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In this three-part series, California Criminal Justice Funders Group (CCJFG) funder-members will come together to discuss and identify funding strategies that support alternatives to the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), including investing in community-led models that address lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. We will learn about concrete funding strategies, hear from movement leaders, highlight CCJFG members’ work, and share practical strategies for supporting work that reimagines different models of community safety and justice.
We're thrilled to share that we are expanding NCG's capacity around climate and disaster resilience. Katie Oran (she/her) has joined NCG as its first-ever Climate and Disaster Resilience Fellow playing a central role in supporting the development of regional and statewide strategies. Katie brings experience in climate adaption, disaster response, land use planning, climate justice organizing, and wildfire mitigation.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I’ve arrived as NCG’s CEO on the shoulders of many others that came before me. Two of the strongest shoulders belong to my first professional mentor and a heavyweight in philanthropic circles, Joe Brooks. During my seventeen years as a work partner and friend at The San Francisco Foundation and then PolicyLink, I learned more from him than I could ever adequately describe. He had a habit of saying things that were increasingly profound the more you thought about them. One of those sayings was, “how much do you need to know to act?”, often dropped in a setting surrounded by other foundation colleagues where he was about to propose bold action to engage some of the Bay Area’s most vexing social challenges
First, let’s get honest about the historical context we are operating in. Philanthropy exists as a result of capitalism and was formed through centuries of slavery, colonization, and displacement. The systems are designed to extract resources, privatize wealth, and centralize power and control of said resources. The systems are successfully doing exactly what they have been designed to do.
To truly strengthen our democracy for the long-term, funders need to hear directly from young people and youth organizing staff and follow their lead to deeply invest in the ecosystem that builds political home and collective agency for us.
In Get It Right: 5 Shifts Philanthropy Must Make Toward an Equitable Region, we've highlighted 5 case studies from regional leaders who are already doing this work. Read about how the Libra Foundation, Tipping Point, Latino Community Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation are creating donor collaboratives to leverage more capital.
The Supreme Court’s decision to federally overturn Roe V. Wade has eliminated a person’s constitutional right to abortion and reversed 50 years of federal abortion protection. States now have flexibility in deciding whether to allow, limit or ban abortions and vital reproductive health. In the 2022 mid-term election voters passing this proposition strengthens California’s infrastructure as a reproductive freedom state for all.