GiveBetter x Los Angeles

Illumination Health + Home

Integrated housing, recuperative care and supportive health services

Research time: 5 min on GPT-6 Astra Light
  • Research — reviewed programs, finances and impact evidence.

Updated: 2026-09-14

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Summary

What do they do? Illumination Health + Home, formerly Illumination Foundation, combines housing with recuperative care and supportive services. The conditional estimate prices a substantial medical-respite component against the full recipient budget. Housing, family services and other health pathways remain unpriced, so this is not a complete portfolio ranking.

Why we’re interested in this organization:

  • Post-hospital recuperative care has a concrete clinical mechanism and external randomized evidence.

  • Current reported respite volume anchors scale without treating all clients as marginal beneficiaries.

  • The cost reconstruction includes recognized donated resources and separately netted event costs.

Our main reservations:

  • External randomized QALY differences were small and statistically uncertain.

  • CalAIM, hospital payments and public contracts can substitute for donations.

  • LA/Orange residence and current marginal capacity are unmeasured; Inland Empire activity is outside the edition.

What do you get for your dollar? $493.7M per better life: ten additional quality-adjusted life years in Los Angeles. Working judgment price for the recuperative-care health component, charging full recorded recipient cost. Other portfolio effects and unrecognized external resource costs remain unestimated; this is not a measured whole-portfolio or societal return..

Central 2329*.5*.25=291.125 expected additional respite episodes before geography, not observed marginal patients.

1. What do they do?

The current organization confirms the name change from Illumination Foundation. The same EIN, 71-1047686, is the recipient; housing and integrated services are included rather than treating respite as a separately restricted charity. Healthcare services include post-hospital recovery and behavioral support. The older service overview describes Orange County, Los Angeles County and Inland Empire operations. Riverside and San Bernardino benefits are outside this LA–Orange MSA; headquarters is not beneficiary geography.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

The FY2024–25 impact report reports 2,329 recuperative-care clients, 6,826 clients overall and 1,719 housed. These are outputs, not additional health gains, and categories can overlap. The model uses respite volume only, with no extra housing QALYs added for the same clients. Track unique admissions, comparable discharge alternatives, symptom and EQ-5D trajectories, completion, readmission and resident county. The latest throughput is paired with FY2024 audited cost as a prospective scale approximation, not a matched-year observed cost per outcome.

3. Qualitative assessment

A Danish randomized respite study compared a two-week recovery stay with usual discharge arrangements. It found lower subsequent costs, but the between-group QALY difference was small and not statistically significant. The first six participants were assigned to intervention rather than randomized, and quality-of-life follow-up was incomplete. Different insurance, housing and clinical needs limit transfer. Hospital savings are not QALYs, and a negative cost-utility ratio does not establish a large health effect.

The central q=0.005 QALY is an explicit modest health-area judgment per otherwise additional respite episode, not the trial's measured coefficient. It represents about 1.8 quality-adjusted days over no more than one year. Zero or adverse health is possible. No avoided-death lifetime term, housing effect, or repeated annual cohort is added.

4. What do you get for your dollar?

FY2024 gross recognized recipient cost is $55,822,486: $55,426,178 audited expense plus $396,308 netted event costs. The audit includes donated services/materials/facilities and depreciation. Original audit The FY2023 original return reconciles $47,541,549 to $47,992,708 audited expense through $451,159 donated services/facilities; adding $321,001 event costs gives $48,313,709. FY2022 return expense plus events is $39,155,013, but its donated-resource reconciliation is not verified, so that year is noncomparable and no synthetic three-year mean is supplied.

At full recipient cost, 2,329 respite clients × 0.5 net service additionality × 0.25 funding responsiveness × 0.005 QALY × 0.8 LA/Orange share / 1.03 gives 1.130583 LA QALYs, or $493.75 million per 10. These fractions are judgments, not observed conversion rates. The wide positive cases, zero and adverse stress retain uncertainty. Outside hospital, clinical and partner resources require separate societal costing; savings are not subtracted from this recipient denominator.

Model, assumptions and sensitivity

Full recognized recipient annual cost; respite-health component only, not complete portfolio or social-resource return. The full annual budget is a ratio normalization, not a requested donation or verified funding tranche. Applying the ratio to an ordinary small gift assumes locally proportional capacity response and the stated component allocation.

g=.8 subjective LA/Orange resident share, sensitivity .5–.95; Inland Empire excluded.

Qall=2329*a*b*q/1.03; QLA=Qall*g; price10=10*55822486/QLA. q is finite total health area, not annual recurring utility.

C
55822486 USD annual recipient gross expense (observed). Audit plus event costs. [audit24]
N
2329 reported respite clients/year (observed). FY2024–25 output, not causal additionality. [impact25]
a
0.5 net service additionality (judgment). Alternative publicly financed respite and discharge care; test .2–.9. [health]
b
0.25 funding responsiveness (judgment). Ordinary donor capacity response; test .05–.75. [audit24]
q
0.005 finite QALY per additional episode (judgment). No more than one year; test .0005–.03 plus zero/harm; not observed RCT coefficient. Treat this as expected net first-year health area, inclusive of competing mortality, intervention burden and benefit fade within the year; it is not a utility level maintained for every survivor. [respite-rct]
g
0.8 LA/Orange benefit share (judgment). Resident mix unobserved; test .5–.95. [geography]

central: Cost: $55.8M; Los Angeles QALYs: 1.1305825242718448; all-population QALYs: 1.4132281553398058. N=2329; a=0.5; b=0.25; q=0.005 finite QALYs per otherwise additional respite episode; g=0.8; one year maximum, 3% discount. Subjective joint case, not confidence bounds.

low: Cost: $55.8M; Los Angeles QALYs: 0.005652912621359223; all-population QALYs: 0.011305825242718446. N=2329; a=0.2; b=0.05; q=0.0005 finite QALYs per otherwise additional respite episode; g=0.5; one year maximum, 3% discount. Subjective joint case, not confidence bounds.

high: Cost: $55.8M; Los Angeles QALYs: 43.49916262135921; all-population QALYs: 45.7885922330097. N=2329; a=0.9; b=0.75; q=0.03 finite QALYs per otherwise additional respite episode; g=0.95; one year maximum, 3% discount. Subjective joint case, not confidence bounds.

zero: Cost: $55.8M; Los Angeles QALYs: 0; all-population QALYs: 0. No additional benefit or full substitution.

adverse: Cost: $55.8M; Los Angeles QALYs: -1; all-population QALYs: -1. Illustrative one LA QALY net harm, not observed. This direct one-year local-harm stress assumes g=1 for the harmed population; it is not derived using the central geography fraction.

portfolio-unknown: Cost: $55.8M; Los Angeles QALYs: unknown; all-population QALYs: unknown. Other portfolio health remains unpriced.

Counterfactual: Existing hospital discharge, public contracts, CalAIM, other respite providers and donor replacement continue. a adjusts service substitution; b adjusts capacity response to ordinary funds once.

Attribution: No additional coalition multiplier. No repeat respite or overlapping housing QALYs credited; verify unique clients.

Explicit subjective central; trial is counterevidence to large health claims. Latest throughput and prior-year cost require updating.

Sensitivity

  • Halving q or b doubles price.
  • FY2025 audited gross cost and resident-weighted throughput could change the estimate.
  • Additional clinical and joint-venture resources belong in a separate social-resource denominator.

Unresolved inputs

  • Current matched-year gross costs and respite throughput.
  • Unique client geography and repeated episodes.
  • Counterfactual discharge care and local measured utility area.
  • Ordinary funding gap versus contracts and replacement.
  • Non-overlapping housing and family health.

5. Funding and previous grants

The FY2024 audit reports $35.90m program fees and $16.23m federal/state contracts and grants. Net assets were $22.93m, including $1.27m restricted, but much of the balance sheet is property rather than spendable cash. These figures do not prove a current funding gap. CalAIM and hospital alternatives make funding response distinct from clinical effectiveness. The current impact report identifies CalOptima partnership; financed expansion is baseline, not automatically caused by a new gift.

Annual expenses

Organization-level spending, including programs, administration and fundraising. The research list averages three comparable, consecutive full fiscal years when available.

  • FY 2022: $39.2M; Illumination Health + Home, EIN 71-1047686, 12-month period, Form 990 plus event costs; donated-service reconciliation incomplete. Source
  • FY 2023: $48.3M; Illumination Health + Home, EIN 71-1047686, 12-month period, Accrual recognized recipient expenses including donated services/facilities and netted event costs. Source
  • FY 2024: $55.8M; Illumination Health + Home, EIN 71-1047686, 12-month period, Accrual recognized recipient expenses including donated services/facilities and netted event costs. Source

6. Sources

  1. Current identity and integrated services. Illumination Health + Home. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  2. Older service-area overview. Illumination Health + Home. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  3. Current healthcare services. Illumination Health + Home. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  4. FY2024–25 impact report. Illumination Health + Home. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  5. FY2024 original audited statements. Illumination Health + Home. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  6. FY2023 original Form 990. Illumination / IRS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  7. FY2022 original Form 990. Illumination / IRS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  8. Randomized medical respite cost-utility study. Bring et al. / BMC Health Services Research. Published: 2020-06-05; retrieved: 2026-09-14.