constituency that will advocate for the development of a comprehensive, diverse, robust, clean, and financially sound public transportation system for Los Angeles County and champion strategies to accelerate its implementation." Another grant to Community Partners supported Multicultural Communities for Mobility, which "advocates for safe, alternative transportation access in underserved communities of color within greater Los Angeles."
Important Grant Details
The foundation does not have a website, and it provides no clear guidelines for grant seekers. It does not appear to accept unsolicited proposals or requests for funding.
PEOPLE:
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CONTACT:
The La Vida Feliz Foundation does not provide a clear avenue for getting in touch with Sosnick, but below is an address:
La Vida Feliz Foundation
501 Silverside Rd., Ste. 123
Wilmington, DE 19809