We are pleased to share a new report, Making Racial Equity Work Last: Organizing Lessons from California State Government, published by State of Equity in partnership with Race Forward’s Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE).
The report documents eight years of building the Capitol Collaborative on Race and Equity (CCORE), a joint initiative of State of Equity and GARE that supports California state government workers in advancing racial equity in their agencies. Drawing on wisdom and experience from the State of Equity and GARE teams, it offers practical lessons for practitioners, government leaders, funders, and community partners working to make racial equity a durable feature of public institutions.
CCORE emerged from California’s Health in All Policies (HiAP) Task Force, which established a foundation for cross-agency collaboration around health and equity starting in 2010. As that work deepened, it became clear that addressing health inequities required confronting structural racism directly. The HiAP team partnered with GARE to create a program grounded in both cross-agency organizing and a clear racial equity framework. The result was CCORE, launched formally in 2018.
Over eight years, more than 600 state workers across 60 departments, agencies, boards, and commissions have participated in CCORE programs. Nearly 40 state agencies have developed racial equity action plans, and more than 20 have embedded equity into their budgets, including by creating permanent equity positions. Many early CCORE participants now hold cabinet, director-level, and senior leadership roles across state and local government. CCORE’s organizing model also contributed directly to the launch of the California Racial Equity Commission and the statewide Racial Equity Framework, finalized in December 2025, and to the creation of States Advancing Racial Equity (SARE), a national network for state government practitioners now active in more than 35 states.
The report focuses on the less visible work that sustains institutional change over time: relationship building, cross-agency organizing, peer exchange, and the inside-outside partnerships that connect government, community organizations, and philanthropy. It draws on the experiences of hundreds of practitioners who have participated in CCORE’s learning cohorts, leadership programs, and peer networks across multiple gubernatorial administrations and through shifting political conditions.
Several themes run through the report’s lessons. Relational design is not a support for the work; it is the work. Executive engagement matters, but must be actively maintained through leadership transitions. Peer exchange reduces isolation and helps practitioners reframe individual struggles as collective problems. BIPOC practitioners face heightened risk and scrutiny, and program design must reflect that reality. And government contracting and procurement frameworks remain a structural barrier that organizations seeking to replicate this model should plan for from the start.
The report also speaks directly to the current moment. Federal rollbacks of civil rights protections and equity-focused programming have made state government a primary arena where these questions play out. CCORE’s experience shows that racial equity infrastructure can persist through political pressure when it is grounded in long-term relationships, organized across agencies and sectors, and supported by sustained philanthropic and institutional investment.
This work has been sustained over time through partnerships with The California Endowment, Blue Shield of California Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others. Their support has funded the backbone capacity that allows organizing infrastructure to endure.
We hope this report is useful to practitioners inside government, to the community organizations and advocates who work alongside them, and to funders and partners seeking to invest in durable change. The lessons from California are not California-specific. They are transferable to any state where people are committed to making public institutions more equitable, responsive, and accountable.
We invite you to read the full report, share it with your networks, and connect with us about what you are seeing in your own context.
Read the full report here.
The State of Equity Team
State of Equity is a program of the Public Health Institute