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.
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...
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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...
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 ...
Communities United , Make the Road New York , and Padres & Jóvenes Unidos have just released a new report, The $3.4 Trillion Mistake: The Cost of Mass Incarceration and Criminalization, and How Justice Reinvestment Can Build a Better Future for All , detailing how the U.S.’s misguided criminal justice policies wasted $3.4 trillion over the last three decades that could have instead been used to more...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
