The Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles will now be able to distribute more Angeleno Cards to struggling families thanks to a $5 million donation from Filipino American tech entrepreneur Bobby Murphy, according to Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Angeleno Cards, which were first unveiled on April 13, are prepaid debit cards specifically for lower-income Angelenos who were financially hit the hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, as previously reported in the Asian Journal.
The first application period of the Angeleno Cards, April 14-16, drew thousands of applicants and the cards ran out quickly, Garcetti said on Monday. The website where residents applied for the cards crashed the morning the program went online, the city reported.
It is unclear when the new round of Angeleno Cards will be available, but the mayor added that the donation from Murphy and his wife will be able to fund 20,000 more cards. The grants provided by the Angeleno Card program range from $700, $1,100 or $1,500 depending on the overall household income and size.
Murphy, 31, is the son of a Filipina immigrant mother and a United States-born father. In 2011, Murphy, along with fellow Stanford University student Evan Spiegel, founded Snapchat, the popular image-sharing app. According to Forbes magazine, Murphy’s net worth is $3.6 billion as of 2020.
In order to qualify for a grant, recipients must live in the city of LA, have a family income level that falls below the federal poverty line before the COVID-19 pandemic, and have experienced a significant economic loss — a 50% loss in overall household income, for example — due to the crisis.
