• by Colin Kirkland , February 6, 2025

Following Snap CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel's emotional letter to Los Angeles -- which included a $5 million pledge to fund immediate aid to those fighting to stop the fires raging across the city -- Spiegel is joining a group of other big-name investors to form the Department of Angels, which will focus on rebuilding areas most ravished by the wildfires.

“The Department of Angels was born out of hundreds of conversations with community members, disaster experts, and survivors of the megafires,” say Spiegel and Miguel A. Santana, chief executive of the California Community Foundation.

“Since January 7, we've talked to individuals directly impacted by the Eaton and Palisades fires and to leaders who have guided other communities through megafire recovery,” they added. “We learned that success or failure often turns on the capacity of community members to design and lead their own recovery. Our mission is to serve that purpose.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, the California Community Foundation, Snap Inc., Spiegel and Snapchat co-founder Bobby Murphy have committed $10 million in seed money to jumpstart the Department of Angels.

This money is being contributed in addition to the $5 million Spiegel recently donated to a group of four universities, including Harvard and UCLA, that are going to study the impacts of the fires on air quality, soil quality and human health.

According to the new Angels’ group’s mission statement, the group will link Altadena, Pasadena, the Palisades, and Malibu communities for a “shared recovery movement” via direct project management and advocacy support to residents.

The group also says it will provide residents of these communities with “vetted, independent data, resources, and expert-informed solutions” for years in hopes of informing them beyond government or corporate sources.

It “takes more than brick and mortar construction to rebuild communities,” the group said. “It requires community organizing and sustained attention.”

The Angels group is operating separately to simultaneous rebuilding and fire-relief efforts led by LA Times executive chairman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and developer Rick Caruso, as well as sports and entertainment personalities Magic Johnson, Casey Wasserman and Mark Walter.