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2024 promises to be a momentous year for democracy—locally, nationally, and globally. Over 4 billion people are living in countries with major elections this year. In the United States, we will also face familiar but obstinate challenges, including the dearth of local news and youth disaffection with voting and institutions. We will also face challenges that are new in this digital era, namely disinformation turbocharged by generative AI that has enormous power to deceive voters, undermine trust, and destabilize our information ecosystems.
GEO’s 2024 National Conference, hosted in partnership with Philanthropy California, offers grantmakers and other practitioners the opportunity to explore equity-centered and community-driven grantmaking practices that support transformational change in order to create a just, connected and inclusive society where we can all thrive.
In 2020, we witnessed philanthropy make major commitments and promises to resource Black-led organizations and movements as part of a renewed reckoning with racial justice after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black lives. Historically, Black-led power-building efforts have been at the forefront of transformative change but have been consistently underfunded and under-resourced. The sudden surge in resources allocated to Black-led nonprofits and power-building organizations over the last four years highlights the urgent need to invest in the leadership and visionary ideas for dismantling systemic racism and advancing an inclusive, multiracial democracy. Now, the question remains whether the investments so far are truly sufficient to provide long-term support for Black power-building organizations and their vital work.
Our staff from the Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County joined NCG’s 2023 Power Building cohort to learn how to be better advocates for policy changes on behalf of our grantees and their clients. Our goals were to learn more about IRS rules governing public charity C3s doing C4 and C4-aligned funding, and to bring what we learn to our many nonprofit colleagues in Sonoma County who are hungry to engage in more advocacy, but unclear on how to move forward. There are roughly 3,000 nonprofits in Sonoma County. We believe that only by aligning and harnessing our collective resources around key issues that affect our most marginalized residents can we, as a sector, build the power necessary for real change.
The California Criminal Justice Funders Group is an established statewide network of funders and donors that invest in a wide range of systems change. CCJFG engages funders from their current location and perspective and supports them to transform learning into collective action; develop principles that align with the movements to end policing, criminalization, imprisonment and the disinvestment of communities in California; build meaningful relationships with impacted communities; and mobilize and redistribute resources.
In philanthropy, how do we steward resources back to the lands and communities that have experienced historical inequities? While it will not undo centuries of harm, it is a first step toward repair. NCG recognizes that we must move beyond optical land acknowledgments into tangible action. What does it mean to move towards right relationships with Indigenous communities? We are figuring it out.
Achieving racial equity and sustaining a viable democracy go hand in hand. NCG defines democracy as the processes, systems, and structures for historically marginalized and underrepresented community members to participate in a political system that fulfills the promise of an equitable multi-racial society. Northern California is a region that can model this approach, ensuring that people of color and other communities historically underrepresented and marginalized in our political process fully engage in the democratic process.