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The California Criminal Justice Funders Group is thrilled to welcome our newest Steering Committee member: Fela Thomas, Senior Program Manager (People Pathway) with San Francisco Foundation (SFF). We have valued Fela’s active participation as a CCJFG member over the past couple of years and are excited to strengthen our collaboration with Fela as a Steering Committee member. Learn more about Fela below!
We want to extend our deepest gratitude for Alan Kwok for serving as NCG’s and Philanthropy California’s Director of Climate and Disaster Resilience for the past four years. Alan will transition to the new role of Senior Advisor beginning February 2023. Underscoring NCG’s deepening commitment to advancing equity in climate and disaster resilience, we will be growing the team, bringing on a new Climate and Disaster Resilience Director to continue the work.
Recently, Dwayne Marsh, CEO of Northern California Grantmakers, and I were reflecting on how many foundations in our memberships are looking to change direction and move toward racial equity. In an ice-bucket-style challenge, Dwayne posted his thoughts and then tagged me with the question, “How best does philanthropy choose courage in the face of the unprecedented complexity the moment offers?"
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.
This is a governance moment. We can master governing for all people by bringing a racial equity consciousness to every aspect of how government does business. We have an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen our democracy by fully activating our multiracial population and building a nation where everyone participates, prospers, and reaches their full potential.
Climate change is here to stay. Although what’s needed seems endless as the impacts will worsen in the coming years, I am hopeful. Since joining the sector four years ago, I have seen an increasing number of funders exploring new ways to address climate change.
The Census is one of the cornerstones of our American democracy. Mandated by the United States Constitution, it is conducted every 10 years and is the largest peacetime effort of the federal government. Census data is used for a variety of purposes from allocation of billions of dollars of federal funding to political representation apportionment to enforcement of civil rights laws. When census information is not accurate, it threatens to muffle the voices of undercounted groups and regions, and undermine the basic political equality that is central to our democracy. Institutions across the country - including local and state governments, businesses, nonprofits and foundations - routinely rely on data from the census to allocate funding, define where services are delivered and promote economic development.