For the Surdna Foundation, Communities Should Define Their Futures

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
09/01/2016
Will Cordery, Program Officer of Surdna Foundation ’s Strong Local Economies program, writes about racial justice and inclusive economic development. This post originally appeared in NCRP’s quarterly journal, which you can find here . When people have asked me what compelled me to join the team at the Surdna Foundation more than a year ago, I’ve often shared that I saw a philanthropic organization that is not only guided by principles of social justice, and working to address real societal problems, but one that is committed to investing in new ways of building economies, environments and...

NFG moves into grantmaking with a multimillion-dollar collaborative fund

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
07/11/2018
Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG) steps into the role of collaborative grantmaker with The Amplify Fund—a new, multimillion-dollar pooled fund focused on investing in equitable, community-led development. The fund, which is seeded by Surdna Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations, is an opportunity for funders to support work to shift local power structures and put decisions about local development in the hands of residents. “Neighborhood Funders Group’s core purpose is to build philanthropy’s capacity to move more resources more effectively to low-income communities and...
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How Philanthropy Can Promote Equity through Community Engagement

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
01/22/2018
When NFG members Nexus Community Partners and The Jay & Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Minnesota heard that there was a light rail extension planned to connect Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park, they knew there was an opportunity to leverage their resources to support community power in the process. Many of the neighborhoods that the light rail extension would pass through are home to a population of majority people of color and immigrants who would likely be left out of the conversation if traditional planning processes were followed. As Patrick Troska, Executive Director of the Phillips...

New Southern Strategies: Employment, Workers' Rights and the Prospects for Regional Resurgence

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Tue, October 03, 2017

What will it take to win successful economic justice campaigns in the South? With many families facing chronically low wages and economic insecurity, an understanding and attention to the political economy of the South can help funders and field organizations develop successful intervention strategies.

The New Southern Strategies: Employment, Workers’ Rights and the Prospects for Regional Resurgence report by Nik Theodore assesses economic indicators affecting quality...

Democratic Development for Thriving Communities: Framing the Issues, Solutions, and Funding Strategies to Address Gentrification and Displacement

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Wed, May 31, 2017

The Democratic Development for Thriving Communities report is the result of collaboration between the California Funders Working Group on Gentrification and Displacement , field leaders, and academics. It builds on previous work from the philanthropic, academic, and organizing sectors to present a framework for philanthropy to consider in strategically addressing gentrification and displacement.

...

FFJ Advisor Discussion Series: Mary Hooks

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
04/27/2018
Next up in FF J’s series of interviews with our Advisors : Mary Hooks , Co-Director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG ) and a leader of the National Bail Out . Make sure to check out the new Until Freedom Comes Bail Out Toolki t , from the National Bail Out. We asked Mary to tell us about a recent win on bail reform with the Atlanta city council, what visionary organizing looks like, and what funders can do in this moment. Congratulations on th is week’s win on bail reform in Atlanta, Georgia! What type of organizing and coalition work did it take...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

National Mama’s Bail Out Day

News type: 
News from the Field
Release Date: 
07/11/2018
The week before Mother’s Day, organizations in Oakland, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg, Montgomery, Memphis, Minneapolis, Durham, Atlanta, and beyond will bail out as many mothers as possible who otherwise would spend Mother’s Day in a cell simply because they cannot afford bail. Everyday an average of 700,000 people are condemned to cages and separated from their families simply because they can not afford to pay bail. National Mama’s Bail Out Day will give incarcerated mothers an opportunity to spend Mother’s Day with their families and build community through gatherings that highlight the...

FJE Funder Call on Forced Arbitration

Event type: 
Briefing
Friday, June 1, 2018 -
9:30am - 10:30am
Webinar
On May 21, 2018, the Supreme Court made a 5-4 decision in the Murphy Oil vs. NLRB case, allowing corporations to include arbitration clauses in employee contracts that effectively force employees to settle any disputes through arbitration. The decision on this case delivers a major blow to workers’ ability to deal with any workplace violations with their employer. Funders for a Just Economy discussed this case, along with several other upcoming labor issues, during this year's Policy Briefing & Labor Strategy Session in March 2018. Join us to continue this conversation, learn about the...

Grant-making with an Intersectional Lens

Event type: 
Webinar
Thursday, May 24, 2018 -
11:00am - 12:30pm
Webinar
The current economic system and laws were not designed for Black people, indigenous peoples, people of color, women, people who identify as LGBTQI, and migrants to thrive. As we consider the implications of this economic system, and philanthropy as a sector within that system, what will it take to truly integrate a historical and intersectional analysis in our grant-making of the economic policies that have led to systemic poverty, structural racism, and patriarchy in order to resource the movement to shift power and seed change? Over the last few years, Funders for a Just Economy (FJE) has...

As We #SayHerName, 7 Policy Paths to Stop Police Violence Against Black Girls and Women

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, July 19, 2016

In honor of the National Day of Action to End State Violence Against Black Women, Girls and Femmes, lawyer, researcher and activist Andrea J. Ritchie presents some policy ideas to eliminate police sexual violence, gendered racial profiling and other ways officers target Black girls, women and gender nonconforming people.

Andrea J. Ritchie May 19, 2016

Activists from Durham to D.C. to Detroit are gearing up for the second National Day of Action to End State...

Funders Briefing and Conversation with Patrisse Cullors and Dignity & Power Now

Event type: 
Briefing
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Los Angeles, CA
John M. Lloyd Foundation, Liberty Hill Foundation, Rosenberg Foundationand Reinvent Communications invite you to a special funders briefing about how funders can best support Black-led movement building. The briefing will feature the work of Dignity and Power Now, a grassroots organization based in Los Angeles founded by Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of #BlackLivesMatter. Dignity and Power Now fights for the dignity and power of incarcerated people, their families and communities. The organization is currently working on a campaign to ensure a civilian review board for the Los...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

Funder Briefing on Policing Reform – Building on NYC Successes for a National Reform Movement

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Wed, July 18, 2018

In the past two years, Communities United for Policing Reform (CPR) has played a critical role in leading a campaign to pass landmark police accountability legislation in New York City and partnering with families of New Yorkers killed by police to secure executive action by Governor Cuomo to establish a special prosecutor for police killings throughout New York State.

In spite of these victories, there remains much more to accomplish to transform police systems, policies, practices, and culture to be more accountable and transparent to the communities they serve. We...

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Topic: 
Community Power-Building
Program: 
Funders for Justice

After Ferguson: Conference Call looking at the role of the faith community in mobilizing around racial justice

Event type: 
Briefing
Monday, July 23, 2018 - 11:15am
Conference Call
Social justice non-profit Sojourners has been working on racial reconciliation and economic justice organizing since the early 1970s, and this past fall Sojourners has been working closely with Ferguson leaders, at their request, as well as with national partners, to achieve a bold agenda—to help America, and particularly communities of faith to listen across racial lines and build a multi-racial and bipartisan movement to achieve racial reconciliation and transform our criminal justice system. Listen to the following conference call with Lisa Sharon Harper, Sojourners’...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

Announcing the 2018 Discount Foundation Legacy Awardee

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
07/11/2018
Enrique Balcazar Community Organizer and Leader at Migrant Justice Enrique "Kike" Balcazar immigrated to the United States from Tabasco, Mexico when he was 17 years old. He joined his parents on a dairy farm in rural Vermont and worked for years on farms across the state. Enrique joined Migrant Justice and became a leader in the successful campaign to expand access to driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants in Vermont. He became part of the organization's Farmworker Coordinating Committee and is now an organizer and spokesperson. Enrique is one of the...

Right To The City and Neighborhood Funders Group 2018 Field & Funder Convening

Event type: 
Convening
Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - Friday, July 20, 2018
Atlanta, GA
Neighborhood Funders Group and the Right To The City Alliance will be hosting a Funder and Field Convening on July 18-20. This gathering will be a dynamic peer-learning and sharing environment with both philanthropic and field practitioners working at the intersections of health, housing, land use, community development, and place-based and community power building strategies. The gathering will coincide with the Homes For All Member Assembly in Atlanta, GA. The HFA Member Assembly will bring together over 300 impacted residents, community organizers, and organizations from across the country...

City Rising

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, July 09, 2018

City Rising is a multi-media documentary that shows how gentrification is deeply rooted in a history of discriminatory laws and practices in the United States. This series illuminates how gentrification is traditionally molded and dictated by those in power. City Rising follows the journey of California communities that are fighting gentrification and features a growing movement of advocates seeking responsible development across the state.

Watch the trailer and full...

Strategy in Action Learning Tour: Equitable Revitalization and Regional Power-Building in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania

Event type: 
Learning Tour
Monday, June 19, 2017 - Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Pittsburgh, PA
Photo by Matthew Field / CC Neighborhood Funders Group, The Heinz Endowments, Pittsburgh United, Ford Foundation, and The Colorado Trust are pleased to invite you to the Strategy in Action Learning Tour: Equitable Revitalization and Regional Power-Building in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. After decades of disinvestment and loss of manufacturing, Pittsburgh’s economy is resurging, bringing new opportunities and threats to low-income communities of color. With aligned progressive strength across the organizing community, elected leadership, and philanthropy, Pittsburgh is striving to be...

Reflections on Labor Day from Funders for a Just Economy

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
09/01/2017
Alejandra L. Ibañez, Chair of NFG's Funders for a Just Economy and Lead Program Officer at Woods Fund Chicago, urges colleagues to defend the past achievements for workers' rights that are now being threatened by unprecedented attacks, and to be bold in pushing towards a more just economy. As we prepare for the Labor Day weekend, which celebrates the strength, resilience, and achievements of workers in this country, I am reminded of the history of organized labor in shaping progressive social movements. And where organized labor has not gone, we see a flourishing of worker centers and the...

Freedom to Thrive: Reimagining Safety & Security in Our Communities

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Fri, May 05, 2017

On July 5, The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), Law for Black Lives , Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), and over 25 affiliates and allies released a new report examining the budgets of 12 city and county governments that reveals the extent to which local jurisdictions pour money into policing and incarceration, at the expense of community safety priorities such as infrastructure and social safety net programs.

The report,...

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Topic: 
Community Safety & Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Stabilizing Communities: Advancing Housing Justice Organizing and Policy Strategies in This Political Moment

Event type: 
Webinar
Thursday, March 30, 2017 -
10:00am - 11:30am
Webinar
Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash Across the country, resident-led institutions and their allies continue to build organizing strategies that address housing, displacement, and gentrification at the local, regional, and state level. Strategies and solutions to gentrification and displacement like rent control measures, passing local ballot initiatives for renter protections, developing community land trusts, and financing affordable housing has had some success, but the demographics of many communities are still rapidly changing. At the center of these shifts, philanthropy continues to play a...

Transnational Workers Rights: Emerging Strategies from the Global North and South

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, April 15, 2015

This report was commissioned by the Society for Labour and Development (based in India), the Project of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ProDESC, based in Mexico), and the National Guestworkers Alliance, three labor rights organizations developing transnational strategies for organizing workers in low-wage industries. Economic globalization has created new strains on labor forces and communities, and the increasing mobility of capital (and with it the threat of exit, disinvestment, and job loss) poses unique challenges to traditional models of labor organizing.

The substantial...

Transnational Workers Rights: Emerging Strategies from the Global North and South

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, April 15, 2015

This report was commissioned by the Society for Labour and Development (based in India), the Project of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ProDESC, based in Mexico), and the National Guestworkers Alliance, three labor rights organizations developing transnational strategies for organizing workers in low-wage industries. Economic globalization has created new strains on labor forces and communities, and the increasing mobility of capital (and with it the threat of exit, disinvestment, and job loss) poses unique challenges to traditional models of labor organizing.

The substantial...

Voices from the Field: Rural Organizers on What They Need from Funders

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Tue, June 05, 2018

As a first step in establishing a framework and priorities, the Integrated Rural Strategies Group commissioned a scan of rural organizing work, Voices from the Field: Rural Organizers on What They Need from Funders . From this scan, the group has gained literacy in the organizing work already taking...

Announcing Two New NFG Projects

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
07/17/2018
It's been a big year for NFG! We officially launched two new, exciting projects at our 2018 National Convening last month in St. Louis. In case you missed it, here's a preview of what's coming. Philanthropy Forward: Leadership for Change This fall, NFG will be launching Philanthropy Forward: Leadership for Change, our first ever leadership cohort for CEOs and presidents of progressive philanthropic institutions. This peer group of aligned CEOs will dig deep on power building and form an aligned bloc of philanthropic leadership. Philanthropy Forward is a strategic partnership with The Aspen...

Rural Rising: Supporting Equity, Sustainability, and Resilience in Rural & Small-Town America

Event type: 
Webinar
Thursday, December 13, 2018 -
11:00am - 12:15pm
Webinar
Whether your organization has many investments in rural communities or you are still puzzling out what the term “rural” really means, we invite you to join this dynamic three-part webinar series and explore opportunities to learn from, lift up, and support innovative and equity-promoting work in rural and small-town communities across the country. Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG), The Heartland Fund and the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders (SAFSF) invite you to join our three-part webinar series, Rural Rising: Supporting Equity, Sustainability, and...

FJE 2017 Policy Briefing: The Road Ahead for Worker Justice

Event type: 
Briefing
Thursday, May 18, 2017 - Friday, May 19, 2017
Washington, DC
In a fundamentally shifting political and power map, Funders for a Just Economy ’s annual policy briefing will update our most current understanding of the major forces and players that impact worker justice; explore the offensive opportunities and defensive needs on federal, state and local levels; and identify how funders can best support them. With exciting keynote speakers and discussion-based panels that unpack corporate power and offensive campaigns, run down the policy fights on the move on the state level, dig into migrant and immigrant workers’ issues, and explore litigation...

NFG 2018 National Convening — Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice

Event type: 
Convening
Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - Thursday, June 7, 2018
St. Louis, MO
Photo by Hcontreras98 on Wikimedia Commons We welcome our network members along with new funders and partners to connect, organize, and mobilize at the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. Find more information on the conference schedule, sponsorships, and more at raiseupconference.org . It’s both an exciting and critical moment for philanthropy. Funders are grappling with how to re-prioritize and step up to meet the needs of these times. With this sense of urgency and need to evolve, we are seeing funders acting on the need to join...
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2018 Community Change Learning Exchange (CCLE)

Event type: 
Convening
Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - Thursday, May 10, 2018
Chicago, IL
Photo by D ori on Wikimedia Commons Join Woods Fund Chicago , The Field Foundation , The Annie E. Casey Foundation , and Neighborhood Funders Group for the 2018 Community Change Learning Exchange (CCLE) on May 9-10, 2018 in Chicago, IL. This iteration of CCLE will highlight the philanthropic journey and process of Woods Fund Chicago and the Field Foundation in moving the needle to address structural racism and shifting their grantmaking to support racial equity and community organizing. We will also learn more about local challenges and opportunities in Chicago, provide a...

DIVEST/INVEST: From Criminalization to Thriving Communities

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Mon, September 17, 2018

We believe that our collective investments in housing, education, health, transportation, food security, and jobs will fail if we do not also proactively work to divest this nation’s resources from criminalization. Divest/Invest: From Criminalization to Thriving Communities , an intersectional toolkit website created by Funders for Justice , helps grantmakers connect with funder colleagues and groups or campaigns working to adress how criminalization impacts youth, civic engagement, immigrant rights, rural...

Funders for Justice Announces Inaugural Advisory Committee of Field Leaders

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
07/05/2017
Since we were founded three years ago, a pillar of Funders for Justice has always been close partnership and guidance from field partners. We are incredibly proud to announce our inaugural cohort of FFJ Advisors. These nine leaders were selected in recognition of their expertise and leadership in movements for racial and gender justice, in police accountability campaigns and anti-criminalization movements, and efforts to inform more impactful grantmaking for community power-building. The Funders for Justice Advisors for 2017-2018 are: Jenny Arwade , Communities United...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

FFJ Advisor Discussion Series: Stephanie Guilloud

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
06/20/2018
Our discussion series with FFJ’s Field Advisors continues with Stephanie Guilloud, Co-Director of Project South . Read our interview below to learn more about how the Legacy Museum and Lynching Memorial can be “a tool and weapon of truth in our long-term struggle to defeat white supremacy and win freedom and justice for us all.” If you could stop a lynching today, would you? “Thank you for taking our case,” Anna Deavere Smith told the 2,000 person crowd at the Grand Opening of the Legacy Museum and Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

Funders for Justice Announces 2nd Cohort of Field Advisors

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
05/15/2018
FFJ is proud to announce our 2nd cohort of FFJ Advisors – 12 powerhouse leaders from cities across the US. These leaders organize in multiple racial and gender justice movements to end criminalization of communities of color, including: organizing in Native nations, Latinx migrant justice, transgender rights, youth and multi-generational organizing, South Asian migrant and worker justice, power-building in the South, bail reform, Black organizing and power-building, community-determined safetyand a world without prisons, an end to the public health crisis of incarceration, and an end to...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

Ways to Support Organizers in North Carolina

News type: 
News from the Field
Release Date: 
10/07/2017
Check out these three ways to support organizers in North Carolina: Freedom Fighter Bond Fund , at the Durham Solidarity Center, is accepting donations to support legal costs for people demonstrating against the police killing of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, NC. The Freedom Fighter Fund is governed by a Rapid Response Team composed of a 5-8 people who are representative of the people and communities organizing in support of racial, social, gender, economic, and environmental justice. #CharlottteUprising Fund by the Charlotte Queer and Trans People of...

Statement from Within Our Lifetime

News type: 
News from the Field
Release Date: 
10/07/2016
This rapid response statement on police killings in September 2016 was originally released by Within Our Lifetime on September 29, 2016 at http://www.withinourlifetime.net/ . Within Our Lifetime (WOL) supports the families of Alfred Olango, Keith Scott, Terence Crutcher, Terrence Sterling, and Tyre King (among many others) and all the people grieving, organizing and protesting for justice in El Cajon, Charlotte, Tulsa, Washington, D.C Columbus, (and beyond) in the wake of the rampant police killings of Black people across America. These tragic losses lay bare the urgent need for substantive...

Foundation for Louisiana Supports Baton Rouge Organizing with Rapid Response Fund

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
09/12/2016
This press release was originally released by Foundation for Louisiana on July 21, 2016 at https://www.foundationforlouisiana.org/news/75/rapid-response-fund . Baton Rouge, LA — Foundation for Louisiana (FFL) stands in solidarity with the Baton Rouge community and people across Louisiana and across the nation who are outraged, hurt and engaged by the fatal shootings of Alton Sterling, Deputy Brad Garafola with East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office and officers Matthew Gerald and Montrell Jackson of the Baton Rouge Police Department — as well as the three other injured police...

New Southern Strategies: Employment, Workers’ Rights and the Prospects for Regional Resurgence

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Mon, October 16, 2017

The southern United States has long been dismissed as an economic backwater, a bastion of cheap labor, antiquated industry, and slow growth. This perception dates back to the antebellum period, and has been reinforced by more recent narratives of southern distinctiveness and southern exceptionalism.

The South, however, has never been as insulated and globally disconnected as popular stereotypes would have it. From the cotton exports and the textile production of the...

Native Voices Rising: A Case for Funding Native-led Change

Resource type: 
Member Publication
Mon, June 10, 2013

This is a pivotal time in Native America. Opportunities are opening up as the result of improving economic standards, higher levels of educational attainment, and better health outcomes in certain regions; however, many of the challenges that have long faced our population still persist. For every major challenge and issue there are also efforts to make positive changes.

Native Voices Rising is a joint research and re-granting project of Native Americans in Philanthropy and Common...

Welcome to the new NFG website!

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
12/10/2018
Thank you for visiting Neighborhood Funders Group's new website! We've completely redesigned and improved how it works to make it easier than ever for our members to use as an online resource. We're currently in soft launch mode before we publicly announce the new site in 2019, so thanks for taking an initial sneak peek! Please excuse our digital dust as we finish testing all of the features of our new website. You can find a temporary archive of our old site at old.nfg.org . What new features can you find on the site? Search the entire website for news, events, and resources using the search...
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Planting Roots in the South: Announcing a New Home for GSP at the Southern Education Foundation

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
05/08/2017
Photo by Jonas Weckschmied on Unsplash NFG is pleased to share some exciting news about the growth of Grantmakers for Southern Progress and plans to deepen its impact by planting organizational roots in the South. Grantmakers for Southern Progress had its genesis in 2009. In its early years, GSP and Neighborhood Funders Group decided to formally partner in order to bridge relationships between southern and national social change-oriented funders. In partnership over the last four years, both entities have benefitted greatly. GSP’s national profile has become well-established, and NFG’s...
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2019 Budget and Policy Briefing

Event type: 
Briefing
Thursday, February 21, 2019 - Friday, February 22, 2019
Washington, DC
Economic Opportunity Funders (formerly GIST) and Funders for a Just Economy (FJE) are joining together to hold a combined 2019 Budget and Policy Briefing as a way to streamline programming, highlight intersections, eliminate duplication, reduce travel burdens on membership, and economize on meeting expenditures. This two-day meeting will focus on federal and state budget and tax policy, work and job quality issues, and organizing and power building strategies. Sessions will explore how the current policy landscape will impact struggling families, workers and communities and the role funders...

Recapping the Strategy in Action Learning Tour: Equitable Revitalization and Regional Power-Building in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Mon, August 28, 2017

Pittsburgh is a “blue city," where nearly 80% of the population voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. The city’s economy is booming, but gentrification is rapidly displacing low-income families of color from hot areas of the city while other neighborhoods have not seen any investment in decades.

Local anchor institutions, community organizations, labor unions, and foundations like The Heinz Endowments are playing a critical role in investing in people and community development to build an economy that includes jobs that sustain...

How NFG is Disrupting Funder-Grantee Dynamics

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
12/04/2018
Helen Chin has just led the Surdna Foundation’s Sustainable Environments Program through a strategy refinement process. “Now,” she says, with satisfaction, “We are able to connect more robustly with what’s bubbling from the ground up in the field, as well as center racial equity in our work!” The outcome of this effort was a commitment to actively partner directly with the communities most vulnerable and impacted by climate change in order to build their capacity and power to self-determine the ownership, control and stewardship of land and infrastructure. This refinement distills the Program...

From Sector Newcomer to Board Member

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
12/04/2018
Marjona Jones joined the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock four years ago after working in the field as an organizer for 14 years. She came to Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG) through an existing relationship between Veatch and NFG: Molly Schultz Hafid , former assistant director at Veatch, also served as an NFG board member and co-chair for the Funders for a Just Economy (FJE) working group. “She was outgoing co-chair when I was hired at Veatch — the relationships she had built through that working group were important to me as well because I also worked around economic...

Funders for Justice Meeting in NYC

Event type: 
Convening
Friday, June 12, 2015
New York, NY
On Friday, June 12, 2015, more than 70 funders gathered together at The Atlantic Philanthropies to coordinate and mobilize resources in support of organizing in response to ongoing events of police brutality and state sanctioned violence faced by communities of color across the country. The Neighborhood Funders Group, ABFE: Partnership with Black Communities, the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, and the Ford Foundation co-hosted the gathering under the Funders for Justice umbrella. The goal of this meeting was to identify concrete action steps towards mobilizing and...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

Real Talk on Police Reform

Event type: 
Member Event
Thursday, April 7, 2016
New York, NY
A CONVERSATION BETWEEN THE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR AND THE ACTIVISTS WHO WORKED TO GET HIM APPOINTED Please join us for a conversation with Alvin Bragg, New York's first special prosecutor for police-related civilian deaths, and the organizers and victims’ families who campaigned to create his position. Moderated by Kai Wright of The Nation, we’ll get an inside look at the special prosecutor’s role and what work lies ahead. This summer, families who have lost loved ones to police violence, working with members and partners of Communities United for Police Reform (including the Justice Committee,...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

Webinar: Fueling the Movement - How Foundations Can Support the Fight for Racial Equity

Event type: 
Webinar
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Webinar
Featured Speakers: Alicia Garza , Special Projects Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance and Creator, #BlackLivesMatter Tynesha McHarris , Director of Community Leadership, Brooklyn Community Foundation Zachary Norris , Executive Director, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights Rev. Starsky Wilson , President & CEO, Deaconess Foundation and Co-Chair of the Ferguson Commission Aaron Dorfman , Executive Director, NCRP (moderator) Join NCRP and our esteemed panelists as we explore what foundations can do in response to recent events in Ferguson, New York City and across the country. Hear...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

‘Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us’

News type: 
News from the Field
How a group of black social media activists built the nation’s first 21st-century civil rights movement. By Jay Caspian Kang, May 4, 2015, New York Times Magazine On the evening of April 25 at the corner of Pratt and Light Streets, in Baltimore’s revitalized downtown district, more than 100 police officers in riot gear stood shoulder to shoulder, shields up. Six officers on horseback fidgeted behind them, staring down at a crowd of about 40, an odd mixture of protesters, journalists and protester-journalists. Earlier in the afternoon, well over a thousand people marched from the Western...

#Asians4BlackLives

News type: 
News from the Field
#Asians4BlackLives On Monday, Dec 15th 2014, members of newly organized all-Black groups, including The Blackout Collective, #BlackBrunch and #BlackLivesMatter , joined with Asian allies in #Asians4BlackLives group and white allies in the Bay Area Solidarity Action Team to lead an occupation of the Oakland Police Department and demand an end to the war on Black people in Oakland and everywhere. Approximately 50 people participated in the action and were joined by a crowd of around 200 supporters. Protestors blocked entrances into the police department and the busy downtown intersection...

#HandsOffTheHomeless Protest of de Blasio’s NYPD

News type: 
News from the Field
For months, we’ve been working with homeless folks living on 125th Street, who have been the target of increasingly aggressive policing by Mayor de Blasio’s NYPD. This is part of a huge citywide effort to push the homeless people out of public space, with the Daily News reporting that the NYPD has identified “80 sites” across the five boroughs where homeless people congregate, that they plan to break up. But homeless people aren’t going to take this lying down. They’re fighting back. And yesterday, we helped the folks on 125th organize an incredible rally and press conference, complete with...

#ReclaimMLK Actions Across the US

News type: 
News from the Field
Check out these articles about the powerful #ReclaimMLK direct action and local organizing across the country this past weekend: Protestors Rally Nationwide to Reclaim MLK’s Legacy by Jamilah King, ColorLines Tuesday, January 20 2015, 10:18 AM EST In cities across the nation, protestors took the streets with a call to reclaim Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy this holiday weekend. The actions were part of a coordinated effort, dubbed #ReclaimMLK on social media, that sought to build off of them momentum of last year’s rallies against police brutality. To see pictures and tweets...
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Topic: 
Community Safety & Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

#SayHerName: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women

News type: 
News from the Field
Sandra Bland, the 28-year old Black woman from Naperville, Illinois who was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a traffic stop in Waller County, Texas on July 10 and was found dead in a jail cell three days later, is the latest victim of police brutality against African American women, says Columbia Law School Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, a leading authority on how law and society are shaped by race and gender. In honor of Bland, and to continue to call attention to violence against Black women in the U.S., the African American Policy Forum, the Center for...

8 Lessons from Our Southern Grantees in the Fight for Equity and Justice

News type: 
Member News
8 Lessons from Our Southern Grantees in the Fight for Equity and Justice By Miabi Chatterji , Senior Program Officer at Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice My colleagues and I at the LGBTQ Racial Justice Fund (RJF) have been thinking hard about how our institutions need to respond to the changes the Trump administration will make to our national culture and policies. Particularly for those of us who support vulnerable communities such as immigrants; refugees; Latinx, Muslim and black people; incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals; sex workers; LGBTQ people; youth of color and...

A Chance to Rewrite America’s Racial Narrative

News type: 
News from the Field
by Alison Brown , May 13, 2015 , Open Society Foundations blog - Voices On Mother’s Day, I watch Samaria Rice beg for some closure five months after her son, Tamir, was shot to death by police officers within moments of encountering him in a Cleveland park. I think of Gloria Darden and the shock she must have experienced at discovering that her son, Freddie Gray, was killed so senselessly and so violently by police. I am awed by Judy Scott’s willingness and resolve to forgive the officer who shot her son, Walter, five times in the back as he fled a police confrontation, fearing for his life...

A Decade After Katrina, Can Philanthropy Make Black Lives Matter?

News type: 
Member News
" By Nat Chioke Williams August 27, 2015, Chronicle of Philanthropy On Saturday, people from around the world will commemorate the 10 years since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Although many people will tout the city’s recovery, few people in black working-class neighborhoods will be celebrating. After all, they have been mostly left behind . But that is hardly the only poignant and painful reminder of the inequities facing blacks in America and how far the nation still must go to end them. On August 4, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, the crowning...

A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement

News type: 
News from the Field
By Alicia Garza , The Feminist Wire, October 7, 2014. I created #BlackLivesMatter with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, two of my sisters, as a call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. It was a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements. Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and...

A Message From FFJ Leadership: In Solidarity With Chicago & Minneapolis

News type: 
NFG Blog
November 24, 2015 Dear Funders for Justice community, Today Chicago officials released the tape of the police killing of Laquan McDonald , a year after his death. Protests have begun, and police appear to be engaged in active suppression tactics, including arrest and physical confrontation . Today on Democracy Now!, BYP100’s Charlene Carruthers explained that the city’s call for peace over Laquan McDonald does not extend to the police . While the police officer will be indicted for murder, justice is by no means guaranteed. We will share updates and ways to support as information becomes...

A New Testament of Hope

News type: 
Member News
" Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation Nearly a half century ago, during the final days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, he penned what he called a “testament of hope,” an epistle he could not have known would be among his last. “Whenever I am asked my opinion of the current state of the civil rights movement,” Dr. King began, “I am forced to pause; it is not easy to describe a crisis so profound that it has caused the most powerful nation in the world to stagger in confusion and bewilderment.” During these past few weeks, as each of us has attempted to make sense of Michael Brown...

Action Alert: Flush Transphobia Fund

News type: 
Member News
From Third Wave Fund: May 26, 2016 Yesterday, eleven states sued the Obama Administration over their mandate that states allow transgender students to use the restroom that fits their gender identity. Today, we're announcing the #FlushTransphobia Fund to fuel the grassroots movement working to combat these horrific bills, and we invite you to join us ! Bathroom bills are about more than just bathrooms. They exploit transphobia and violence experienced by women to gain support for sweeping anti-LGBTQ bills while doing nothing to address the real causes of violence against women. If you're...

Activists Locked Down Outside Tacoma Detention Center

News type: 
News from the Field
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]#Not1More // www.notonemoredeportation.com Diverse coalition of activists risk arrest to stop immigrant deportations, call...

After #Ferguson

News type: 
News from the Field
By Steven Hsieh and Raven Rakia, The Nation, October 8, 2014. When Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed Michael Brown on August 9, King D. Seals, age 27, was at the crime scene within the hour. He lives just a few blocks away from Canfield Green, the predominantly black apartment complex where the unarmed teenager was shot. He saw Brown's body, which would lie on the street for an additional three hours. "It wasn't even a protest yet," Seals said about the gathering when he first arrived. "It was a black boy being shot in the community. It was about ten...

After #FergusonOctober

News type: 
NFG Blog
" How can philanthropy support organizing in this moment and in the long term? The Neighborhood Funders Group asked four questions – these are the responses. October 16, 2014 Thank you to the following people and organizations for their contributions: Bukky Gbadegesin, Organization for Black Struggle (OBS): oagbadegesin@gmail.com Jeff Ordower, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE): jeff@organizemo.org Rashad Robinson, ColorofChange.org: rashad@colorofchange.org Sherrilyn Ifill, Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.: sifill@naacpldf.org Please fee free...

After Ferguson Grand Jury Failure, Federal Government Must Act for Justice

News type: 
News from the Field
Communities United for Police Reform, November 24, 2014. Today, Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) released the following statement in response to the grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot unarmed Michael Brown in August: "We are outraged that the grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown. From Ferguson to Brooklyn, communities of color face hyper-aggressive policing and lack of meaningful or timely accountability for officers who use excessive and deadly force. The double...

AG Holder announces first six pilot sites for the National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice

News type: 
News from the Field
March 18, 2015 View full press release. The National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice is honored to be leading this effort, under which National Network Director David Kennedy and John Jay College President Jeremy Travis will collaborate with a consortium of national law enforcement experts to assess the police-community relationship in each pilot site and develop a detailed site-specific plan that will enhance procedural justice, reduce bias, and support reconciliation in communities where trust has been harmed. We are...
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Community Safety & Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

An Open Letter from Ferguson Protesters and Allies

News type: 
News from the Field
By DeRay Mckesson, Brittany Packnett, and Johnetta Elzie, Huffington Post, November 11, 2014. Originally published October 17: In Ferguson, police met our protesting of police brutality with the disgusting irony of greater brutality, the likes of which Americans have rarely seen on our own soil. In this American town, officers tapped their batons, pointed guns in our faces, kneed our women's heads, threw our pregnant mothers to the ground, jailed our peaceful clergy and academics, and tear gassed our children. We are living an American Horror Story. But it...

Arizona Citizens Speak Out Against "Secret Police Bill"

News type: 
News from the Field
By Miriam Wasser Wed., Mar. 18 2015 at 1:37 PM Phoenix New Times Update 3/17/15 7:30 p.m.: SB 1445 passed in the House Wednesday afternoon. The vote was 44 to 13, with three members not voting. ( View the full voting breakdown here ) It will now advance to Governor Doug Ducey’s office. Original story follows: Community leaders and members of the ACLU gathered on the capital lawn this morning to speak out against SB 1445, a controversial bill that “limits the release of the name of a peace officer who is involved in a use of deadly physical force incident for 60 days.” Read...
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Community Safety & Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

As We Mourn Charleston's Victims, Philanthropy Must Act

News type: 
Member News
By Nakisha M. Lewis, Tynesha McHarris, and Allen Kwabena Frimpong The Chronicle of Philanthropy, June 26, 2015 As we face the latest violent assault on black people — the nine black parishioners who were shot dead in their church in Charleston — those of us in philanthropy must think hard about our role in supporting the movement for black lives. We have returned yet again to the kind of vigilante violence that also took the life of Trayvon Martin. We are constantly reminded of the culture of violence in our country that continues to take the lives of black people. The volatile stream of...

Black Churches Are Burning Again in America

News type: 
News from the Field
by Emma Green, The Atlantic “What's the church doing on fire?” Jeanette Dudley, the associate pastor of God's Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia, got a call a little after 5 a.m. on Wednesday, she told a local TV news station. Her tiny church of about a dozen members had been burned, probably beyond repair. The Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco got called in, which has been the standard procedure for church fires since the late 1960s. Investigators say they’ve ruled out possible causes like an electrical malfunction; most likely, this was arson. The very same night, many miles...
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Topic: 
Racial Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Black Lives Matter, Today and Always: January 15 Highway Action Solidarity Statement

News type: 
News from the Field
by Mia McKenzie January 16, 2015 BlackGirlDangerous.org On January 15, 2015, A non-Black group of Pan-Asians, Latinos, and white people, some of whom are queer and transgender, linked their bodies together across the I- 93 highway in a highly coordinated action in Boston. This act of civic participation was in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and Black people. Here is the solidarity statement: Police in Ferguson are not bad apples — the whole system, Boston included, is rotten to the core. In the past 15 years, law enforcement officers of Boston Police, the nation’s first...
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Topic: 
Racial Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Black Lives Matter,' NYC Mayor Says After Grand Jury Doesn't Indict Officer

News type: 
News from the Field
By Bill Chappell Originally published on npr.org , December 3, 2014. A grand jury has decided not to indict a New York police officer in the death of Eric Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk this past July. "It's a very painful day for so many New Yorkers," Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday. The encounter between Garner and officer Daniel Pantaleo caused an uproar after video footage of the incident was released. It showed Garner repeatedly gasping, "I can't breathe," as Pantaleo and other officers took him to the ground. Garner family attorney Jonathon Moore says he's "...
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Topic: 
Racial Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Black Panther cub on new era of civil action

News type: 
News from the Field
In the year since the death of Michael Brown, black Americans have brought civil disobedience into the 21st century. by Malkia Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network What I remember most viscerally is the fear. It had been almost four hours, and I couldn't get the handcuffs off. The lights in the underground subway station were flickering, and I had an almost phobic fear of the dark. The white cop who had cuffed me to the gate inside the subway station was gone, and I didn't know when he was coming back. He...

Breaking: Ferguson Activists Meet with President Obama to Demand an End to Police Brutality Nationwide

News type: 
News from the Field
Ferguson Action, December 1, 2014. It has been one week since a St. Louis County grand jury failed to indict Officer Darren Wilson for shooting Michal Brown, an unarmed teenager, six times in the head, chest and arms. Communities nationwide have responded to the miscarriage of justice by carrying out more than 150 sustained, coordinated and intense protest actions that show no signs of letting up. Primarily led by young people of color, the continued sit-ins, highway shutdowns and walkouts have commanded the White House’s attention. Today President Barack Obama, Vice...

Building Strong, Healthy, and Resilient Communities in Ferguson and Beyond

News type: 
News from the Field
The recent shooting death of African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, is a painful reminder of the deeply entrenched divisions and tensions that plague too many American communities fractured by decades of racial discrimination, poverty, and disinvestment. As in Ferguson, tensions often simmer just below the surface until starkly revealed by some precipitating incident. As the nation continues to grapple with the tough questions raised by the events in Ferguson, it is encouraging to recognize that philanthropy has a role to play. Michael Brown’s death and the local and...

Building the Road to Belonging: Three Ways Philanthropy Can Help End Mass Criminalization

News type: 
Member News
By Connie Cagampang Heller and Alexander Saingchin National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Fall 2015 Police Shooting Kills Sleeping 7-Year-Old Girl During Drug Raid. Police Kill 12-Year-Old Boy Playing with Plastic Gun. Young Man, 14 Years Old, Tried as an Adult. Woman Who Acted in Self-Defense Now Serving Life Sentence Have you found yourself thinking something urgently needs to change after seeing headlines about the latest abuses perpetrated by the criminal justice system? How did criminalization become a defining characteristic of American society? What can we in philanthropy do...

Building Trust Between Communities and Local Police

News type: 
News from the Field
David Hudson December 01, 2014 08:25 PM EST Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and around the country have grabbed the attention of the nation and the world, and have highlighted the importance of strong, collaborative relationships between local police and the communities that they protect. Today, the Administration announced new steps we’re taking to strengthen the relationships between law enforcement agencies and the communities they are obligated to protect and serve, including: Advancing the use of body worn cameras and promoting proven community policing initiatives Creating a new...

California bans grand juries in fatal shootings by police

News type: 
News from the Field
By Tracey Kaplan, San Joe Mercury News 08/11/2015 Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday making California the first state in the nation to ban the use of grand juries to decide whether police officers should face criminal charges when they kill people in the line of duty. The ban, which will go into effect next year, comes after grand juries in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, made controversial decisions in secret hearings last year not to bring charges against officers who killed unarmed black men, sparking protests across the country. Calls for transparency also have...

Chicago Has Spent Half a Billion Dollars on Police Brutality Cases—And It’s Impoverishing the Victims’ Communities

News type: 
News from the Field
By Carrie Sloan and Johnaé Strong March 11, 2016 - The Nation Mayor Rahm Emanuel, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, and the Chicago Police Department are under intense scrutiny for covering up the murder of Laquan McDonald, the unarmed Black 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by a police officer in October 2014, just four months before Chicago’s mayoral election. As part of this cover-up, the City of Chicago paid McDonald’s family $5 million if they agreed not to publicly share the video of the murder. But the McDonald settlement was just a drop in the bucket: Chicago has spent $642 million on...

CPR Statement re: Deaths of NYPD Officers Wenjian Liu & Rafael Ramos

News type: 
News from the Field
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: DECEMBER 20, 2014 Communities United for Police Reform released the following statement tonight on the deaths of NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos: “Today, it was reported that two NYPD officers were killed by a man who earlier in the day seriously injured a young woman in Baltimore, and who killed himself after shooting the officers. We express our condolences to the families of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, as well as to the woman reported to be his former girlfriend who was shot earlier today. “As the details of today’s shootings...
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Topic: 
Community Safety & Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Cuomo Appointed A Special Prosecutor For New York Killings Involving Police

News type: 
News from the Field
by Christopher Mathias, Huffington Post New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed an executive order Wednesday appointing a special prosecutor to handle cases involving civilians who die at the hands of police. "We have seen this all across the country where there's a lack of trust in the criminal justice system, triggered by a particular case," Cuomo had told reporters on Tuesday, according to Capital New York . "And the basic argument is always the same. That they don't trust the prosecution because of the connections with the police. And a criminal justice system doesn't work without trust."...

Dear Mr. President: A Letter From Tef Poe

News type: 
News from the Field
By Tef Poe Originally published in the Riverfront Times , December 1, 2014. Editor's note: Tef Poe is an artist from the St. Louis area. Through powerful imagery and complicated honesty, he has earned a reputation as one of the best rappers telling the story of St. Louis, which is about much more than one place. Poe has been featured in music publications such as XXL and Urb Magazine . His project The Hero Killer was released on January 2 and was followed up this year by a full-length with DJ Burn One entitled Cheer For the Villain . Follow him on twitter @...

Donate to the Legal Support Fund for Justice for Mike Brown

News type: 
News from the Field
In support of those people arrested during protests this week, on the one-year anniversary of the police murder of Michael Brown, please consider donating to the legal support fund . Since August 9, over 800 people have been arrested in Ferguson while protesting Mike Brown's death and the epidemic of police violence facing Black and Brown communities in the United States.The Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) legal support team aims to provide accessible, democratic and accountable legal support to a wide range of people participating in the struggle for social change...
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Funding Opportunity
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Dream Defenders, Black Lives Matter & Ferguson Reps Take Historic Trip to Palestine

News type: 
News from the Field
Leaders from American racial justice movements connect with Palestinians living under occupation By Kristian Davis Baile, Ebony.com Representatives at the forefront of the movements for Black lives and racial justice have taken a historic trip to Palestine this week to connect with activists living under Israeli occupation. Black journalists, artists and organizers representing Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), and more have joined the Dream Defenders for a 10-day trip to the occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. The...

Embattled Ferguson police chief resigns

News type: 
News from the Field
CBSnews.com Last Updated Mar 11, 2015 9:40 PM EDT Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson resigned his position Wednesday, a high-ranking city official confirmed to CBS News. The development comes a week after a Department of Justice report heavily criticized the Ferguson police department for bias against African American citizens. The report charged that police disproportionately use excessive force against blacks and that black drivers are stopped and searched far more often than white motorists, even though they're less likely to be carrying contraband. © 2015 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights...

Enough

News type: 
Member News
July 7, 2016 Headwaters Foundation for Justice mourns the death of Philando Castile, who was shot and killed during a traffic stop by a St. Anthony police officer. And we cry, “enough.” We stand against the increasing criminalization and police violence that targets black people and people of color across the country and in our streets. We stand with his partner and her young daughter, who were traumatized as witnesses to Philando’s death and then detained by police. We stand in solidarity with all families who have lost loved ones at the hands of local law enforcement. We stand against...

Enough is Enough: We Demand Quality Policing Now

News type: 
News from the Field
The Organization for Black Struggle Originally post on obs-onthemove.org , December 3, 2014. Today American justice has failed yet again. Our legal system has denied justice to the family of Eric Garner less than forty-eight hours after President Barack Obama met with African-American activists calling for an end to police brutality and murder. Fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement we are still in pursuit of justice. We are still confronting what Dr. King called, the triple evils of militarism, racism and capitalism. Instead of using his presidential powers to...

Ensuring the Voices of Government Reflect the People They Represent

News type: 
News from the Field
By Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of Color of Change , and Cristobal Joshua Alex, President of Latino Victory Project . Huffington Post, October 14, 2014. It has been more than a month since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown and the highly militarized and repressive police response to the rallies and demonstrations that came in its wake. The scenes still seem misplaced, as if taken from a history book illustrating the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1964. Yes, in 2014, 50 years after the Civil Rights Act, African-American and Latino...

Executives' Alliance Foundation Leaders "Ban the Box"

News type: 
Member News
Issue Call to Action for All U.S. Philanthropic Institutions to Adopt Fair Chance Hiring Measures NEW YORK, Feb. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Leaders from 42 foundations announced today that they have "banned the box" by adopting fair chance hiring policies or ensuring that questions about criminal convictions do not appear on applications for employment with their foundations. They also issued a challenge to all U.S. philanthropic institutions to follow suit and eliminate barriers to employment for people with arrest and conviction records. The foundations are members and allies of...

Families of people killed by Albuquerque police campaign to hold the police accountable

News type: 
News from the Field
Families of people killed by the Albuquerque police department are campaigning for systemic reforms to the APD and to hold police officers accountable for their actions. The following email is from Ken Ellis, the father of a man killed by the police. To learn more about the campaign, contact Adriann Barboa of Strong Families, New Mexico at adriann@forwardtogether.org . From: Ken Ellis II via Strong Families, New Mexico Reply to: communications@forwardtogether.org Subject: Holding police officers accountable Four years ago, my son Kenneth – an Iraq war...
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Topic: 
Criminalization
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Feature: Freedom Inc.’s Creative Response to the Criminalization of Black Communities in Madison, Wisconsin

News type: 
Member News
Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice has been supporting Freedom Inc. (FI) for 4 years. FI was founded in 2003, is based in Madison, WI and has used particularly creative and inspiring strategies to respond to oppression, racism and violence. FI works to end violence within and against low and no income communities of color. They work at the intersection of prison abolition, LGBT rights, education rights, and reproductive justice. FI aims to challenge the fundamental root causes of violence through leadership development and community organizing in Black and Southeast Asian, particularly...

Ferguson City Council Announces New Programs

News type: 
News from the Field
Ferguson City Council Announces New Programs, September 8th, 2014. Ferguson City Council announced today that they are implementing several changes and new programs in response to community concerns. These new laws and policies are designed to reduce court fine revenue used for general city operations, reform court procedures, and establish a Citizen Review Board to provide citizen oversight and guidance for the police department. Additionally, the City Council will commit to pursue funding for the West Florissant Great Streets Project with the City of Dellwood and St. Louis County. “The...
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Program: 
Funders for Justice

Ferguson October Report

News type: 
News from the Field
In support of the growing momentum across many philanthropic spaces, NFG reached out to four organizations deeply involved in Ferguson October for their viewpoint on the weekend of actions, this moment in organizing, what lies ahead, and what the critical resource needs are right now. What we received were accounts of the tremendously brave and incredibly creative organizing happening right now – and specific ways that philanthropy can be in solidarity through increased resources. Read the report.

Ferguson: A Miscarriage of Justice and a Movement That Won't Give Up

News type: 
News from the Field
by Marisa Franco, lead organizer of the #not1more campaign for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network Originally posted on the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) website "Last night completed a circle of tragedy and travesty. Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in broad daylight, but his protectors used the thick of night to announce their decision to not indict. While the St. Louis prosecutor’s explanation rang empty and hollow, the clamor for justice in the streets of Ferguson was once again clear, resounding, and this time nationwide. Our hearts were...

FFJ Advisor Discussion Series: Jenny Arwade, Interviewed by Manuela Arciniegas

News type: 
NFG Blog
" FFJ Advisor Discussion Series: Jenny Arwade, Interviewed by Manuela Arciniegas [caption id=""attachment_70911"" align=""alignleft"" width=""260""] Left to Right: Jenny Arwade, Co-Executive Director at Communities United; Manuela Arciniegas, Associate Program Officer at the Andrus Family Fund.[/caption] Next up in our discussion series with FFJ ’ s Field Advisors , Manuela Arciniegas (Associate Program Officer at the Andrus Family Fund ) interviews Jenny Arwade (FFJ Field Advisor and Co-Executive Director of Communities United ) . Read the interview below to learn more on...

Five Questions with Casey: Sophie Dagenais on the Baltimore Unrest and the Way Forward

News type: 
Member News
October 27, 2015, By the Annie E. Casey Foundation As director of the Baltimore Civic Site team, Sophie Dagenais oversees Casey’s community-based investment strategies and grant-making activities in Baltimore. She also advises the Foundation on investing in the East Baltimore Revitalization Initiative, a major community and economic development project aimed at transforming an 88-acre East Baltimore neighborhood. Prior to joining Casey, Dagenais served as chief of staff for Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. A member of the New York and Maryland Bar Associations, she previously worked...

Five Things President Obama Could Do to Stop the Killing

News type: 
News from the Field
By Gordon Whitman, Deputy Director, PICO National Network If my son - who is 14 years old, has Autism and is hearing impaired - were African-American I would be worried every time he left the house to walk to school or the library, worried that he'd have a failed encounter with a teacher, school administrator or police officer that would result in him being hurt, psychologically or physically. That anxiety - which I know many parents of African-American and Latino children have - is by no means irrational. Whites bring a host of unthinking stereotypes into their encounters with African-...

Following Ferguson

News type: 
Member News
by Eric Ward, Program Officer, Advancing Racial Justice and Minority Rights, Ford Foundation August 22, 2014 In Ferguson, Mo. protests are in their 13th day. And while a governor-imposed curfew has been lifted and National Guard units have been withdrawn, a “state of emergency” remains in place. Amid a flood of related reading, these articles and resources have stood out to me. I hope their insights will fuel your own discussions about Ferguson and the larger systems at play. Via: Ford Foundation Equals Change

For Philanthropy, Time to Double Down to End Injustice

News type: 
Member News
For Philanthropy, Time to Double Down to End Injustice January 10, 2017 By Jennifer Buffett, Peter Buffett, and Pamela Shifman of the NoVo Foundation As people across the country prepare for the White House transition next week, foundations and other nonprofits are grappling with the consequences of change for our collective future, especially as we have witnessed how deep a grip misogyny and racism hold over America. With the country’s leadership, priorities, and legislative agenda now in flux, grant makers understandably feel compelled to explore new strategies to fulfill their missions and...

Freedom Side Open Letter

News type: 
News from the Field
To Whom It May Concern; This is an open letter from frontline leaders engaged in the struggle for justice in Ferguson and the larger fight against police brutality and Black dehumanization, to request real solidarity. This is a moment recorded for the future and we are writing this letter to open up ways for people to stand in solidarity. This is a historical moment that young people are leading, but that should come as no surprise because young people have always been the fuel of social movements. Youth leaders recruiting, planning, living and creating the change we want to see and the world...

From Palestine to Ferguson— Justice for Mike Brown, Justice for Gaza

News type: 
News from the Field
For the last 70 days the youth of Ferguson, Missouri have led protests and vigils every night in remembrance of 18 year old Michael Brown and the countless other black lives that are cut short at the rate of at least 400 annually by police in the United States . This past weekend protesters merged on Ferguson for a weekend of action called for by the youth of Ferguson with actions, protests and acts of civil disobedience taking place from Friday to Monday, October 10th to the 13th. Mustafa Abdullah is a community organizer originally from North Carolina who moved to St. Louis two years ago to...

From the Front Lines of Ferguson

News type: 
Member News
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"] April 10, 2015 by Terrance Pitts, Program Officer, Open Society Foundations Read the original blog post here. The incident...

Funders: Let's Stop Fixating on Our Issues and Start Supporting Our Values

News type: 
Member News
Funders: Let's Stop Fixating on Our Issues and Start Supporting Our Values February 3, 2017 By Dimple Abichandani, Executive Director of General Service Foundation As I think about where we go from here, I can’t stop thinking about the election. The 2010 election. In 2010, there were two dozen states that had anti-Sharia law ballot measures and/or legislation pending. In fact, Sharia law did not pose any real threat to communities, but these ballot measures introduced by conservatives tested whether Islamophobia mobilized voters. On election day in 2010, voters in Oklahoma overwhelmingly...

Funding needs in Ferguson, MO

News type: 
Member News
Funding needs in Ferguson, MO, as compiled by Rev. Starsky D. Wilson, President & CEO of the Deaconess Foundation and Robert Hughes, PhD, President & CEO of the Missouri Foundation for Health. Funders engaged community-based leaders to delineate current efforts aimed at meeting the needs in the Ferguson area, as well as to identify gaps that present opportunities for additional investment. This document provides a snapshot of our environmental scan captured in the beginning of December 2014. It represents a broad spectrum of activity and ideology from a diverse set of local funders...

Funding Opportunity: Protesters in Cleveland

News type: 
Member News
It's not too late to donate! Click here for more information and to donate . A Message from the Third Wave Fund : In July 2015, over 1600 people from across the country gathered at the Movement for Black Lives meeting in Cleveland to reflect, grow, fellowship, and remember our fallen. Three months later, there has been no justice in the city of Cleveland or in the state of Ohio for those who have been brutalized and killed at the hands of the state. Rather, the violence experienced by Black folks in Cleveland has escalated with the murders of trans women, the de-funding of health clinics such...

Grant Makers Give Money Fast to Challenge Trump Policies

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
03/13/2017
February 24, 2017 By Rebecca Koenig, The Chronicle of Philanthropy The unprecedented sums individual donors have given to progressive nonprofits since the presidential election have drawn ample attention. The American Civil Liberties Union alone raised $24 million in one weekend after it took on Donald Trump’s travel ban, earning the venerable charity headlines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and Politico. Foundation responses to the new administration’s policies have flown under the radar. But grant makers worried about how the change in leadership might affect the...

Grant Makers Should Seize the Moment to Seek Racial Justice Solutions

News type: 
NFG Blog
by Shireen Zaman, Director, Proteus Fund's Security & Rights Collborative and Laila Mehta, Former Director, Asian Amiercans and Pacific Islands in Philanthropy Civic Engagement Fund This post originally appeared as a "Letter to the Editor" in the September 21 issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy To the Editor: The Chronicle’s article " After Ferguson, Grant Makers Are Seeking Fresh Solutions to Racial-Justice Problems " (September 11) clearly expresses the need for funders to address underlying causes of racial tensions in this country. In addition to the recent deaths...

Headwaters Foundation for Justice Launches Emergency Fund For Black Lives

News type: 
Member News
Contact: Maria De La Cruz (612)270-2307 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, December 9, 2015 – Headwaters Foundation for Justice is launching “the Emergency Fund for Black Lives” to provide grants to Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (NOC). These two groups have inspired, mobilized, and supported hundreds of community members to call out and change police violence against people of color. With an initial goal of $100,000, Headwaters Foundation has already raised over $60,000 by reaching out to individual donors and foundation partners. On...

Headwaters Foundation for Justice Relaunches Emergency Fund for Black Lives

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Member News
Headwaters Foundation for Justice Relaunches Emergency Fund for Black Lives Contact: Maria De La Cruz 612-400-6263 Our Response to Recent Events: July 2016 The killing of Jamar Clark in Minneapolis and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights have catalyzed a conversation about racial and economic justice in Minnesota. Organizers on the ground are demanding that our law makers and other leaders address issues like criminalization, state violence, and public safety. Young, queer, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color are leading the movement by putting their bodies, often literally, on the...

I Am the Black Woman Who Interrupted the Netroots Presidential Town Hall, and This Is Why

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News from the Field
by Tia Oso Identities.mic, July 21, 2015 I am Tia Oso, the black woman who took to the stage and demanded a microphone on July 18 at the Netroots Nation Presidential Town Hall in Phoenix, Arizona. I did this to focus the attention of the nation's largest gathering of progressive leaders and presidential hopefuls on the death of Sandra Bland and other black women killed while in police custody, because the most important and urgent issue of our day is structural violence and systemic racism that is oppressing and killing black women, men and children. This is an emergency . Sandra Bland and I...

I Did What I Was Paid to Do': Race Control and America

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News from the Field
by Troy Jackson, Director, The AMOS Project & Co-author of Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith Law enforcement, prosecutors, and clergy in this country are simply doing what we are paid to do. Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, in an interview with George Stephanopoulis, shared his belief that in the altercation with and subsequent killing of Michael Brown, "I did what I was paid to do." While there are many disputed facts around what happened between Brown and Wilson in the last few moments of Brown's life, Wilson is unquestionably telling the truth when he says he was...

In ‘Moral Monday,’ activists protest Brown shooting with acts of civil disobedience

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News from the Field
By Wesley Lowery and Arelis R. Hernández , Washington Post - October 13, 2014. ST. LOUIS – In a third day of civil disobedience, local and national clergy members with up-stretched arms cross police lines and were arrested during a protest at the Ferguson Police Department. The planned act, which organizers called Moral Monday, featured a more-than-four-hour protest in which waves of clergy demanded to speak with Ferguson Police chief Tom Jackson and crossed police lines. Among those arrested in one of the first waves was Dr. Cornel West, an activist and scholar who declared...
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Is Democracy Funding Undemocratic? Funding Civic Engagement in an Era of Protest

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News from the Field
By Austin Belali Nonprofit Quarterly - March 22, 2016 This piece is part of our ongoing Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Project created to spotlight millennials’ voices and thoughts on diversity and justice. We urge you to read how this project came together in collaboration between NPQ and the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network and about the ideology behind this series. We intend to publish another 20 pieces in the upcoming months. Readers will be able to subscribe to an RSS feed to follow articles as they are published, approximately every two weeks. NPQ and YNPN will be using the...

Jews for Racial Justice Moving the Conversation About Police Brutality Into White Communities

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News from the Field
Thursday, 02 July 2015 By Chris Crass, Truthout | Interview As New York City erupted in December 2014 in mass, nonviolent, disruptive direct action after the non-indictment of the officer who murdered Eric Garner and the officers who were accomplices in this brutal crime, one of the actions that grabbed national headlines and many a heart, was organized by Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) . Over 400 members of JFREJ, including Rabbis and other leaders in the Jewish community, took to the streets of the primarily white, wealthy and Jewish, Upper West Side. This civil disobedience...

Justice Dept. to investigate NYC chokehold death

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News from the Field
By Eric Tucker , Associated Press, December 3, 2014. WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will conduct a federal investigation into the chokehold death of an unarmed black man after a grand jury in New York City declined to indict the white police officer who applied the move, Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday. The investigation will look for potential civil rights investigations in the July 17 death of Eric Garner, 43, who was confronted by the officer on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. A video shot by an...

Lawyers descend on Ferguson ahead of grand jury decision

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News from the Field
By Tim Reid, Reuters, November 21, 2014. FERGUSON, Mo Nov 21 (Reuters) - Hundreds of civil rights lawyers from across America are descending on Ferguson, Missouri as police and protesters prepare for a grand jury decision on whether to charge the officer who killed an unarmed black teenager in August. The attorneys are arriving in Ferguson as talks between protest groups and police have stalled over a refusal by officials to rule out the use of riot gear, tear gas and militarized equipment if demonstrations turn violent should a grand jury decide not to indict police officer Darren Wilson,...

Lessons for Ferguson from 4,000 Miles Away

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Member News
November 25, 2014 by Allison Brown, Program Officer, Open Society Foundations Read the original post on the blog of the Open Society Foundations We proceeded on a country road His mother’s eyes red and swole Her child was never comin’ home Said a prayer for his soul As the coffin had closed, committed to the earth below First seed she had sown, would be a tree never grown Shade that was never known Who controls the Terrordome, the men with hearts made of stone Who love only what they own — Mos Def, “Tree Never Grown,” Hip Hop for Respect (2000), in response to the killing of Amadou Diallo...

LGBTQ Organizations Stand in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter

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News from the Field
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jennifer Houston, Director, External Affairs jhouston@outfront.org LGBTQ Organizations Stand in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter December 3rd, 2015 (Minneapolis) — Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities know that liberation is not a given; it is fought for. We remember it was trans women of color who led the riots at Stonewall, catalyzing a national movement. Before Stonewall, trans people who were getting arrested spurred the Compton Cafeteria Riots in 1966. We remember the White Night Riots...

Mall Of America Protest A “Decoy” Says Black Lives Matter

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News from the Field
By: Michael McIntee | December 23, 2015 | The Uptake Black Lives Matter organizers say their announced protest at the Mall of America was a “planned diversion” and a “decoy.” Their real goal was the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport. Protesters did show up at the nation’s largest shopping mall Wednesday afternoon, but they quickly left and boarded trains for a quick trip to the nearby MSP airport where they blocked traffic and caused delays at both of the airports. As proof that the airport action was planned and not just an adlib, Black Lives Matter points to a tweet with a video showing...

Many organizers at the forefront of protests are women, despite men taking center stage

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News from the Field
By Caitlin Goldblatt, City Paper Recent Columns Updated April 27, 2015 The struggle to control the narrative of Saturday’s protests is part of a much longer struggle for control over the narratives of marginalized individuals and communities in the United States. After hours of more than a thousand marching from Gilmor Homes to the Western District police station, to rally at City Hall, with no incident, a seemingly spontaneous march to Camden Yards during a baseball game triggered a series of events whose timeline journalists are still piecing together from video footage. Many organizers at...

Meet the Woman Behind #BlackLivesMatter — The Hashtag That Became a Civil Rights Movement

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News from the Field
Alicia Garza and two friends first tweeted #BlackLivesMatter to spark a conversation after the death of Trayvon Martin. Three years later, their hashtag has become a movement. Liz Pleasant, May 01, 2015, Yes! Magazine Following the police killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina, TIME Magazine hit newsstands with a cover dominated by large, block letters: “Black Lives Matter.” #BlackLivesMatter has infiltrated America’s modern vocabulary. It’s the rallying cry for a movement that began getting a lot of national attention after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson...

Million Hoodies Chapter Grant Fund

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News from the Field
Organized by Million Hoodies Movement Donate Now THE STORY: Million Hoodies Movement for Justice is a national racial justice organization dedicated to ending the mass criminalization of young people of color. We utilize media and grassroots organizing to transform the public discourse on systemic racism and white supremacy and build next generation human rights leaders with a network of concerned students and artists across the country. This fundraiser will provide small organizing and campaign grants to Million Hoodies chapters at...

Minneapolis Protestors Occupy Police Precinct, Shut Down Highway After Police Kill Jamar Clark

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News from the Field
by Kenrya Rankin Naase, ColorLines Tue, Nov 17, 2015 4:59 PM EST On November 15, 2015, at about 1 a.m., Minneapolis police shot Jamar Clark, an unarmed 24-year-old black man. Last night, hundreds of protestors shut down a major highway in a bid for justice. Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau detailed officers’ account of the shooting during a press conference on Sunday. Two officers say they were called to break up a domestic dispute between Clark and his girlfriend, and that he was interfering as EMTs were caring for her. They maintain that Clark struggled with officers and one of them...

Minneapolis repeals lurking, spitting laws that criminalize people of color

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News from the Field
Minnesota Neighborhoods Organizing for Change (MN NOC) June 5, 2015 Today, after months of organizing and community pressure, the Minneapolis City Council voted 12-1 to repeal laws against lurking and spitting. These laws, disproportionately enforced against people of color, had been criticized as "Minneapolis Black Codes." The repeal comes on the heels of a new ACLU report showing that in Minneapolis, black and Native American people are over 8 times more likely to be arrested for low level offenses than white people. The Twin Cities' racial disparities, among the worst in the nation on...

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon Declares State Of Emergency Ahead Of Grand Jury Decision

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News from the Field
By Ashley Alman , Huffington Post, November 17, 2014. Gov. Jay Nixon (D) issued an executive order on Monday declaring a state of emergency in Missouri as the nation awaits a grand jury decision in the case of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. Citing "periods of unrest" in the city of Ferguson and other places in the St. Louis area following Brown's Aug. 9 death, Nixon announced the executive order as a measure to protect the citizens and businesses of Missouri from "violence and damage." "I further direct the Missouri State Highway...

More is required of us

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Member News
by Vanessa Daniel, Groundswell Fund August 5, 2016 - Health & Environmental Funders Network “I think we all know, deep down, that something more is required of us now. This truth is difficult to face because it’s inconvenient and deeply unsettling. And yet silence isn’t an option. And I’m sure that many who refused to ride segregated buses in Montgomery after Rosa Parks stood her ground wished they could’ve taken the bus, rather than walk miles in protest, day after day, for a whole year. But they knew they had to walk. And so do we.” – Michelle Alexander What more is required of...

No more fake budgets?! Exploring Equity-Based Approaches to Financial Review

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Member News
No more fake budgets?! Exploring Equity-Based Approaches to Financial Review By Iris Garcia , Grants Manager at Akonadi Foundation Since 2000, Akonadi Foundation has been working to support and nurture racial justice movement building through our core grantmaking programs, the Arc Toward Justice Fund and the Beloved Community Fund. Over the past 17 years, we have been seeking out ways to align our internal systems and practices with our racial justice values. Through Akonadi’s involvement with Bay Area Justice Funders Network, we met Carol Cantwell, the founder of Fun with Financials , who...

Obama Calls for Changes in Policing After Task Force Report

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News from the Field
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, The New York Times March 2, 2015 WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday called for prompt action to change police practices across the country after the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island at the hands of white officers exposed frustrations about law enforcement in minority communities. Mr. Obama, unveiling the recommendations of a White House task force created in the wake of the killings, said local law enforcement agencies should consider requiring independent criminal investigations and independent prosecutors in cases where the use...

OBS Launches Quality Policing Initiative

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News from the Field
In December 2014, Organization for Black Struggle launched their Quality Policing Initiative : The killings of Mike Brown, Kajieme Powell, Vonderrit Myers and others are not the result of abnormal incidents resulting in accidents, nor do these killings reflect “one bad apple” police officer. It is a manifestation of a system of policing that is unaccountable, out of control and acts from its worst impulses of racism and aggression. It sees black and brown citizens as individual targets and whole communities as collective threats. The existing situation means that too frequently there will be...

Oct 22-24 in Chicago: Confronting the International Association of Chiefs of Police

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News from the Field
Disruption can oftentimes be a very stressful thing. Disruption can cause nervousness and anxiety in the person doing the disruption, and tension and anger in the person being disrupted. Disruption can also be a source of movement and progress. It’s safe to assume that the disruption of Democratic Presidential candidates by Black Lives Matter leaders has spurred those candidates to quickly develop policy platforms that address racial justice. Being disruptive may not always be polite and respectable, but it can make a statement and more importantly move your agenda. It is with this in mind...

One year after Eric Garner’s death, we still are not safe

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News from the Field
By Dante Barry, Executive Director, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice MSNBC.com, 07/17/15 12:30 PM—Updated 07/21/15 06:12 PM One year has passed since the death of Eric Garner and it seems New Yorkers are still living in Michael Bloomberg’s “two cities.” In 2013, Bill de Blasio campaigned to replace the longtime mayor with a platform advocating police reform and economic populism. He won his campaign by echoing the words of protest movements and promising to help those most impacted by policing, poverty, and criminalization. But while de Blasio as mayor has reined in the city’s “stop-and-...

Our cynicism will not build a movement. Collaboration will.

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News from the Field
Our cynicism will not build a movement. Collaboration will. January 26, 2017 By Alicia Garza I’ve been grappling with how to challenge cynicism in a moment that requires all of us to show up differently. On Saturday, I joined more than a million women in Washington, D.C., to register my opposition to the new regime. Participating in the Women’s March — if you count satellite protests around the country, the largest one-day mobilization in the history of the United States — was both symbolic and challenging. Like many other black women, I was conflicted about participating. That a group of...

Outrage Over Garner and Brown Cases Should Keep Philanthropy Focused on Criminal Justice

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News from the Field
By Vincent Stehle, The Chronicle of Philanthropy. December 17, 2014 The streets of Ferguson, Mo., New York City, and many other cities across the nation have been overflowing with protests for the past month in reaction to grand-jury decisions not to indict police officers responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The anger and frustration many people feel over those deaths and many others involving the excessive use of force by police is understandable, particularly when it comes to encounters with African-American men and boys. ProPublica, an investigative journalism...

Philanthropy on the Frontlines of Ferguson

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Member News
The Deaconess Foundation seeks to shift public policy, mobilize community members, and strengthen advocacy efforts related to children and youth. By Rev. Starsky D. Wilson Standford Social Innovation Review - Spring 2016 Few moments in life are filled with the hope and promise of a high school graduation. Marked by celebration and anticipation of the future, commencement is one of the most important milestones in a young person’s life. For students in Normandy High School’s class of 2014, though, graduation was also a stark reminder of the deep inequities facing many of...

Police arrest protesters as St. Louis awaits grand jury decision

News type: 
News from the Field
By Scott Malone and Daniel Wallis , Reuters - November 20, 2014. (Reuters) - Police in Ferguson, Missouri, kept alert on Thursday for signs of tension after arresting five people for blocking a street the night before in a protest demanding the criminal indictment of a white police officer who shot dead an unarmed black teenager in August. The St. Louis suburb has been bracing for months to learn whether a St. Louis County grand jury will charge police officer Darren Wilson in the slaying of 18-year-old Michael Brown, a case that has become a flashpoint for often-troubled U.S...

Police in Ferguson committed human rights abuses: Amnesty report

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News from the Field
By Carey Gillam , Reuters. October 24, 2014. (Reuters) - Police in Ferguson, Missouri, committed human rights abuses as they sought to quell mostly peaceful protests that erupted after an officer killed an unarmed black teenager, an international human rights organization said in a report released on Friday. The Amnesty International report said law enforcement officers should be investigated by U.S. authorities for the abuses, which occurred during weeks of racially charged protests that erupted after white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown...

Police In Ferguson Stock Up On Riot Gear Ahead Of Grand Jury Decision

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News from the Field
By Ryan J. Reilly , Huffington Post, October 28, 2014. WASHINGTON -- The St. Louis County Police Department has stocked up on tear gas, less-lethal ammunition and plastic handcuffs in anticipation of massive protests in the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, if a grand jury doesn't indict the police officer who killed 18-year-old Michael Brown . The jury is expected to reach its decision sometime in November. Many protesters in Ferguson do not believe that Officer Darren Wilson will be indicted and contend that recent grand jury leaks are meant to prepare the public for that...

Police Reform Organizers Pitch Net Neutrality To FCC

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News from the Field
by Matt Sledge, Huffington Post. January 9, 2015. Police reform organizers traveled to Capitol Hill and the Federal Communications Commission on Friday to push for open access to the Internet, which they say is an increasingly vital organizing tool in the wake of the controversial deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. The delegation met with black members of Congress including Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). They also met with one commissioner and staffers from the FCC, which will decide in February whether to classify broadband Internet as a public utility, a step...

Police Shootings Since Ferguson Put Foundations to the Test

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Member News
By Drew Lindsay, Chronicle of Philanthropy July 19, 2016 In mid-April, a police-reform task force appointed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivered a handsome 183-page report, its cover adorned with photos of city residents and comforting words about "restoring trust." Yet the words inside carried a stinging condemnation of systemic racism in the city’s law enforcement. A similar message is routinely delivered on the streets of Chicago with more raw power and emotion. Since the November release of video footage showing a police officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, protests have...

Policing the Homeless: Broken Windows ‘On Steroids”

News type: 
News from the Field
by Lynn Lewis March 29, 2016, The Crime Report Cities, towns and rural areas all over the United States are experiencing a housing crisis not seen since the Great Depression. Homelessness is the tip of the iceberg of that crisis; but rather than address its causes, local authorities are treating it as a law enforcement problem. That has not only led to real tragedies, but violates the Constitution. In recent years, we’ve seen police officers used to force homeless folks out of public spaces, buttressed by laws that effectively criminalize life-sustaining behavior such as lying down in a park...

PolicyLink

News type: 
News from the Field
On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot multiple times and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri. This tragic act provoked grief and outrage in Ferguson and across the country. We mourned the loss of an innocent young man, taken before his time, and recognized that his killing was the latest in a long and rapidly growing succession of cases involving police use of lethal force against unarmed people of color. The disproportionate, militarized police response to subsequent community protests in Ferguson—including the use of tear...

Private University Police Patrol Off-Campus (and Off the Record)

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News from the Field
by Hannah K. Gold, Pacific Standard Mar 17, 2015 Members of the University of Chicago Police Department carry guns, make arrests, and patrol tens of thousands of residents unaffiliated with the university—but they don’t have to disclose any information about stops, arrests, and policies. Two Illinois Representatives are finally trying to change that. Read the full article .

Protesters Demand Action From Ohio Attorney General Over Police Use Of Force

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News from the Field
By Glenn McEntyre , WBNS - 10TV, December 4, 2014. COLUMBUS, Ohio - Outrage over Eric Garner's deadly confrontation with New York City police has sparked protests across the country, including in Columbus. Protestors say Ohio has its own examples of police force that ended in the deaths of young black people. And, they are demanding changes from Ohio’s Attorney General. It is painful to watch the final moments of Eric Garner's life: taken to the ground by New York City police, an officer's arm at his throat, as Garner gasps for air. Eleven times he chokes out his final,...

Questions Linger for LGBT Community After Police Kill Jessie Hernandez

News type: 
News from the Field
by Jamilah King, Wed, Feb 18, 2015 7:00 AM EST, ColorLines It's an unseasonably warm February Friday in Denver and four young activists are looking for a place to eat lunch. They don't have much time -- it's already 12:30, and Diane Amaya has to be back at work in the clerical office at the Denver Elections Division by 1:00 -- so they're scouring the grass around the city's McNichols Civic Center. The lawns are mostly empty, minus the police SUV blaring Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," but they're worried about crossing an invisible boundary. "Why can't we sit there?" asks Angel Campos, holding...

Rapid Response Racial Justice Fund

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Member News
[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]The California Endowment, The California Wellness Foundation, Rosenberg Foundation, and Liberty Hill Foundation have...

Relatives of fallen press Cuomo for special prosecutor

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News from the Field
by Casey Seiler, Capitol Confidential (Casey Seiler, Times Union) Relatives of New Yorkers who died at the hands of law enforcement returned to Albany to push the Legislature to reject anything short of the appointment of a special prosecutor to review such cases — a stance that makes Gov. Andrew Cuomo their ally and an unlikely opponent. Gwen Carr, whose son Eric Garner died last summer after police put him in a chokehold as he was arrested for selling loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street corner, spoke during the advocates’ session-ending return visit. “We need someone to look at the...

She was only a baby': last charge dropped in police raid that killed sleeping Detroit child

News type: 
News from the Field
by Rose Hackman, The Guardian. January 31, 2015. Final charges against Joseph Weekley, a police officer who shot dead a 7-year-old girl, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, in Detroit in May 2010, were dismissed on Friday, leaving a family bereft and raising serious concern among national groups over an increasingly militarized –police force. In an echo of deaths at police hands that rocked the US last year, including those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York, Officer Weekley is white and Aiyana Stanley-Jones was black. Juries twice failed to reach a verdict in Weekley’s...

Shifting Gears for Racial Justice

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Member News
Release Date: 
03/08/2016
by Lindsay Ryder Program Officer, Security & Rights Collaborative What does “acting in solidarity” mean to you? “Understanding and acting on the connections between our common struggles.” “Creating space in our field meetings, calls and events to address anti-black racism in our spaces.” “Joining direct action with other communities of color to demand reform, accountability and awareness.” These are a few of the answer that leaders of national civil rights organizations provided in response to this question, and their statements embody the intersectional and cross-...

Solutions Emerging from the Movement for Black Lives

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News from the Field
By Julie Quiroz, May 13, 2015, Let's Talk: At the Heart of Movement Building , The Movement Strategy Center I am an ally in the movement for Black lives, so social and alternative media are my required reading. It’s there – not in the shamefully racist and sensationalistic corporate media – where I find reporting from the streets and movement perspectives from progressive Black leaders. Even if I’m far away from a particular struggle, social and alternative media help me connect the dots to wherever I am. Whether I’m in the grocery store or at a family barbeque, I need to be grounded and...

Spotlight: Justice Committee, North Star Fund Grantee

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Member News
Cori Parrish, Deputy Director of Programs and Operations North Star Fund January 2016 The Justice Committee (JC) is among the groups leading a movement against police violence and systemic racism in New York City. They are empowering low-income Latino/a communities and other people of color to address these issues. JC members and leaders are New Yorkers whose lives are impacted by police violence, including families who have lost loved ones to the New York Police Department. JC is a co-founder and steering committee member of Communities United for Police Reform. Since 2004, Justice Committee...

St. Louis rapper: In U.S., police murder of blacks legal in all but name

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News from the Field
By Madalena Araujo, CNN, November 25, 2014. St. Louis rapper Tef Poe told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday that he has “come to terms with the fact that in the United States of America it is perfectly legal for police officers to murder people of color.” Poe’s comments come as Americans have taken to the streets across the country to voice their frustration at a grand jury decision not to indict the police officer who shot dead an unarmed black 18-year-old in August. The idea that a police office can kill someone without accountability is something "we’re coping with and...

Statement from Center Social Inclusion

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News from the Field
We at Center for Social Inclusion (CSI) are deeply disappointed by the grand jury decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Mike Brown. We remember that at the center of this tragedy is an 18 year old young man, Mike Brown, and the tremendous loss his family will endure for the rest of their lives. We look to the residents of Ferguson, particularly young people, who peacefully took to the streets and organized every day to tell the world about Mike Brown, to proclaim that #BlackLivesMatter, and to demand justice. Yesterday, justice was not served. The criminal justice...

Statement: Do Not Militarize Our Mourning: Orlando and the Ongoing Tragedy Against LGBTSTGNC POC

News type: 
News from the Field
See the original post on the Audre Lorde Project website . June 15, 2016 We at the Audre Lorde Project are devastated by the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando which resulted in the murder of 49 queer and trans people (the majority of whom are Black, Latinx, and/or Afrolatinx), including Enrique Rios from Brooklyn. We send our deepest condolences to all of the families, lovers, and friends of the victims and all of the Southern queer and trans organizers who continue to fight for liberation in their name. We are with you in solidarity. We are constantly reminded...

Stop the War on Baltimore

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News from the Field
Now is the time for Mayor Rawlings Blake to put an end to Baltimore police militarization. Dante Barry, The Nation , May 6, 2015 Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake has lifted the citywide curfew, and the National Guard plans to implement a drawdown. Now is the time for Mayor Rawlings Blake to put an end to Baltimore police militarization. The response to the killing of Michael Brown last year in Ferguson opened up a national conversation around police militarization and how militarized police disproportionately affect communities of color. Thanks to the wars on drugs...

Support Chicago Protesters

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News from the Field
BYP 100 has partnered with The Chicago Community Bond Fund to raise funds. Donate now to support protesters . Watch videos of the protests here . Statement from BYP100 Regarding ‪#‎STOPTHECOPS‬ March happening NOW October 24, 2015 Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) , Assata’s Daughters, We Charge Genocide and Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD) are taking action today to shut-down the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Conference in Chicago to demonstrate the urgency for a fundamental shift in the way this country invests in our most valuable...

Support Minneapolis Protesters

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News from the Field
Last updated December 2, 201. Please check back regularly for updates. DONATE to Black Lives Matter Minneapolis : Please donate to help support their efforts with bail, legal support, and other supplies. ********************************* November 27, 2015 Dear Community, In the past 10 days Minneapolis has experienced horrific acts of violence, first with the shooting of Jamar Clark, a 24 year old unarmed black man, who was killed by the Minneapolis police just over a week ago. Then, on Monday night, in the wake of an ongoing peaceful occupation demanding justice for Jamar...

Support Protesters in Chicago

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News from the Field
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 1, 2015 Contact: Camesha Jones 240-533-2876 chicago.chapter@byp100.org OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM THE BYP100 ON THE FIRING OF CPD POLICE SUPERINTENDENT GARRY MCCARTHY BYP100 calls for resignation of Mayor Emanuel and States Attorney Alvarez, defunding of policing and investment in Black futures The Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) is pleased to learn that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has taken one necessary step towards holding himself and the city of Chicago accountable for its promotion and...

Sustaining a movement for fair and just policing: Accelerating the pace of real change

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Member News
National awareness of police brutality and the need for policing reform is at an all-time high. Sustained attention to horrific moments has led to the birth of a movement, and a tipping point is in sight. Tides and its sister organization, The Advocacy Fund, work closely with funders and grassroots organizers to accelerate policing reform. Since 2010, we’ve been bringing people together to find innovative solutions for safer communities. Through partnerships with several New York-based foundations, the Funds for Fair and Just Policing at Tides and The Advocacy Fund have granted over $8...

The criminalization of Muslim students must end

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News from the Field
Ahmed Mohamed’s treatment by teachers and police show us the extent to which Islamophobia has spread to schools September 17, 2015 by Deepa Iyer, for Aljazeera America The experience of Ahmed Mohamed — a Sudanese Muslim high school freshman who was suspended and arrested in Irving, Texas, after his teachers and administrators believed that a clock he made was a bomb — has caught America’s attention. Even President Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg weighed in, inviting Mohamed to the White House and Facebook , respectively. But these gestures, as sincere as they are, cannot by themselves...

The long, halting, unfinished fight to end racial profiling in America

News type: 
News from the Field
By Emily Badger Originally published on WashingtonPost.com , December 4, 2014. In his very first address to Congress — in the speech where new presidents first detail their priorities for the nation — George W. Bush devoted a few moments to an unlikely topic: racial profiling. "Too many of our citizens have cause to doubt our nation's justice," he said, "when the law points a finger of suspicion at groups instead of individuals." The issue had, in fact, played into the 2000 election. The national news was full of stories of doctors and lawyers and NFL players stopped for "...

The National Bar Association Responds to the Grand Jury's Decision Not to Indict Police Officer Darren Wilson in the Shooting Death of Michael Brown

News type: 
News from the Field
National Bar Association, November 24, 2014. WASHINGTON, DC – The National Bar Association is questioning how the Grand Jury, considering the evidence before them, could reach the conclusion that Darren Wilson should not be indicted and tried for the shooting death of Michael Brown. National Bar Association President Pamela J. Meanes expresses her sincere disappointment with the outcome of the Grand Jury’s decision but has made it abundantly clear that the National Bar Association stands firm and will be calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to pursue...

The Police Are Killing One Group at a Staggering Rate, and Nobody Is Talking About It

News type: 
News from the Field
By Zak Cheney-Rice, February 05, 2015 , Identities.mic The end of 2014 was a bloody time for Native Americans. Even as protesters rallied against the police killings of unarmed black people like Michael Brown and Eric Garner in December, Rapid City police fired five bullets into Allen Locke, a 30-year-old Lakota man living in South Dakota. In a tragic bit of irony, it was later revealed that Locke had been at a demonstration against police killings of indigenous people just one day earlier. Yet while devastating for his family and community, Locke's death illustrates a much bigger problem:...

The Power of the People – SB1445 is a Strategic Victory With Lessons for Alliance Building

News type: 
News from the Field
Post by Tia Oso, National Coordinator for the Black Immigration Network and BAJI Arizona Organizer Late Monday , in a much anticipated decision, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey vetoed Senate Bill 1445 , dubbed the “Secret Police” bill. As the Movement for Black Lives shines the light of justice on the crisis of police brutality plaguing Black communities across the country, powerful Arizona police unions used their influence to introduce SB1445. The bill withheld the identity of officers that used deadly force or police brutality for 60 days, as well as redacting officer’s...

The Religious Effort in Ferguson

News type: 
News from the Field
During a weekend of protests two months after Michael Brown's death, clergy members speak out for unity and repentance. Allen McDuffee Oct 13 2014 Originally published in The Atlantic The weekend of demonstrations dubbed "FergusonOctober," two months after the fatal shooting of teenager Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, came to a close with "Moral Monday," during which local and national religious leaders tried to help heal a badly damaged community in the absence of any forward movement on legal fronts. "My faith compels me to be here," Bishop Wayne Smith of the Episcopal...

Third Wave Fund Launches Mobilize Power Fund for Urgent Gender Justice Activism

News type: 
Member News
Third Wave Fund's new Mobilize Power Fund is now accepting proposals ! This fund supports urgent organizing, activism, and mobilization led by young women of color, queer, and transgender youth around the country who lead movements for justice and take on this country's most challenging issues. Mobilize Power Fund The effort to end gender, racial, and economic oppression is long-term, yet there are critical moments that call for quick action. This fund was set up to support grassroots groups who are often the first to respond to issues of state-violence, reproductive...

Trans Delegation to the Movement for Black Lives Convening

News type: 
News from the Field
The Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), based in San Francisco, has been spearheading the efforts to mobilize resources to support a national delegation of 16 black trans, gender non-conforming and intersex leaders to be able to attend this historical national convening and hold a one day work meeting previous to the convening. As a part of and separately mirroring the explosion of people’s movement in response to police brutality a trans liberation movement has blossomed within the intensity of violence. As an anchor organization with a long-term (12 years)...

Updates on Ferguson, Cleveland, and NYC

News type: 
NFG Blog
By Lorraine Ramirez , Program Manager, Neighborhood Funders Group, November 25, 2014. As you know, last night it was announced that the grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown. Like many of you, we are saddened and angry, but unfortunately not surprised, given the long time crisis level of police violence against communities of color, low-income communities, LGBTQ communities, and others across the country. NFG is committed to continuing this conversation and movement against systemic racism, in close partnership with our sister...

Urgent Funding Needs and Opportunities

News type: 
Member News
Following are opportunities to fund local organizing in Ferguson, MO, New York, California and nationally. Last updated March 23, 2015. F erguson, MO: Funding needs in Ferguson, MO, as compiled by Rev. Starsky D. Wilson, President & CEO of the Deaconess Foundation and Robert Hughes, PhD, President & CEO of the Missouri Foundation for Health. Funders engaged community-based leaders to delineate current efforts aimed at meeting the needs in the Ferguson area, as well as to identify gaps that present opportunities for additional investment. This...

USHRN Statement on the State of Emergency of Anti-Trans Hate Violence

News type: 
News from the Field
August 21, 2015 The US Human Rights Network's Coordinating Center extends our thoughts and prayers to the families and loved ones of the 18 transgender women, - primarily women of color, and specifically Black, - whose lives have been taken this year due to hate violence. Along with our members, we raised this issue as a human rights crisis in March and have since seen the numbers increase at an alarming rate. These numbers are likely on the conservative end as they are only the reported cases. When we include Mya Hall, a Black trans woman who was killed by the NSA, the number jumps up to 19...

We Call it the "American Dream"

News type: 
News from the Field
by Amaha Kassa, Executive Director, African Communities Together Ask immigrants why we came to America, and you will hear millions of different stories. But our many stories usually boil down to just a few shared reasons. Safety, freedom, opportunity, and family. When immigrants get to America, we often find realizing our dreams harder than we imagined. But immigrants persevere, and we keep fighting for the dreams that inspired us to cross borders and oceans and continents. What immigrants don’t always fully appreciate is that many native-born Americans have had to fight just as hard and...

We Can’t Win a Right To The City Unless #Black Lives Matter

News type: 
News from the Field
Right to the City Alliance - March 2015 Wall Street, the financial center of the most powerful city in the world, was built and maintained through slave labor. The massive profiteering of big banks and private equity firms that prevails, rides on the backs of black and brown families. Movements across America confronting the crisis of foreclosure, gentrification and displacement, need to have black leaders who help define the vision for our right to the city. Here in the United States, the recent momentum built in the fight against state violence and for a world where #blacklivesmatter has...

We will not be silenced.

News type: 
News from the Field
ACTIVISTS BLAST NYPD ATTEMPTS TO SILENCE MOVEMENT FOR CHANGE New York, NY — Activists issued a scathing statement this afternoon in response to recent attempts by the NYPD to silence the efforts of citizens seeking justice for victims of police violence. The letter, drafted by Ferguson Action, and cosigned by over a dozen grassroots organizations takes aim at PBA president Patrick Lynch and Commissioner Bratton for their reckless attempts to conflate constitutionally protected protest activities with the tragic murders of officers Ramos and Liu: “The events...

What We’ve Gained And Lost Since Stonewall

News type: 
News from the Field
Black trans people have been struggling for acceptance for 50 years. And we’re not even close to getting it. By Miss Major There is no because of this or that — Stonewall just happened. There was a tendency at that time for white people to think, well, she’s a junkie or she’s an alcoholic or she’s a drug addict. She’s anything but human, so why listen to her? That was the basic attitude towards us trans women in the 60s. And it just happened to be everywhere. Some of the girls back then, like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, tried to speak up for us, but just got laughed at. Everyone,...

Why Ferguson Burns

News type: 
News from the Field
The Nation, November 25, 2014. Ferguson is on fire. Immediately after St. Louis prosecutor Robert McCulloch announced that a grand jury had failed to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, waves of unrest roiled the city. A dozen buildings were torched and looted, and two police cars were set ablaze. As President Obama appeared on TV urging calm, cops in Ferguson fired rounds of tear-gas canisters into crowds and deployed armored vehicles with gun turrets that were built for our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They...

Youth on the Move: How Funders Can Support the Growing Movement of Young People of Color in 2015

News type: 
Member News
Funders Collaborative for Youth Organizing , Jan 9, 2015 As we begin 2015, we at the Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) have been re-inspired by the undeniable potential for young people of color to play a transformative role in advancing social justice. Young people of color are demonstrating a readiness to organize that has not been seen in many years. For funders and others who care about youth leadership and social and racial justice, it is an important time to support the actions taking place across the country to help them coalesce into a sustained movement. For funders...

A Ferguson Syllabus: Reading a Movement

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, August 10, 2015

By Darnell L. Moore

Identities.mic

August 07, 2015

Sunday will mark the one-year anniversary of the death of Mike Brown Jr., the 18-year old black teenager who was fatally shot by 28-year old Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown's killing — and the subsequent public display of his lifeless body left bloodied and uncovered on a tiny street before his family and neighbors — was a fulcrum igniting a sustained uprising.

...

After Ferguson: Conference Call looking at the role of the faith community in mobilizing around racial justice

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Sat, April 11, 2015

Social justice non-profit Sojourners has been working on racial reconciliation and economic justice organizing since the early 1970s, and this past fall Sojourners has been working closely with Ferguson leaders, at their request, as well as with national partners, to achieve a bold agenda—to help America, and particularly communities of faith to listen across racial lines and build a multi-racial and bipartisan movement to achieve racial reconciliation and transform our criminal justice system.

Listen to the following conference call with Lisa Sharon Harper,...

Agenda to Keep us Safe

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, September 30, 2014

Originally posted at byp100.org

The Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) is dedicated to the long-term fight to end the criminalization of Black youth. We believe that strategies to achieve this goal and ultimately transform our lives and communities require grassroots organizing and public policy advocacy at the local, state, and federal level.

Thus BYP100 wants decision makers, elected officials, and law enforcement agencies to implement and enforce our ...

Baltimore Uprisings

Resource type: 
Other
Tue, April 28, 2015

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Funding Opportunity
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Funders for Justice

Bending the Arc from Interest to Advancement

Resource type: 
Member Publication
Wed, April 08, 2015

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Topic: 
Funding Opportunity
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Funders for Justice

Building a Beloved Community: Strengthening the Field of Black Male Achievement

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, May 13, 2014

Building a Beloved Community: Strengthening the Field of Black Male Achievement is a newly released report that maps the landscape of work in the area of black male achievement and offers recommendations for what it will take to strengthen the field moving forward. Based on interviews with 50 leaders in the social, academic, government, and business sectors, the report takes stock of the major sectors engaged in the field and examines opportunities for other constituencies to become more involved. Read the report.

Via:...

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Topic: 
Racial Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Building Momentum From The Ground Up: A Toolkit For Promoting Justice In Policing

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sun, June 14, 2015

From the Center for Popular Democracy and PolicyLink .

www.justiceinpolicing.com

The killing of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, John Crawford III, and Ezell Ford over just four weeks last summer, and the subsequent failure to hold any officers involved responsible, spurred a national conversation about police violence and systemic racism. Community members, often led by tenacious...

Control, Disruption and Democracy: Philanthropy's Role in Inclusive Civic Engagement

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Mon, February 29, 2016

"By Gara LaMarche

The following is adapted from the keynote speech at the Funders Committee for Civic Participation conference in Washington, D.C., on October 6, 2015.

In Citizen , the poet Claudia Rankine, writing about the abandonment of Black lives after Hurricane Katrina – a signal event in the shift toward the current political moment – says “the fiction of the facts assumes innocence, ignorance, lack of intention, misdirection; the necessary conditions of a certain time and place.”

To overcome the fictions we tell ourselves requires us to acknowledge that the...

EPIP Webinar Recap- Police Accountability and Racial Justice: Sustaining a Movement

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Tue, May 05, 2015

The tragedies of Eric Garner, Mike Brown, John Crawford, Jessie Hernandez and others have ignited a national movement around police reform and racial justice. How can grassroots groups capitalize on the increased attention to organize and build coalitions that will impact policy and create sustainable change? In this webinar, we were be joined by representatives of Communities United for Police Reform (CPR), a New York City based coalition, to learn about their local work and how it fits into a larger national and historical context. We discussed how to maintain momentum and make this...

Expanding Sanctuary: What Makes a City a Sanctuary Now?

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, March 13, 2017
Expanding Sanctuary: What Makes a City a Sanctuary Now?

The term “sanctuary” most recently refers to local policies that limit when and if local law enforcement communicates with, or submits to, (often unconstitutional) requests from federal immigration agents. But in a country where over-policing results in 1 in 3 people being arrested at least once by the age of 23, during a time when evolving technology places fingerprint scanners in the palm of every law enforcement officers’ hand, and as we anticipate the growth in...

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Topic: 
Criminalization
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Ferguson Action Demands

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sat, November 01, 2014

from Ferguson Action

OUR VISION FOR A NEW AMERICA

WE WANT JUSTICE FOR MICHAEL BROWN. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR OUR COMMUNITIES

We Want an End to all Forms of Discrimination and the Full Recognition of our Human Rights

The United States Government must acknowledge and address the structural violence and institutional discrimination that continues to imprison our communities either in a life of poverty and/or one behind bars. We want the United States Government to recognize the full spectrum of our human...

Ferguson Commission Report Examines Issues Behind Mike Brown Uprising, Proposes Action

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, September 14, 2015

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]by Kenrya Rankin Naasel, ColorLines

Mon, Sep 14, 2015

Today, the Ferguson Commission—a group of regional...

Ferguson Solidarity: Ways to Support the Fight

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, August 19, 2014

" Organization for Black Struggle (OBS) , Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) have identified several critical ways for allies outside of Ferguson to support OBS's organizing efforts: financial resources, legal support, and solidarity actions in localities across the country.

Ferguson Solidarity: Ways to Support the Fight

All eyes are on the fight for justice for Michael Brown and the growing movement against the systematic targeting of...

Ferguson to Geneva

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sat, November 01, 2014

The family of Michael Brown, HandsUpUnited, Organization for Black Struggle (OBS), and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) submitted a brief to the United Nations and will present it in Geneva November 12-13, 2014. They aim "not only to achieve justice in Ferguson, but to unite governments around the world against the human rights violations that result from racial profiling and police violence."

Read the brief.

From Grievance to Governance: 8 Features of Transformative Campaigns

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, May 03, 2016

By Jodeen Olguín-Tayler, Let's Talk: At the Heart of Movement-Building - A Blog of the Movement Strategy Center

January 26, 2016

One morning last December, I found myself at the Ford Foundation watching Anna Galland , Ai-jen Poo and Heather McGhee share a stage at an event called The Future of Organizing: Contesting for Power in a...

From Protest to Power - Behind the scenes of disruptive social movements

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Mon, November 07, 2016

From Protest to Power is a convening hosted by the Ford Foundation and the Solidaire Network on February 26, 2016. We live in a political era defined by crisis, but also great promise. The effects of climate change, economic inequality, and racial injustice threaten our future. Yet in the face of these challenges, there’s a vibrant, visible resurgence of popular movements, of communities rising up against entrenched economic and political power. And it’s working. Four years after the start of the...

Grantmakers for Girls of Color - Watch the National Funders Convening

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Thu, May 19, 2016

Watch the REPLAY of the livestream from the Grantmakers for Girls of Color National Funders Convening. Originally aired: May 19, 2016, 8:45am to 12:15pm ET See the morning program, speakers, and their twitter handles below the video. Join the conversation using #G4GC Learn more about the convening here. ...

How to Fund the Revolution: Part 1

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, March 01, 2016

By Mary Joyce, Movement Net Lab

In Part 1 of this two-part series I argue why new social movement funding infrastructure is necessary. In Part 2 I’ll suggest how to do it.

Q : Why is new financial infrastructure needed?

There’s a big disconnect between how social change is happening and how resources for change-makers are distributed. Unless changes occur in the activist funding system the most effective activists will be starved of resources and change will not occur.

A : Social movements look different…

...

How White Foundation Leaders Can Promote Racial Justice

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sat, March 14, 2015

By Aaron Dorfman, Executive Director, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy

Since last summer, a movement has been brewing in response to the police killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and many others. People across the country have taken to the streets, demanding changes in policies that contribute to government-sanctioned violence against African- Americans and Latinos.

People of color are leading this movement, as they should be, but they shouldn’t be expected to move this agenda forward by...

Hundreds Rally for the Right to Refuse Stop and Frisk

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, April 20, 2016

By Kavitha Surana, Bedford & Bowery

April 21, 2016

In 2013 Mayor Bill De Blasio was voted into office with pledges to reign in police violence and stop-and-frisk policing targeted at blacks and latinos. (Remember that emotional video about needing to have stop-and-frisk conversations with his son, Dante?) And since he took office, street-stops have continued on a downward...

Key Insights from #BaltimoreUprising

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, May 18, 2015

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]

Austin Thompson, director Youth Engagement Fund

Understanding Baltimore’s Uprising...

L.A. RISING: The 1992 Civil Unrest, the Arc of Social Justice Organizing, and the Lessons for Today’s Movement Building

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sat, April 28, 2012

By Manuel Pastor and Michele Prichard , April 2014.

“This report is our attempt to unravel at least part of the story. It is a long and complicated tale, which partly explains the many pages we take to tell it. Even at this length (and the full report on which this summary is based is even longer), our telling is necessarily incomplete. There were so many actors, so many turning points, and so many skirmishes in the fight for justice. But we try to capture parts of the puzzle, offering key lessons to activists, social movement observers, and funders from our...

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Community Power-Building
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Funders for Justice

Letter to President Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, November 25, 2014

Today, a St. Louis Grand Jury refused to indict Mike Brown's killer — Police Officer Darren Wilson. On Aug. 9th, the nation was horrified to learn that Mike Brown was racially profiled and brutally killed by police as he walked down the street with a friend. His family called it an execution.

Now his killer may never be held accountable — unless President Obama and US Attorney General Holder take action. The Department of Justice has the power to arrest and prosecute Officer Wilson under federal criminal charges. Raise your voice today to...

Leveraging Limited Dollars: How Grantmakers Achieve Tangible Results by Funding Policy and Community Engagement

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sat, January 28, 2012

By Lisa Ranghelli, January 2012.

This report distills findings from more than 400 pages of research amassed over three years as part of NCRP’s Grantmaking for Community Impact Project (GCIP). The project documented $26.6 billion in benefits for taxpayers and communities in 13 states, and found that every dollar grantmakers and other donors invested in policy and civic engagement provided a return of $115 in community benefit ...read more.

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Philanthropic Practice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Living Resource Systems: A New Approach for Supporting Movement Networks

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, November 01, 2016
Living Resource Systems: A New Approach for Supporting Movement Networks

article and photo provided by the Movement Net Lab

In tandem with the many movement networks of the last decade, innovative funding channels and configurations have emerged to support them.

These changes are part of the shift from foundation-centered funding to a broader conceptualization of resources we call a living resource system . A living resource system provides a relationship-based approach to resources:...

Making Black Lives Matter

Resource type: 
Member Publication
Wed, February 25, 2015

Nat Chioke Williams, Executive Director, Hill-Snowdon Foundation

The tragic killing of an unarmed African American teenager, Michael Brown, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri gave a new energy and national platform to the issue of police brutality and excessive force in the Black community. Indeed, in the months surrounding Mike Brown’s killing, there was a wave of killings of unarmed Black men, boys and women by white police officers across the country including Ezell Ford in Los Angeles; John Crawford, Tamir Rice and Tanisha Anderson in Ohio; and Eric Garner and Akai...

Making Black Lives Matter Initiative Website Launch

Resource type: 
Member Publication
Tue, March 01, 2016

Dear Colleagues, In recognition of Black History and Black Futures month, the Hill-Snowdon Foundation is launching a brand new website for our Making Black Lives Matter Initiative (MBLM) . The Making Black Lives Matter Initiative site will provide background on Hill-Snowdon’s MBLM Initiative that is focused on supporting Black-led organizing in order to help revitalize and strengthen the institutional and political power of the Black community. The website describes Foundation’s framework for supporting...

Making Change: How Social Movements Work - and How to Support Them

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, November 07, 2016
Making Change: How Social Movements Work - and How to Support Them

by Manuel Pastor and Rhonda Ortiz, originally published in March 2009

Social movements are a hidden underpinning of the American story. Using the tools of relationship building, community mobilization, and symbolic protest, they have helped bring us civil rights, labor protections, and even a healthier environment, sparking people’s aspirations, imaginations, and actions for a better nation.

This document seeks to provide a guidepost to both funders and the field by detailing what makes for a successful...

Mapping Police Violence

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, March 03, 2015

MappingPoliceViolence.org , a project of WeTheProtesters.org , is the most comprehensive analysis of police killings and their impact on black people in the US. We've mapped 302 black people killed by police in 2014, disaggregated the data by race/gender/age/place, established national trend data to monitor police violence over time, and identified the States and Police Departments most likely to threaten black life. We intend to update the tool and continue to refine it to support activist...

Mapping the Field: Racial Justice and Police Accountability

Resource type: 
Other
Sat, August 15, 2015

Organizations Addressing Police Accountability and Racial Justice

Select "Visible Layers" to filter organizations by geographic scope.

Data compiled by Resource Generation and Funders for Justice.

Please note that this list is in formation and is regularly expanded based on recommendations from the field and from funders. If you would like to suggest an organization for this list, or you are part of an organization that you think should be on this list, please write to us at...

Moving Forward on Racial Justice Philanthropy

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Fri, November 28, 2014

Moving Forward on Racial Justice Philanthropy is the fifth volume of Critical Issues Forum series, which aims to deepen the discourse around important progressive racial justice issues within philanthropy. As PRE celebrated our 10th anniversary last year and engaged allies within the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors to mark the occasion with us, we heard "Have you seen any progress?" repeatedly and knew it was important to take stock of what many of us have been collectively aiming to move for decades. Through focus groups, webinars and direct interviews, our team has sought to get a...

Moving Money, Making Change: Funding the Movement for Black Lives

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Thu, November 05, 2015

By Amoretta Morris

Fall 2015 - Responsive Philanthropy, the blog of National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy

The Movement for Black Lives Convening took place on July 24–26, 2015 at Cleveland State University. It was co-convened by Black Lives Matter , Blackbird and Black Youth Project 100 in partnership with many regional and local organizing groups. For a full list, see http://movementforblacklives.org .

Emmett Till. Kerry Baxter....

National and Local Recommendations for Police Accountability

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, December 10, 2014

The Center for Popular Democracy

The killing of unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson created a moment of moral outrage and mobilization that reverberated around the country. Unfortunately, we understand that the harassment and killing of black and brown women and men through excessive use of force by law enforcement is not uncommon in the United States. According to a report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Project, in 2012 an average of one black person was killed by law enforcement or vigilantes every 28 hours. For the families...

Philanthropy OUTlook: LGBTQ Criminalization and Criminal Justice Reform in the U.S.

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, March 13, 2017
Philanthropy OUTlook: LGBTQ Criminalization and Criminal Justice Reform in the U.S.

LGBTQ people— especially LGBTQ people of color and trans people—are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. Biased policing and aggressive sentencing make LGBTQ people more likely to face time in prison, where they often face poor treatment and abuse.

Funders for LGBTQ Issues released a new infographic that...

Philanthropy, You in Danger, Girl! Five Things Philanthropies Need to Do Now in the Trump Age

Resource type: 
Member Publication
Mon, March 06, 2017
Philanthropy, You in Danger, Girl! Five Things Philanthropies Need to Do Now in the Trump Age

February 5, 2017

By Edgar Villanueva , VP of Programs and Advocacy at the Schott Foundation for Public Education

These first two weeks in Trump's America have been chaotic and stressful, but already emblematic of the dire needs philanthropy must step up to. From those who could be left out of affordable health care to those bandied about in an educational...

Press Release from Amnesty International

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Fri, October 24, 2014

Amnesty International , October 24, 2014.

Following the initial protests in Ferguson, Missouri sparked by the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, Amnesty International USA dispatched a human rights delegation which included observers to monitor the protests and police response.

Today, the human rights organization has released a new report, On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson ,documenting the human...

Race and Policing - A Resource from IssueLab

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, August 15, 2016

Again and again the data show that people of color in the U.S. are disproportionately, and systematically, stopped, frisked, arrested, and exposed to the use of force by police. Police departments and communities across the U.S. are struggling with these realities and with what has become a glaring divide in how Americans experience and relate to policing.

This special collection includes research from nonprofits, foundations, and university based research centers, who have not only described and documented the issue but who also provide much-needed recommendations for addressing...

Race Files

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, December 01, 2014

We live in an age of colorblind racism. We claim we don’t see color, yet American society continues to be organized and divided by race. Race Files exists to lift the veil of colorblindness – to make race and racism visible. Race Files uses analogy, pop culture, and personal narratives to tell the story of race and create a language that will help us defeat racism.

Visit their website.

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Topic: 
Racial Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation

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Partner Resource
Fri, November 28, 2014

The Center for Racial Justice Innovation's most recent edition of Moving the Race Conversation Forward includes a section with content analysis on print, cable, and social media coverage of Ferguson. ColorLines , an online publication by Race Forward, has had excellent ongoing coverage of Ferguson .

Visit the Race Forward website....

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Topic: 
Racial Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Reports from the Movement Strategy Center

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, November 01, 2016
Reports from the Movement Strategy Center

The Movement Strategy Center offers a plethora of resources that speak on transformative practices, collective impact, intersecting issues, and building progressive power. Below is a curated list.

Practices of Transformative Movement Building

We need transformative strategies to generate exponential change. But how do we accomplish this? How...

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Topic: 
Community Power-Building
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Resourcing the Movement for Black Lives

Fri, June 03, 2016

Above: America Wake Up is scrawled on an I-beam in the burnt out rubble that once was Beauty Town. The store was burnt down during the protest on Nov. 24, 2014. Photo by Shawn Escoffery shawnescoffery.com & distantdreams.me By William Cordery - March 17, 2016 Grassroots Fundraising Journal - editorial board THE POLICE BRUTALITY AND IMPUNITY that led to the deaths of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray,...

Response to Eric Garner's Case: A Deeper Conversation

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, December 03, 2014

Eight days after thousands took to the streets in protest, grief, and outrage following a Ferguson grand jury’s decision not to indict a white police officer for fatally shooting an unarmed black teenager, we are faced ­with the reality that a New York grand jury, tasked with determining whether to hold another white police officer accountable for the publicly witnessed and video recorded death of an unarmed black man, reached the same decision: no indictment.

We are faced with the reality of a...

Response to Ferguson: Systemic Problems Require Systemic Solutions

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, November 24, 2014

Dear friends,

Last night, like many across the world who were watching, we experienced deep disappointment in the decision by the St. Louis County grand jury not to indict Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenage boy, on August 9. Our thoughts are first with the family of Michael Brown and the community of Ferguson.

It’s important to note that this case has never been about just one police officer. The spotlight on Ferguson has revealed with a renewed, sharper focus a deep divide in our society...

Seven Ways That Funders Can Support Racial Justice

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Fri, June 27, 2014

By , Senior Fellow, Movement Strategy Center

A few months ago I spoke to Eva Paterson, president of the Equal Justice Society , who described “disturbing trends in some national foundations; a pulling away from race where they seem to be adopting the notion of post-racial America.”

“What,” asked Patterson, “is going on?”

How far have we come from 1993 when — a year...

St. Louis Activist: Decades After 1968 Urban Uprisings, Key Economic & Race Issues Remain Unresolved

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, August 19, 2014

Democracy Now! - August 19, 2014

The upheaval in Ferguson, Missouri, has called to mind the racial divisions that split open in the 1960s with a series of uprisings in cities across the country. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson established what became known as the Kerner Commission to investigate the causes of the unrest. In February 1968, the commission famously concluded: "Our nation is moving toward two societies — one black, one white — separate and unequal." Just a month later, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sparked uprisings in more than...

Stop and Frisk Info

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, December 10, 2014

This is a publicly accessible, comprehensive and multidisciplinary research database website. This is an essential resource for providing and publicizing factual, scientifically valid information about current “stop and frisk” policing practices. The information in this website is maintained by The Center on Race, Crime and Justice at John Jay College.

Visit their website.

Find More By:
Topic: 
Criminalization
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Sustaining Racial Justice Action in Philanthropy: Ferguson & Beyond

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, December 15, 2014

From Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity

Many of us have watched or perhaps even marched, as community members mobilize to keep the nation's attention on the racial injustice so evident in the recent tragic police killings of unarmed Black men and boys, with outrage then exacerbated by the failures to indict the police responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

As change agents within philanthropy, as we witness local, national and global action in response to the repeated travesty of justice and societal...

The Black Philanthropic Resource Library

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Thu, December 11, 2014

In regions throughout the US, foundations and philanthropic groups convene panels, conduct webinars and interviews, create press releases, and develop various multi-media products to showcase the impact of philanthropic investment in Black communities. ABFE has compiled a growing list of these products to document the evolution of Black male initiatives in philanthropy and to highlight data of particular interest to members and colleagues throughout its networks.

Visit their website.

The Black Scholar: Ferguson, the Black Radical Tradition and the Path Forward

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, August 26, 2014

By Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua , The Black Scholar, August 26, 2014.

Can’t you feel it? Feel the temperature dropping? Feel the icy winds blowing? It’s winter in America. Spring and fall seem to have enveloped summer. The chill comes sooner and lasts longer. It’s winter in America. There’s a blizzard coming. The first frost has already fallen, in Ferguson, Missouri, of all places. Ferguson has ripped the veil off. It is now clear for the world to see how the U.S. plans to deal with its black internal colony.

It’s getting dark; it’s nearly midnight. Yes,...

The Case for Funding Black-Led Social Change

Resource type: 
Member Publication
Mon, March 13, 2017
The Case for Funding Black-Led Social Change

The Black Social Change Funders (launched by Hill-Snowdon Foundation and ABFE ) presents "The Case for Funding Black-Led Social Change" as a charge to inspire sustained commitment to strengthen and expand the infrastructure for Black-led social, institutional and political power in the U.S. The case addresses three interwoven questions:

Why focus on anti-Black...

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Fri, December 30, 2011

By Khalil Gibran Muhammad Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known. We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society. Following the 1890 census, the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery, crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land of opportunity were woven into a cautionary tale about the exceptional threat black people posed to modern urban...

The Immigration Detention Transparency and Human Rights Project: August 2015 Report

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, August 31, 2015

NIJC Freedom of Information Act Litigation Reveals Systemic Lack of Accountability in Immigration Detention Contracting

(August 2015) — The National Immigrant Justice Center’s (NIJC’s) three-year Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation resulted in the most comprehensive public release to date of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration detention center contracts and inspections.

With The Immigration Detention Transparency and Human...

The Making of Ferguson

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, October 14, 2014

By Richard Rothstein, Economic Policy Institute, October 15, 2014.

Executive summary

In August 2014, a Ferguson, Missouri, policeman shot and killed an unarmed black teenager. Michael Brown’s death and the resulting protests and racial tension brought considerable attention to that town. Observers who had not been looking closely at our evolving demographic patterns were surprised to see ghetto conditions we had come to associate with inner cities now duplicated in a formerly white suburban community: racially segregated neighborhoods with high poverty...

The New Jim Crow

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, January 16, 2012

By Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement. Since its publication in 2010, the book has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for more than a year; been dubbed the “secular bible of a new social movement” by numerous commentators, including ...

The Real Crime: Mass Criminalization of our Communities

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, June 23, 2015

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) presents The Real Crime

...

The Violence Happening in Ferguson Is More Than Physical

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Fri, September 05, 2014

by Alexandra Moffett-Bateau Originally published in RH Reality Check

This piece is published in collaboration with Echoing Ida, a Forward Together project.

On Saturday, August 9, Michael Brown became one of several U.S. Black men in recent weeks to die violently at the hands of a law enforcement officer. Within days, Ferguson, and along with it Black-American hearts and minds everywhere, seemed to implode...

Thinking About the Safety of Black Lives Beyond Policing

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, February 25, 2015
February 25, 2015 Huffington Post By Marbre Stahly-Butts , Soros Justice Fellow, Dante Barry, Executive Director of Million Hoodies Movement for Justice

After a string of high profile police killings over two-hundred communities across the country erupted in massive protests and sustained acts of civil disobedience. People flooded the streets demanding an end to police brutality and a recognition that black lives matter.

The state response to this growing movement has been anemic. Task forces were formed and body cameras funded, but the conversations in mainstream media and the...

Thoughts on Ferguson

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, September 08, 2014

by Alicia Walters, Movement Building Coordinator, Forward Together Originally published on Beyond the Picket Fence: The Strong Families Blog .

On August 9th, 2014, unarmed teenager Michael Brown was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. In the weeks after his death, protests ensued and a national dialogue began about police brutality, the over policing of communities of color, the militarization of our police forces, and...

Time to turn protests into change

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Wed, December 10, 2014

By Eric Lui

Originally published on cnn.com , December 4, 2014.

(CNN) -- More than a week after the grand jury's decision in Ferguson, protests continue nationwide. On campuses, in malls, on streets and in stadiums, Americans young and old are voicing their anger about the non-indictments in the deaths of Michael Brown and now Eric Garner in New York -- and about the rigged system that makes such results all too common.

This proliferation of...

Timeline of Race, Racism, Resistance and Philanthropy 1992-2014

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sat, May 31, 2014

By Larry Raphael Salomon, Julie Quiroz, Maggie Potapchuk and Lori Villarosa

This historical timeline attempts to capture, in one place, many significant moments, events, controversies and victories that have defined the racial landscape since the turbulent days following the LAPD/Rodney King beating verdict over two decades ago. When communities in Los Angeles rebelled, "race riots" exploded the commonly held myth that our nation had progressed from the explicitly unjust conditions that had defined earlier generations. And in the decades since, the...

United Against the Muslim Ban

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Mon, March 13, 2017
United Against the Muslim Ban

Visit United Against the Muslim Ban to learn more about the policing of Muslim communities through the travel and migration ban. Now is the time to take a stand, regardless of your faith, ethnicity or cultural heritage. These policies threaten more than Muslim, Arab, Black, and South Asian communities. They threaten our Constitution. They threaten our vision of America. They threaten our core values and ideals.

This site will provide resources...

Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, March 01, 2016
Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People documents how pervasive stigma and discrimination, biased enforcement of laws, and discriminatory policing strategies mean that LGBT people are disproportionately likely to interact with law enforcement and to have their lives criminalized. LGBT people are also treated unfairly once they enter the system; the report shows how they overrepresented in jails and prisons and face abuse while incarcerated. Finally, the report sheds light on the fact that LGBT...

Watch Now: Funder Briefing on Policing Reform - Building on NYC Successes for a National Reform Movement.

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Tue, November 17, 2015

Due to technical difficulties, sound begins the video at 10:14.

In the past two years, Communities United for Policing Reform (CPR) has played a critical role in leading a campaign to pass landmark police accountability legislation in New York City and partnering with families of New Yorkers killed by police to secure executive action by Governor Cuomo to establish a special prosecutor for police killings throughout New York State.

In spite of these victories, there remains much more to accomplish to transform police systems, policies, practices, and culture to be more...

We didn’t start a movement. We started a network.

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Sun, February 21, 2016

by Patrisse Marie Cullors-Brignac

In 2013, I helped create a Black-centered political will and movement building project called #BlackLivesMatter. You may have heard of it. As many of you know, it was in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. Another co-creator, Alicia Garza first uttered the words in a love note to Black people. I slapped a hashtag on it because I understood the power of spreading messages. Opal Tometi caught wind and helped us develop the broader social media platform, among other things. All of us are trained radical Black...

WeTheProtesters.org: A Resource Hub for the Movement

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, March 03, 2015

A hub of information, made by protesters for protesters, to help activists advance the movement for justice and equity. Includes an Activist Toolkit, Policy Think-Tank, Comprehensive Map of Protester Demands, and several other resources mentioned in the Overview and Executive Summary.

WeTheProtestors.org

Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, November 24, 2015

Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families proves that the costs of locking up millions of people is much deeper than we think. Locking up individuals also breaks apart their families and communities, saddles them with overwhelming debt, and leads to mental and physical ailments. The situation is dire, but a better approach is possible.

Executive Summary:

Each year, the United States spends $80 billion 1 to lock away...

Women of Color on #BlackLivesMatter, Gender, and Racism

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Thu, December 11, 2014

Third Wave Fund Blog, Dec 11, 2014

Outrage and heartbreak. Direct Action. Civil Disobedience. People are responding to the murder of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and the subsequent lack of indictment of the white police officers who killed them. People all over the place are declaring #BlackLivesMatter, and demanding justice. There’s been a proliferation of important writing on how state violence and racial injustice impacts the lives of women of color and LGBT people of...

Five Principles for Engagement on the Future of Work(ers) and Two Big Ideas

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
10/11/2018
In these videos, Sarita Gupta (Jobs with Justice) talks about collective bargaining and the future of work and Michelle Miller (Coworker.org) describes the concept of “surveillance capitalism” and data generated by workers. Please watch and share these videos! Below, Emma Oppenheim (Open Society Foundations) and José García (Ford Foundation) share how they're thinking about the future of workers. The future of work is everywhere. Between the two of us, we’ve attended countless conferences, meetings, report releases, or other future of work-themed events. In philanthropy,...

Are funders ready to fight for our freedom?

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
09/04/2018
By Manisha Vaze , Senior Program Manager of NFG's Funders for a Just Economy This Labor Day weekend, as we celebrate the last days of summer with barbeques and back-to-school preparation, I am thinking about how the labor movement is facing some of the most serious threats to its future. Well-funded efforts are shutting down public sector unions and workers’ ability to collectively bargain , while corporations are using their lobbying power to lock contingent and informal workers out of basic labor protections . Companies are worming out of providing basic benefits such as...

Standing in Our Power Together

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
08/16/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice . Here, Manisha Vaze , Senior Program Manager of NFG's Funders for a Just Economy , reflects on funder strategy discussions for building worker power. These days, between the news cycle and continued attacks on working families, it can feel overwhelming to push forward our agenda for justice. This feeling isn’t a new one – movement work comes with big ups and downs, especially as the political landscape...

Recapping The Road Ahead for Worker Justice: Where to Lean In, Pull Up, Push Back and Pivot

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Mon, June 19, 2017

For many years, Funders for a Just Economy (FJE) has held a yearly policy briefing to engage its members on specific policy issues that affect middle and low-income workers. In a fundamentally shifting political and power map, this year’s policy briefing updated members with our current understanding of the major forces and players that impact worker justice. FJE members engaged in strategic conversations about the decline of organized labor, economic discrimination based on migration status and gender, the future of work, emerging state and local...

Why We Move Money for Justice

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/19/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice . Here, Lorraine Ramirez , Senior Program Manager of NFG's Funders for Justice , talks about mobilizing resources for social change. The Ferguson uprisings sparked change in St. Louis and around the world. Funders for Justice (FFJ) was honored to meet some of the leaders of the uprisings, and understand the connections between their work and movements for justice across the US. What I Learned in St...

White People and Activism in the Trump Era

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/19/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice . Here, Caitlin Duffy , senior associate for learning and engagement at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) , reflects on leveraging privilege and dissent in the face of fear. People in the United States are scared. Some white people fear the loss of dominant social status, and they worry about the loss of good jobs or falling victim to terrorism and crime. Donald Trump has spread and...

Philanthropy’s Role in Holding Tension

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
07/12/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. Here, Megan Armentrout , Program Associate at the Incarnate Word Foundation and St. Louis local, reflects on the possibilities of shifting philanthropy's focus to long-term change. When I first started in philanthropy just two years ago my boss said, “ Keep an eye out for Neighborhood Funders Group - they are your people”. I had just missed the 2016 convening in Oakland and learned I had to wait another...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Answering the Call from Movement Leaders

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/12/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. Here, Julia Beatty , Program Officer for the Black-Led Movement Fund and the Communities Transforming Policing Fund at Borealis Philanthropy , reflects on philanthropy's accountability to grassroots movements. “Uprising creates the authorization for funding movements.” These words, spoken by Reverend Starsky Wilson, Executive Director of the Deaconess Foundation in St. Louis, are some of...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Choosing to be a Liberated Gatekeeper

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/12/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. Here, Amoretta Morris , — Director of National Community Strategies at The Annie E. Casey Foundation , NFG Conference Co-Chair, and NFG Board Member — reflects on the theme of her opening plenary address. Recently, a trusted social justice leader called me a philanthropic gatekeeper . And hearing those words stung — a lot. But once I got over my initial defensiveness, I realized it was true. Gatekeepers,...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Time to Invest for Justice

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/12/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. Here, Rudi Navarra , Program Officer at The Solutions Project , reflects on the importance of investing time into learning and collaborating together. This week in Texas, "Road To Change" organizers and Parkland shooting survivors engaged pro-gun counter-protesters in an impromptu 90-minute street town hall dialogue resulting in jaw-dropping and surprising general agreement on Red Flag Laws, background...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Bringing Our Whole Selves to Philanthropy and Our Grantmaking

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/12/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. Here, Ryan Li Dahlstrom , Program Officer for the Fund for Trans Generations at Borealis Philanthropy , reflects on ways funders can live their values in their work. Often times in philanthropic spaces we are not encouraged to bring our whole selves—to share and reflect on how our identities and values as people and as funders intersect. This year, during my first time attending the Neighborhood Funders...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Facing and Recovering from Soul Trauma

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/09/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. Here, Andrea Dobson , NFG Board Member and Chief Operating & Financial Officer of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation , reflects on the realities of philanthropy's role in building community change. “Soul trauma: when who you thought you were runs smack into the realities of your life.” I’ve experienced plenty of soul trauma as I’ve watched communities disintegrate and people polarize, as poverty has...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

As the South Grows

Resource type: 
Partner Resource
Tue, June 12, 2018

As the South Grows is an initiative of Grantmakers for Southern Progress (GSP) and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) to give philanthropists the tools they need to partner effectively with visionary leaders across the South. The initiative will produce a four-part investigative research and resource report series around place-based strategies for supporting structural change in the South. Through timely...

Post-Election Resources

Resource type: 
Other
Tue, November 22, 2016

Social justice organizers, advocates, and the funders who support their work are all grappling with how to move forward in the new social and political moment we find ourselves in. NFG has pulled together a short list of post-election readings and tools you may find useful. We all have a responsibility to go deeper in the weeks, months and years ahead. If you’d like to share information or analysis with us, please write to nfg@nfg.org .

Readings: Role for Funders

...

Democratic Development for Thriving Communities Report

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Mon, June 12, 2017

The Democratic Development for Thriving Communities: Framing the Issues, Solutions, and Funding Strategies to Address Gentrification and Displacement report is the result of collaboration between the California Funders Working Group on Gentrification and Displacement , field leaders, and academics. It builds on previous work from the philanthropic, academic, and...

California Funders Working Group on Gentrification and Displacement

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
10/12/2016
The California Funders Working Group on Gentrification and Displacement (CA FWGGD) is a working group of funders committed to addressing gentrification and displacement issues in California and nationally. It is now moving into a new phase of work that will result in the creation and capitalization of a collaborative fund. The fund is being designed in consultation with community leaders to advance racial and economic equity and community health in California’s cities, with a focus on supporting community-driven policy solutions to the crisis of gentrification and displacement while...

Towards a Better Place: A Conversation About Promising Practice in Place-Based Philanthropy

Resource type: 
Event Recap
NFG Report
Fri, March 13, 2015

In response to a resurgence of interest in place-based grantmaking, the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group convened over 100 funders and leaders from the field in September 2014 for Towards a Better Place: A Conversation About Promising Practice in Place-Based Philanthropy. This conference report provides an overview of the discussions that took place at this conference, including:

  • lessons shared by experienced place-based funders;

  • key challenges and

    • ...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Can place-based grantmaking help turn the tide of inequality?

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
03/19/2015
By Dennis Quirin and Steve Patrick Today we see many local communities – urban, suburban and rural - swamped by historic disinvestment and the growing tide of economic and social inequality in our country. Place-based grantmaking can play an important role in turning this tide, but not without addressing the core structural barriers that have produced and propelled it. In local communities, addressing the lived experiences of people who are marginalized by racism, poverty, immigration status, gender discrimination, homophobia and disability will require many funders to retool their approaches...
Find More By:
Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Webinar Resources from Hope in the Heartland: Racial Justice and the White Working Class

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Thu, May 18, 2017

The current debates within progressive circles about the importance of “winning over” the white working class often fail to directly address the need for honest conversations about race, racism and xenophobia. It is tempting for many political strategists and funders to think that we can find and fund a short cut—better candidates, better field canvassing, better television ads, better framing etc... And, that these solutions will influence white, working class voters to (re)align with progressive candidates and causes.

These interventions are doomed from the start because they...

Recap: 2017 Grantmakers for Southern Progress Spring Convening

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Fri, May 05, 2017

In bayous, hollers, cities, and small towns across the American South, visionary leaders have long pioneered cutting edge, successful strategies to build lasting change in their communities and beyond. These leaders have the skills and expertise necessary to navigate an inclusive way forward for everyone in this era of unprecedented political, economic, and demographic shifts. Yet philanthropy—for reasons both mundane and profound—hasn't kept up. How can Southern and national philanthropists alike change this trend and help advance progress in the region and the nation overall?

...

Find More By:
Topic: 
Community Power-Building

Webinar Recap of Stabilizing Communities: Advancing Housing Justice Organizing and Policy Strategies in This Political Moment

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Fri, April 21, 2017

Across the country, resident-led institutions and their allies continue to build organizing strategies that address housing, displacement, and gentrification at the local, regional, and state level. Strategies and solutions to gentrification and displacement like rent control measures, passing local ballot initiatives for renter protections, developing community land trusts, and financing affordable housing has had some success, but the demographics of many communities are still rapidly changing.

At the center of these shifts, philanthropy continues to play a critical role...

Webinar Recap of From Sanctuary to Freedom: Cities in Resistance

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Tue, March 21, 2017

While the frame of sanctuary cities is designed as protection for undocumented and migrant residents, it also offers an opportunity to engage us all in critical questions about how we shape our democracy and local places: What makes a city a sanctuary? Sanctuary for whom and from what?

Immediately after the presidential election, mayors across the country took a bold public stance, declaring their cities to be “sanctuary cities,” and vowing to protect their cities' residents against the potential harsh policies that are anticipated to come from the new federal administration and...

Webinar Recap: How to Creatively Fund Social Movements

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Fri, February 24, 2017

Neighborhood Funders Group and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) co-hosted "How to Creatively Fund Social Movements," a webinar that explored how foundations can be more flexible in supporting grassroots groups and leaders. Experienced grantmakers and organizers shared strategies for responding to this movement moment's critical need for resources to frontline social change actors.

View materials from the webinar here:

...

FFJ Call Recap: Policing and Criminalization in the Trump Era

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Wed, February 15, 2017

“This is a time for you and for us to be fearless; to find ways and resources to fund organizing and base building.” — Marielena Hincapie, National Immigration Law Center

Over the course of these past few weeks, marginalized communities have been relentlessly targeted and criminalized by the new federal administration. These include immigrants, with an executive order to begin building a wall along the southern...

Grantmakers for Southern Progress 2016 Post-Election Webinar Recap

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Mon, January 09, 2017

As we know, Southern communities have been navigating challenging political climates for decades. This briefing discussed how the election impacts social justice work supporting LGBTQ, people of color, and immigrant communities in the South. Leaders and practitioners deeply rooted in their work in the South offered their insights about the challenges and opportunities of the current national narrative about...

Webinar Recap: Governance, Participatory Budgeting, and Grantmaking

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Fri, November 03, 2017

Last week, Neighborhood Funders Group held a webinar on Governance, Participatory Budgeting, and Grantmaking to plant a seed and spark a conversation amongst funders about democratic and participatory models where community stakeholders are involved in deciding how public and philanthropic resources should be allocated. Here is a recap of the lessons learned, along with the video recording and slides from the webinar.

By Nile Malloy, Senior Program Manager, Democratizing Development Program

Throughout the country...

Tour Reflections from a Native New Yorker

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Fri, May 02, 2014

Stacey Millett, Senior Program Officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation and a Native New Yorker, writes about putting people first when considering investment decisions.

I joined Neighborhood Funders Group for the learning tour in early April; we spent day two in New York City for an interactive, information-packed trip that took us by bus from Midtown to East Harlem to the Bronx and back. These were places I had not seen since leaving my native city years ago. But I was struck by how the patterns of...

From Boston to New York: Is a More Just City Possible?

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Mon, April 14, 2014

Kevin Ryan, Program Director at New York Foundation , discusses his biggest takeaways from NFG's latest learning tour.

On April 2 and 3, Neighborhood Funders Group hosted From Boston to New York: Is a More Just City Possible?, a two-day learning tour that focused on the promise of both cities’ new mayoral administrations to be more transparent and accountable, and to develop strategies that bridge the income gap between the wealthy and the poor. More than 40 grantmakers joined us for the tour, as well as over 40 organizers, activists, community...

California Funders’ Convening on Gentrification and Displacement

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Thu, December 03, 2015

On July 20, 2015, NFG partnered with the California Endowment, Ford Foundation, Common Counsel Foundation, and Smart Growth California to convene a day-long meeting for 70 funders and practitioners working on gentrification and displacement issues in California.

Our goal was to deepen a shared understanding of the problems and solutions to the crisis of displacement affecting residents and small businesses in many cities in California due to gentrification. We also sought to lay the foundation for potential alignment on strategies addressing these issues.

We developed a...

Peer Coaching Training Webinar

Event type: 
Webinar
Monday, November 5, 2018 - 1:00pm
Webinar
"In the midst of continual change and development, people rarely struggle because they lack some key piece of information or some precise procedure from a course or a book. Rather, they often get stuck in how they think and feel about themselves or their situations." — Carter McNamara, Authenticity Consulting Our work with our members has taught us that peer support to work through goals and challenges is a powerful tool to move our work towards justice forward. Neighborhood Funders Group is excited to announce the launch of a new offering this fall: peer coaching circles model based on work...

NFG 2018 Award for Excellence & Discount Foundation Legacy Award

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
06/27/2018
Neighborhood Funders Group honored and celebrated two inspiring leaders in philanthropy and organizing: Molly Schultz Hafid, recipient of the NFG Award for Excellence, and Enrique "Kike" Balcazar, winner of the Discount Foundation Legacy Award, at the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice. NFG Award for Excellence in Philanthropy NFG’s Award for Excellence in Philanthropy honors individuals who exemplify our values and willingness to engage in shared leadership, power analysis, and principled struggle as they navigate what it means to be a...

What It's Going to Take to Change Philanthropy

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
12/06/2017
In October 2017, Funders for Justice (FFJ), a program of Neighborhood Funders Group, hosted a funder briefing on the Freedom Cities Movement at the NoVo Foundation office in New York City. FFJ got the chance to sit down and talk with NoVo's Ramatu Bangura, Program Officer for Advancing Adolescent Girls’ Rights, and Jesenia Santana, Program Officer for the Initiative to End Violence Against Girls and Women, about the foundation's vision and funding of the movement. Ramatu Bangura FFJ: The last year or couple years have been really the challenging ones in many parts of the country with...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Staff Transitions at NFG

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
06/29/2017
It's an exciting time here at Neighborhood Funders Group, and our staff team is growing and shifting. Lindsay Ryder Adriana Rocha We are sad to say goodbye to Yolanda Hippensteele as our Director of Member Engagement, but delighted to welcome Adriana Rocha as NFG's new Vice President of Programs, and Lindsay Ryder as our new Membership Manager as well as congratulate Sarita Ahuja into a new role as Vice President of Operations. Adriana has worked in the social justice field for over 20 years, bringing great expertise in organizational and network capacity building. Prior to joining NFG, she...
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Welcome New NFG Board Members

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
02/21/2018
Please join us in welcoming our newest board members , who will help guide NFG in the coming years: Shona Chakravartty Senior Program Officer Hill-Snowdon Foundation Amoretta Morris Senior Associate Family-Centered Community Change Annie E. Casey Foundation Marjona Jones Program Officer U.U. Veatch Program at Shelter Rock Emma Oppenheim Program Officer, Economic Advancement U.S. Programs Open Society Foundations We would also like to introduce NFG’s new Board Chair: Michael Brown Vice-President of Community Leadership The Seattle Foundation Our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation are...
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We are the ones we’ve been waiting for

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
11/09/2016
After a long, bitter, and confusing election season, we have finally come to the other side. Many of us are feeling a lot of hard emotions. Many of us are looking for answers to questions: How did this happen? What does this mean for our country, and the values of equity and justice that we hold dear? What can I do, or what can I do differently? What we know is that we have been in a real, powerful, hopeful, and evolving movement moment for the past few years. While what we thought we knew yesterday may now be in question, what is not in question is: If you believe in equity and justice, now...
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“Advancing Together” the Democratizing Development Program

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
10/13/2016
We launched NFG’s new Democratizing Development Program this summer with the goal of supporting our network to help create a shift in how development happens in cities and towns across the country. We are working toward a vision where low-income people and communities of color have actual decision-making ability to say what development looks like in their neighborhoods, and to define where and how they want to live. Here is a short list of what we have been up to. We also have lots of great programming planned for the rest of the year: ➤ Online 2017 Program Planning...

Nominate Labor Movement Leaders for the 2017 Discount Foundation Legacy Award!

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
09/29/2017
Nominations are now open for 2017 Discount Foundation Legacy Award ! Launched in 2015, the Discount Foundation Legacy Awards supports leading edge organizing in the worker justice arena. In partnership with Jobs with Justice and Funders for a Just Economy (a program of Neighborhood Funders Group ), the Discount Legacy Award honors and supports an exemplary individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership to the workers' rights movement in the U.S. and abroad. The 2017 Discount Foundation Legacy Award winner will be publicly recognized for their remarkable contributions to the...

The 2016 Discount Legacy Award Nominations Are Open!

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
10/12/2015
The nominations are now open for the first annual Discount Legacy Award. Jobs With Justice Education Fund and the Neighborhood Funders Group recently launched the Discount Legacy Award Program to honor and support an exemplary individual from the worker justice movement. The selected awardee will be granted a $20,000 stipend, providing them with the flexibility to expand on their work. The Discount Legacy Award Program is supported by the Discount Foundation, a foundation founded on making economic opportunity an achievable reality for all, especially underpaid Americans and...

Celebrating 20 Years of Leadership on Labor and Economic Justice

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
09/01/2016
This Labor Day, we are celebrating a milestone—the 20 th anniversary of the Working Group on Labor and Community Partnerships (WGLCP). What a feat! Since 1996, the working group has kept a revolving circle of funders engaged, informed, and organized around funding strategies that expand access to quality employment with higher wages, better working conditions, comprehensive benefits, organizing opportunities, and financial stability for working families. Check out this fabulous 10-minute video recounting the working group’s history and impact, and how the funder/field landscape has changed...

A Community-Centered Response to Louisiana Flooding

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
08/26/2016
The recent flooding disaster in Louisiana is responsible for loss of life, major destruction of property, and significant impacts on safety in a region already struggling with disinvestment. Over 10,000 people are in shelters, and thousands more will return to damaged homes, neighborhoods, and communities. Thankfully, government’s response to this disaster has been much better than its response to Hurricane Katrina. First responders have saved lives and served evacuees, and disaster agencies are assessing the recovery landscape. Meanwhile, philanthropic organizations—like NFG partner...

Backing Protests: Funders for Justice Members Answer Activist Movements' Call

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
07/19/2016
Groups that emerged after Ferguson are mobilizing thousands of people for protests that develop with lightning speed and have dramatic impact. Their approach appeals to some grant makers. (The following is an excerpt from The Chronicle of Philanthropy 's article " Police Shootings Since Ferguson Put Foundations to the Test ". Published on July 19, 2016 and written by Drew Lindsey.) Backing Protests If helping design police reform represents one philanthropic response to the shootings, activist movements that swelled following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., offer another...

NFG Member Spotlight: The Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
10/17/2018
The Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation focuses on health and well-being, prioritizing correctional health issues along with chronic violence and community health. We asked Langeloth's President, Scott Moyer, to talk about their work and how membership with NFG is shaping their thinking. Langeloth is part of a number of funder collaboratives, including the Fund for a Safer Future (addressing gun violence), Four Freedoms Fund (supporting immigrant rights), and the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing/Youth for Safety and Justice Fund (rapid response funding to youth-led safety and...

Roses Along A Journey: My Transformative Experience in NFG’s Project Phoenix

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
10/03/2017
Tyler Nickerson, NFG Member and Director of Investments and State Strategy at The Solutions Project , was one of 33 funders selected to participate in NFG’s Project Phoenix . He shares his reflections on the year-long collective learning program developed for funders to explore philanthropy’s role in supporting a “just transition to a new economy” that promotes good jobs, local economic prosperity, ecological sustainability, and re-prioritization of capital in society. Pausing and appreciating the important moments around me is something I’m intentionally trying to get better at doing. With a...

Funders: Let's Stop Fixating on Our Issues and Start Supporting our Values

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
02/15/2017
Dimple Abichandani, NFG member and Executive Director of the General Service Foundation , encourages colleagues to move from business as usual toward new practices of solidarity, including increased funder alignment and greater support of cross-issue movement building efforts that often struggle to raise funds. This post originally appeared in Inside Philanthropy here . As I think about where we go from here, I can’t stop thinking about the election. The 2010 election. In 2010, there were two dozen states that had anti-Sharia law ballot measures and/or legislation pending. In fact, Sharia law...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Resilient Places Require Intentional Strategies

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
11/29/2016
In September, the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group convened 100 local, regional, and national funders for Towards a More Resilient Place: Promising Practices in Place-Based Philanthropy . Here, Angela Brown of The Hyams Foundation reflects on the variety of grantmaking approaches in the field and the importance of working with communities on long-term strategies. By Angela Brown, The Hyams Foundation Six weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the convening Toward A More Resilient Place: Promising Practice in Place-Based Philanthropy,...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Changing Foundation Culture to Support Place-Based Change

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
11/02/2016
In September 2016, the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group convened 100 local, regional, and national funders for Towards a More Resilient Place: Promising Practices in Place-Based Philanthropy . Here, Raquel Gutierrez of Vitalyst Health Foundation reflects on where the culture in foundations needs to evolve to match developments in the field. By Raquel Gutierrez, Vitalyst Health Foundation The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group chose an inspiring setting for their convening, Towards a More Resilient Place: Promising...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

For the Surdna Foundation, Communities Should Define Their Futures

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
09/01/2016
Will Cordery, Program Officer of Surdna Foundation ’s Strong Local Economies program, writes about racial justice and inclusive economic development. This post originally appeared in NCRP’s quarterly journal, which you can find here . When people have asked me what compelled me to join the team at the Surdna Foundation more than a year ago, I’ve often shared that I saw a philanthropic organization that is not only guided by principles of social justice, and working to address real societal problems, but one that is committed to investing in new ways of building economies, environments and...
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For the Surdna Foundation, Communities Should Define Their Futures

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
09/01/2016
Will Cordery, Program Officer of Surdna Foundation ’s Strong Local Economies program, writes about racial justice and inclusive economic development. This post originally appeared in NCRP’s quarterly journal, which you can find here . When people have asked me what compelled me to join the team at the Surdna Foundation more than a year ago, I’ve often shared that I saw a philanthropic organization that is not only guided by principles of social justice, and working to address real societal problems, but one that is committed to investing in new ways of building economies, environments and...
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#NFG2016 Conference Recap from Native Americans in Philanthropy

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
08/04/2016
Jennifer Fairbanks, Communication Specialist at Native Americans in Philanthropy , provides her perspective on NFG’s 2016 National Convening. This post originally appeared on Native Americans in Philanthropy’s blog, which you can find here . The Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG) held their national convening this year from June 14-16 in Oakland, California. With a focus on Philanthropic Strategies for People, Place & Power , the content and programming centered around rethinking the role of funders in building long-term holistic transformation and community power. Native Americans in...

Leading with Power: #NFG2016 Conference Recap

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Mon, July 18, 2016

Last month, over 300 funders and field leaders joined Neighborhood Funders Group in Oakland, CA, making it NFG's largest convening ever. Grounded by frontline leaders and organizers in social movements for racial and economic justice, the conference provided a dynamic space where funders listened deeply and talked frankly about how best to resource meaningful social change with community power building and innovative partnerships in the heart of these discussions.

“People were not afraid to be real. In other funder convenings, there are lots of layers to the truth. People were...

Can you tackle poverty without taking on place?

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
06/29/2016
Earlier this month, House Republicans released a new plan to fight poverty and social immobility. However, there is little mention of the role that place plays in perpetuating poverty or shaping economic opportunity. Growing research shows that geography plays a powerful role in determining life outcomes in the United States. This article from the Urban Institute discusses the importance of place on poverty and makes several policy recommendations. By Solomon Greene, Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and former NFG board member Earlier this month, House Republicans released a new plan to...
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Topic: 
Economic Justice
Housing Justice

Innovative community land trust from Puerto Rico wins 2015-16 UN World Habitat Award

News type: 
News from the Field
Release Date: 
03/01/2016
San Juan, Puerto Rico - The Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña, a community land trust from the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, won the 2015-16 UN World Habitat Award, which honors innovative and replicable initiatives that address issues affecting human settlements. The Award will be received during the third UN Habitat global summit, which takes place every 20 years. “We are proud to obtain this honor for Puerto Rico as an acknowledgement of what can be accomplished through ample citizen participation and community work towards a common vision for better living conditions,” said...

JPMorgan Chase, Detroit Development Fund and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Announce $6.5 Million Loan Fund for Detroit’s Minority-Owned Small Businesses

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
10/12/2015
Entrepreneurs of Color Fund will provide greater economic opportunity for small businesses that lack access to credit and primarily serve Detroit’s neighborhoods. September 15, 2015 (Detroit) – The Detroit Development Fund (DDF), JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) today announced a new $6.5 million lending program for Detroit businesses owned by entrepreneurs of color and businesses that primarily hire people of color. The Entrepreneurs of Color Fund will boost economic opportunity for minority-owned businesses in Detroit by providing them with...

Funder Coalition Calls for Building a Just and Resilient New Orleans

News type: 
Member News
Release Date: 
09/01/2015
August 29, 2015, Philanthropy News Digest - While challenges such as entrenched poverty and overincarceration remain, funder collaborations, cross-sectoral partnerships, and community-based leadership and participation have helped transform New Orleans in the decade since Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic damage to the city, a paper from the Greater New Orleans Funders Network argues. The paper, Fulfilling the Promise, Making New Orleans a Just and Resilient City (16 pages, PDF), outlines the progress made and challenges that remain in areas where philanthropy has played an important role...
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Topic: 
Climate Justice
Economic Justice

New Reports: And Still I Rise, #BlackWorkersMatter

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Thu, May 07, 2015

Check out this webinar from May 11th featuring the authors of the report, Kimberly Freeman Brown and Sean Thomas-Breitfeld!

Two new cutting edge and groundbreaking reports looking at the nexus of work, race, gender, and class were recently released at the conference State of Black Workers in America at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. The first report, And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders...

VICTORY: HUD Program Changes to Reduce Foreclosures and Increase Affordable Housing

News type: 
News from the Field
Release Date: 
04/30/2015
April 24, 2015 - Exciting news from our partners at Right to the City, Center for Popular Democracy, and Alliance for Community Empowerment: Following a six month campaign led by the community groups working with the Right to the City Alliance (RTC) and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) of HUD announced significant changes to the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP). Following the changes announced today, the DASP’s new plan will include: A commitment to selling more loans through special pools that require investors to achieve a certain...

On Earth Day, Empowering Allies for the Year Ahead

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
04/22/2015
People, Place and the Pope offer new hope for environmental progress Rachel Leon, Environmental Grantmakers Association Dennis Quirin, Neighborhood Funders Group There is new hope for sustaining people, place, and planet on Earth Day’s 45 th anniversary, as burgeoning voices for equity, community, and faith are rising to the forefront of the environmental movement. Is the philanthropic community poised to invest in these arenas so that we can maximize this moment of opportunity? Whether your starting place is economic justice or climate resilience, the solutions to these global challenges...

Water Works: Building Partnerships to Create Jobs and Transform Communities

Event type: 
Briefing
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
New York, NY
Please join the Surdna Foundation and Neighborhood Funders Group in a special funder briefing and strategy session with water and wastewater utility leaders. Water is the backbone of sustainable communities and the lifeline of American prosperity. It keeps our people healthy, our cities running, and our economies growing. As public utilities invest billions of dollars to rebuild our nation’s aging water and wastewater systems, they have the opportunity to significantly improve people and place. This briefing with senior executives of water and wastewater agencies will showcase how public...

Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation Asks: What is NFG?

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
12/05/2014
Longtime NFG member and leader asked an important question: "What is NFG?" See how they answered. So many smiling faces from our friends in Arkansas! "Like NFG, we see the need for philanthropy to advance social justice and community change. We share NFG's fundamental commitment to economic and social justice - to supporting people in low and bottom income communities, both urban and rural."
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5 Hot Causes for Donors in 2015

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
02/04/2014
Chronicle of Philanthropy, January 15, 2015 The Battle for Racial Justice: Grant makers are uniting to address racial-justice issues as tensions remain high following the failure of grand juries to indict white police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City. Funders for Justice, a new group of about 30 foundations and other groups affiliated with the Neighborhood Funders Group, has set up a website to publicize activities and promote giving to community organizers working on issues like police accountability. Lori Villarosa, executive director of the...

A Pivotal Moment for Racial Justice

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
01/05/2015
Eric Ward, Program Officer of Ford Foundation 's Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice program, reflects on emerging opportunities for the racial organizing movement. This post originally appeared on Ford Foundation’s Equals Change Blog, which you can find here . On December 3, a New York grand jury announced that no indictment would be delivered in the police killing of Eric Garner. Following the grand jury decision not to indict the police officer who shot another unarmed black man, Michael Brown , in Ferguson, Missouri in August, this news set off protests across the country. But these deaths...

Police Accountability: Organizing and Philanthropic Strategies

Resource type: 
Other
Mon, September 15, 2014

The uprisings in Ferguson, MO, in response to the police killing of Michael Brown, have awakened national attention to racially biased policing. This has occurred amidst a growing national consciousness that the criminalization of people of color and low-income communities is a mechanism of the racial and economic injustice that prevents the full civic participation of communities of color in their communities – in education, jobs, housing, and elected representation.

Following are resources that might be helpful when considering how your philanthropic institution might support...

Unions, Activists Align on Affordable Housing

News type: 
News from the Field
Release Date: 
09/04/2014
August 19, 2014 - A group of New York City construction unions have forged a coalition with affordable housing activists to ratchet up pressure on Mayor Bill de Blasio to require organized labor in the building of 80,000 lower-cost apartment units over the next decade. The unions say they will begin supporting a call for 50% of the new units to be set aside for lower- and middle-income residents, a key tenet of the housing advocates' agenda and a departure from past practice in the city. Unions are also willing to make an unusual concession, accepting wages that are 40% lower than normal...
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Topic: 
Housing Justice
Workers' Rights

NFG Announces LaTosha Brown as Project Director for Grantmakers for Southern Progress

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
12/01/2014
Grantmakers for Southern Progress (GSP) and Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG), are pleased to announce that LaTosha Brown will become the Project Director for Grantmakers for Southern Progress. Grantmakers for Southern Progress is a funder working group of NFG, comprised of Southern and national funders who are committed to advancing progress in the outcomes, conditions, and opportunities for those who are least well off socially, economically, and politically in the South. Ms. Brown is a native of the south and currently resides in Atlanta, GA. She brings to GSP deep experience in...
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Project Phoenix

Event type: 
Convening
Monday, February 1, 2016 - Monday, January 30, 2017
Overview Project Phoenix: Connecting Democracy, Economy, and Sustainability (Phoenix) was a year-long cohort collective learning program for funders. This project adds to several conversations that have emerged in philanthropy over the past few years exploring fronts ranging from local economies and climate justice to worker co-ops under the frame of a “just transition” or “solidarity economy” or “economic resiliency” or “new economy.” For Phoenix, the term “new economy” described intersectional activities with an intention to support: a democracy that works for all an...

Project Phoenix Grantmaking Tools

Resource type: 
Other
Mon, March 06, 2017

Project Phoenix convened a group of funders from a broad range of issue perspectives (climate, civic engagement, worker rights, local economies, etc.) and a broad range of institutional types and positions (size, mission, geography, approach, level of risk-taking, etc.). We realized we often meant very different things by the terms “just transition” or “new economy” or “solidarity economy” and found it difficult to understand each others’ work and the possibilities at the intersection in a shared framework. Learn more about...

Field & Funder Convening explores strategies to resource transformative solutions to the US housing crisis

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Wed, August 01, 2018

In July 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group and the Right To The City Alliance hosted a Funder & Field Convening alongside the Homes For All Member Assembly in Atlanta, GA. Grantmakers met with grassroots leaders to strategically align and move more resources to support housing justice efforts happening throughout the country. The convening included workshops on investing in long-term narrative shift, a funder tour through Atlanta with the ...

The Road Ahead for Worker Justice: Where to Lean In, Pull Up, Push Back and Pivot

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Sat, June 24, 2017

For many years, Funders for a Just Economy (FJE) has held a yearly policy briefing to engage its members on specific policy issues that affect middle and low-income workers. In a fundamentally shifting political and power map, this year’s policy briefing updated members with our current understanding of the major forces and players that impact worker justice. FJE members engaged in strategic conversations about the decline of organized labor, economic discrimination based on migration status and gender, the future of work, emerging state and local...

Stabilizing Communities: Advancing Housing Justice Organizing and Policy Strategies in This Political Moment

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Fri, April 21, 2017

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Across the country, resident-led institutions and their allies continue to build organizing strategies that address housing, displacement, and gentrification at the local, regional, and state level. Strategies and solutions to gentrification and displacement like rent control measures,...

Project Phoenix Readings

Resource type: 
Other
Mon, March 06, 2017

Below are several of the reports and readings that supported our learning in Project Phoenix, a year-long cohort collective learning program for funders exploring fronts ranging from local economies and climate justice to worker co-ops under the frame of a “just transition” or “solidarity economy” or “economic resiliency” or “new economy.” Learn more about it here.

General

Project Phoenix Outcomes and Evaluation

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Wed, March 08, 2017

Project Phoenix: Connecting Democracy, Economy, and Sustainability was a year-long cohort collective learning program for funders exploring fronts ranging from local economies and climate justice to worker co-ops under the frame of a “just transition” or “solidarity economy” or “economic resiliency” or “new economy.” Learn more about it here.

What emerged from our year of learning together? What paths have we found for cross-sector philanthropic engagement around a broad set of interventions that are commensurate to...

Welcome Manisha Vaze, Sr. Program Manager of Funders for a Just Economy

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
03/02/2017
Manisha Vaze has joined NFG’s staff as new Senior Program Manager for our Funders for a Just Economy (FJE) program. She comes to NFG with more than 12 years’ experience in grassroots organizing. Most recently, she was the Director of Organizing at Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) in Los Angeles to help advance an agenda to eliminate structural barriers to social and economic barriers for residents of South L.A. There, Manisha helped build replicable job training and workforce models that have regional and national impact. Manisha joins Funders for a Just Economy (...
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Program: 
Funders for a Just Economy

Prisons/Detention Centers, Racial Justice, and the Environment in Rural Places

Event type: 
Webinar
Monday, January 28, 2019 -
10:00am - 11:30am
Webinar
Rural towns are increasingly used as sites for prisons and detention centers, and supported by some city leaders as an economic driver. However, prisons and detention centers funnel residents into low-wage service jobs, pollute the land, and ultimately rely on increasing the number of people in prison in order to grow. This often means heavier policing of youth, migrants, homeless folks, and families. Neighborhood Funders Group's Integrated Rural Strategies Group and Funders for Justice invite you to a webinar in which you’ll hear from leaders who organize for local investment in thriving...

LA-Area NFG Member Happy Hour

Event type: 
Reception
Wednesday, January 9, 2019 -
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Los Angeles, CA
Kick-off 2019 with NFG! Join us as we gather NFG staff and members in the LA area. Non-members wanting to learn more and connect with the NFG network welcome to join! Arts District Brewing Company 828 Traction Ave Los Angeles, CA 90013 Cash bar. Light appetizers will be served. Thank you to NFG member Liberty Hill Foundation for sponsoring this event!
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Discount Foundation Legacy Award

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
12/10/2018
The Discount Foundation Legacy Award was launched in 2015 to commemorate and carry on the legacy of the Foundation’s decades-long history of supporting leading edge organizing in the worker justice arena beyond its spend down as a foundation in 2014. Created in partnership with Jobs With Justice Education Fund and the Neighborhood Funders Group’s Funders for a Just Economy , the Discount Legacy Award annually identifies, supports and celebrates an individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and contributed significantly to the workers’ rights movement in the United States and/or...

2017 Discount Legacy Award Reception

Event type: 
Other
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Washington, DC
Launched in 2015, the Discount Foundation Legacy Award supports leading edge organizing in the worker justice arena. In partnership with Jobs with Justice and Funders for a Just Economy , each year the Discount Legacy Award honors and supports an exemplary individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership to the workers' rights movement in the U.S. and abroad. Luna Ranjit, Co-founder of Adhikaar , is the winner of the 2017 Discount Foundation Legacy Award. She will be honored at the annual Funders for a Just Economy Policy Briefing on May 18-19, 2017, in Washington, DC. The reception...

Journey Towards Intersectional Grant-Making

Resource type: 
NFG Report
Thu, May 24, 2018

Funders for a Just Economy started the Working at the Intersections group to create a supportive community in which funders could learn about intersectional grant-making together and create the beginnings of a central framework on economic justice grantmaking through an intersectional lens.

In late 2017, the group interviewed a dozen philanthropic leaders and key thought partners to inform their understanding of intersectional grant-making. The approach was an appreciative inquiry to affirm that there is a great deal of expertise in the field...

FFJ Advisor Discussion Series: Kris Hayashi

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
01/14/2019
Hear from Kris Hayashi, Executive Director of Transgender Law Center and FFJ Field Advisor, about the efforts to seek #JusticeforRoxsana and the horrific conditions trans migrants face, particularly in ICE custody. Click here to participate in a matching gift challenge. #JusticeforRoxsana Six months ago, our government murdered Roxsana Hernandez, a transgender woman and asylum-seeker from Honduras. Last month we put ICE on notice. On November 26 th, 2018 Transgender Law Center (TLC) and the Law Office of Andrew R. Free announced that we have filed a Notice of Wrongful Death Tort Claim in New...

Reimagining How We Fund and What We Fund

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
07/19/2018
In June 2018, Neighborhood Funders Group convened hundreds of local, regional, and national funders for the NFG 2018 National Convening, Raise Up: Moving Money for Justice . Here, Dr. Carmen Rojas , NFG Board Member and Co-Founder & CEO of The Workers Lab , reflects on reimagining the role of philanthropy in these pressing times. The NFG conference could not have come at a better time. We are at a critical juncture as a country, and the field of philanthropy has a number of hard truths to face if it hopes to realize a better tomorrow for everyone in the U.S. We are living...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

NFG Midwest Equity Funders Meeting

Event type: 
Convening
Thursday, January 31, 2019 -
10:00am - 5:00pm
Milwaukee, WI
To register for this event, please log in to your account or create a new account . For any registration issues, contact support@nfg.org . For additional information about the event, contact Nile Malloy, Senior Program Manager, at nile@nfg.org . The Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Ford Foundation, Needmor Fund, and the Neighborhood Funders Group invite you to a Midwest equity project meeting in deeping our shared practice towards equity and justice in the region. The purpose of the meeting is to bring together a core group of Midwest Funders working on issues of equity, justice, and economic...

NFG Member Spotlight: Tremaine Foundation

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
04/27/2018
The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation , based in New Haven, CT, does grantmaking through a national lens in niche areas of Art, Environment, and Learning Differences. One of their recent initiatives that may be of special interest to the NFG membership is Sustainable CT (Connecticut). We asked Tremaine Foundation staff Michelle Knapick , President, and Nicole Chevalier , Program Director, to respond to a few questions about their work, and how their membership with NFG is shaping their thinking. 1. The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Towards a More Resilient Place: Voices from the Convening

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Wed, October 18, 2017

Last month, the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and Neighborhood Funders Group convened 100 local, regional, and national funders for Towards a More Resilient Place: Promising Practices in Place-Based Philanthropy . This convening builds on our 2014 Towards a Better Place convening and our 2015 convening with the Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation,...

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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

FFJ Advisor Discussion Series: Charlene Carruthers

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
04/27/2018
Next up in our discussion series with FFJ ’ s Field Advisors , staff interviews Charlene Carruthers , Founding National Director of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100) . Read our interview below to learn more about their work on nationalizing the invest/divest demand, Black queer feminist (BQF) lens as an organizing framework, and the importance of leadership training and political education. Don’t forget to also check out BYP100 ’ s Agenda to Build Black Futures and Charlene’s forthcoming book “Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements” which will be published...

FFJ Advisor Discussion Series: Zachary Norris

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
04/27/2018
In the spring of 2017, Funders for Justice (FFJ) launched its inaugural cohort of Advisors – nine field leaders recognized for their leadership in community power-building, racial and gender justice, police accountability campaigns, and anti-criminalization movements. We asked them to share their insights on the current political climate, how we can build a vision for the world we want, and what funders can do in this moment. This month, FFJ staff interviewed Zachary Norris , Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights . (The Ella Baker Center is a leader in the Freedom...

Michael Brown and Alison Corwin discuss why NFG membership is so critical for funders in this political climate

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
11/29/2017
In this era of political uncertainty, we as funders have one simple task: accelerate the pace of systemic change for poor communities and communities of color by taking collective action and funding grassroots efforts . NFG is the political home where funders collaborate to make this happen. As NFG members ourselves, we’ve learned how to fund just economic development , organized to move money for justice , and rolled-up our sleeves with other members to have a more powerful, collective impact. Here we have an organizing space that is not only deeply helpful in moving...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

No Time for Business as Usual

News type: 
NFG Blog
Release Date: 
05/16/2017
Sharon Alpert, NFG member and President & CEO of The Nathan Cummings Foundation , shares an update on NCF's strategy for combatting inequality and climate change. She describes how NCF has built out its integrated framework and committed to expanding payouts in response to this political moment. These are extraordinary times. For more than 25 years, Nathan Cummings Foundation’s mission has explicitly named a commitment to democratic values and social justice, supporting the most vulnerable, respecting diversity and promoting understanding across cultures, and empowering communities. Today...
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Topic: 
Philanthropic Practice

Our Work Today: A Statement from FFJ Leadership

News type: 
NFG News
Release Date: 
08/14/2017
Just several days ago, the city council of Charlottesville, VA, voted to sell the Robert E. Lee statue and to create a reparations fund for Black residents , or an “equity package” which will invest $4 million in Black people of Charlottesville. Among those investments were funding for a heritage center, public housing, and GED programs. White nationalist leaders called for a national mobilization to protest the city’s historic move towards structural equity. We all watched on Friday night as hundreds of white nationalists from around the country, marched on the University of Virginia ,...
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Topic: 
Racial Justice
Program: 
Funders for Justice

Webinar Recap: Why Should Social Justice Funders Care About Impact Investing?

Resource type: 
Event Recap
Fri, July 14, 2017

Funders who have long provided grants to seed social change efforts are becoming interested in fundamental shifts in traditional corporate accountability and disinvestment strategies to consider developing strategies for more values aligned and socially impactful investment alongside grantmaking. These strategies have the potential to help the philanthropic sector invest at scale to change the economy regionally and contribute towards community renewal, power building, and seeding systemic change.

NFG's Project Phoenix and...

Development Without Displacement in Opportunity Zones

Event type: 
Webinar
Wednesday, January 30, 2019 -
10:00am - 11:30am
Webinar
To register for this event, please log in to your account or create a new account . For any registration issues, contact support@nfg.org . Photo by Blake Wheeler on Unsplash Last month, NFG's Democratizing Development Program held two separate meetings with funders and community leaders to learn, network, and strategize about the impacts, implications, and potential actions we can take to ensure that Opportunity Zones are more equitable in cities across the country. The Opportunity Zones designation, a provision nested within the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, presents significant...