The Culturist Group

Preserving Culture, Empowering Communities: A Response to the Eaton Fire 

Social Impact Framework: Community Representation and Engagement  

What was the issue we were trying to solve?  

In January 2025, the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, led to the loss of livelihoods and homes, displacing thousands of residents. Those from BIPOC and socially disadvantaged communities including neighbors and friends of our own team member Kimberli Samuel, who already face systemic barriers to recovery and representation, were particularly at risk of being overlooked in traditional emergency response efforts.  

What were the stated objectives of our initiative?  

The Culturist Group, being local to Los Angeles, responded to this urgent need for community-based cultural and historic preservation given what we know about this community. Our primary objective was to help bring national awareness to the needs of BIPOC and socially disadvantaged residents impacted by the Eaton Fire.  

Specifically, we sought to:  

• Advocate for undervalued communities whose recovery needs were being unmet through social and earned media channels
• Assist displaced families through coordinated fundraising and resource mobilization  
• Build a model of disaster response rooted in equity, cultural relevance, and community trust  
• Actively partner with third-party organizations including GoFundMe to help operate and safeguard our efforts 

What were the specific metrics we used to measure the success of our efforts?  

Through a combination of fundraising and operational initiatives, we first created a shared spreadsheet as a central repository to list families in need, heavily promoted donations for families and individuals on this list – and we received and managed communications with families reporting need(s) or sharing their fundraising links.  

For weeks, we tracked the number of families assisted, the percentage of families who reached or exceeded their fundraising goals, the number of GoFundMe campaigns created, verified, and coordinated, and the frequency of real-time updates. We also tracked total dollars raised and fundraising completion rates.  

These metrics represented the direct returns of impact for community members in need and helped demonstrate resilience and the power of intentional, equity-centered action. 

What were the specific outcomes of our efforts?

Through rapid mobilization and community partnership, we exposed our grassroots campaign which facilitated over $4.4 million in donations for 152 BIPOC families displaced by the Eaton Fire. We ensured that no family went unfunded, coordinating over 80 individual GoFundMe campaigns that were verified, tracked, and promoted through a transparent, community-first model.  

Our team worked in four-hour response cycles to provide continual updates during the crisis, maintaining public trust and ensuring visibility for each family's needs. Fourteen families reached or exceeded their fundraising goals entirely.  

What other best practices or key lessons can we share?

The Culturist Group is a startup agency without massive resources or extensive staff, but that didn’t stop us. We learned that scale is about focus, speed, and alignment with purpose. By applying the same principles we use in tourism, authentic representation, community partnership, values, and culture-rooted communications and equity-centered design, we built a disaster relief model that met people where they were and treated them with dignity.  

Supporting families reminded us that the challenges we work to solve in travel, systemic underrepresentation, cultural erasure, and economic inequity, also show up in other sectors, including emergency response. And the same solutions of trust and storytelling, can drive measurable, life-changing results.