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New organizations emerged in response to COVID-19, 2020’s racial reckoning, and to meet the rising needs and service gaps in communities. Many of these organizations are led by BIPOC leaders, have small budgets, small teams, and are often fiscally sponsored. What do these emerging organizations need for long term sustainability? How can funders support these organizations?

One of the core values of a trust-based approach is to work for systemic equity, which should include a focus on racial equity. And while trust-based philanthropy and racial equity work are not identical nor interchangeable, both work hand-in-hand to advance a vision for a more just and equitable nonprofit sector. In short, a racial equity lens is needed in order to fully embody trust-based philanthropy, and trust-based philanthropy is a helpful framework to actualize racial equity within philanthropy. To learn more about the distinctions and correlations, you can review the guide on The Intersection of Trust-Based Philanthropy & Racial Equity.

The NCG Funders for Climate Justice Group is a collaboration with Smart Growth California and the League of California Community Foundations. We invite funders who are interested in or are already funding at the intersection of climate justice and resilience to join us and to share and provide input as we collectively learnand take action on critical climate justice challenges and opportunities. Discussion topics in the group will focus on intersectional issues relating to climate justice, as well as philanthropic and community-based practices and trends relevant to northern California’s 48-county region. We also welcome topical and tactical feedback from funders as we improve this group.

As we face the current federal political regime, and deal with the havoc being inflicted from the top down, philanthropy is in a unique position to support our nonprofit partners working tirelessly to serve communities, protect progressive public policies and programs, and stave off the harmful repercussions of administrative and congressional actions. Last year, we saw a clear attempt to stifle political dissent through federal legislation that would have granted the executive branch power to dismantle any organization it deems as a “terrorist supporting” organization. While HR 9495 did not pass the Senate, the proposal was a chilling harbinger of what we can anticipate in the future, and sounded the alarm for how we must collectively respond

In our commitment to advancing racial, social, and economic justice, it is essential that we closely examine the patterns present in grantmaking practices. By diligently gathering and analyzing demographic data about the organizations being funded, philanthropy can gain valuable insights and make meaningful strides toward achieving racial equity. With this clear framework in place, we can hold the sector accountable for our funding decisions and transparently assess our progress year after year, ensuring that our efforts contribute to real and lasting change.

In this second session of the Foundations of Racial Equity Series, we explore racial capitalism, which describes the current economic system of extracting social and economic value from people of color. Racial capitalism is based on the theft, exclusion and exploitation of the land, labor, and capital of people of color. Philanthropy—as a social, political, and economic strategy of society’s wealthiest people, mostly white men, and institutions that “do good” while moving wealth without tax exposure— upholds racial capitalism.

Our democratic systems are deeply entwined with disaster resilience. On the eve of consequential presidential and local elections, the question of what role democracy plays in disasters, and what role the response to disasters plays in undermining or strengthening democracy, has never been more important. Funders should consider the role a strong and functional democracy plays in the ability for communities to self-determine what resilience to disasters looks like for their communities, have adequate and culturally appropriate resources to respond when disasters occur, and have the power to demand equitable recoveries.