Generous donors have made significant contributions to our Racial Equity Fund, enabling the Foundation to build momentum for new investments focusing on Racial Justice Systems Change. We are incredibly grateful to Facebook, Inc. that awarded $1 million as part of its effort to support Black-led nonprofits, and will enhance the Foundation’s work to combat systemic racism and inequity in Greater Miami.
We’ve done extensive research to identify the broad range of groups engaged in social justice and equity issues, over 80 so far, and held dozens of conversations to surface more. We want to keep an open door to continue building connections. Please reach out to Vicky Checo, vcheco@miamifoundation.org, to share a group that could be new to us.
Along with making new investments beginning in March, we are committed to mapping and making visible the landscape of groups to more powerfully elevate them and attract additional resources for our community.
Our next funding will seek to build momentum on systems-level change and foster collective efforts on pressing issues, finding those where groups have traction and are doing related work. We are prioritizing social justice and equity groups that are:
- Black-led, meaning the organization is guided by an executive who is Black and/or Black senior leadership
- Working on changing systems that hold injustice and inequities in place
- Engaged in community power-building, movement-building through work such as organizing, developing collectives, building community leadership, knowledge of issues, how systems work and how to impact them
- Amplify or advocating on issues of systemic racism and inequity, that may or may include community-based organizing work
We are adapting our grantmaking approach to reflect better the nature and limited capacity of social justice groups and find synergies on key systemic issues. Based on research so far – and new suggestions coming in – we’ve begun outreach to groups that reflect our priorities. Rather than applications, we are arranging video meetings to gather information an organization would otherwise submit in writing. By using virtual technology, we can allow groups to share their work more richly. And we can share their work in their voice with advisors we will engage in making initial funding investments in March and additional ones in the second quarter of 2021.
We will continue to provide updates here about our process, investments, and what we are learning.