Our bi-weekly magazine Together For Good offers deeper-dive stories about news-making people and institutions in our community, resources to help us do our work better, and up-to-the-minute info about the latest jobs and opportunities for professional development. You can sign up to receive the magazine below. If you're an NCG member we want to help you share news and announcements from your organization. You can submit your press release, blog, or article.
NCG's Blog
I found myself, one day, along with my colleague Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez, now the ED of MACLA, facing a nine-month delay for a significant grant that supported the work. MACLA was subsidizing the work with no funds. The intermediary was not delivering the grant on time, nor did it seem it was going to be delivered on time in spite of repeated efforts to collect the grant funds. I became aware of the Arts Loan Fund (ALF) and after some difficult deliberation, applied.
When we ask our grantees what they want for themselves, their families, and their communities, they often say one word: safety. That is why – during a time when the national conversation on solutions to harm is embroiled in heated debate – our guiding star continues to be organizing towards interventions that center safety outside of the carceral punishment system.
My invitation to you, as you explore these resources, is to interrogate the role urgency plays in your life and work. Urgency, a feature and symptom of white supremacy culture, especially stands as a major obstacle to centering relationships and pausing long enough to discern our right next move with skillful means. Together, we can transform systems of white dominance, with the aim of engendering more belonging, trust, accountability, and sustained change.
Working in racial equity and social justice in the philanthropic sector is challenging because the “personal is political,” and there often feels like no break from our 9-5 roles. We don’t get to take off our skin or the grief we feel in our bodies from the years of oppression of racism that our people have endured. As a BIPOC woman and a gender non-conforming person who work to advance racial equity, healing justice has multiple meanings and layers for us, and for BIPOC communities. We want to acknowledge the differences and be in solidarity with our Black, Brown, and Indigenous siblings who historically dealt with enslavement, genocide, and currently experience oppressions in materially different ways.
Philanthropy News
We are looking forward to another year together building our community of funders who are dedicated to abolition, healing, and liberation. As a part of our growing commitment to the movement, we’re thrilled to introduce our new Movement Advisors: Amber-Rose Howard, Ashley Rojas, Gilbert Johnson, and Morning Star Gali. See their bios below!
NCG is pleased to welcome a new member to its growing team! Semiyah Constantino (she/her) joins as the new Digital Engagement Associate to help with all aspects of communications. Interested in getting to know Semiyah or have questions about communications? Get in touch!
For more than half a decade, Philanthropy Northwest, Northern California Grantmakers, Southern California Grantmakers and Catalyst of San Diego and Imperial Counties have been the recipients of unprecedented support from one foundation that saw value in regional philanthropy-serving organizations. That partner is the Satterberg Foundation. In the years since this infusion began, we’ve often chatted about how this relationship has changed us and how we need to tell its story.
The application period for the 2022 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Community Fund is open! As the Community Fund enters its fifth year, CZI is expanding the geographic reach of the program to support organizations working across San Mateo County, prioritizing communities most impacted by structural racism and inequities.
Resources Search
Nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area have long struggled to find and keep affordable space in the region’s red-hot real estate market and the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new array of space challenges. Nonprofits now face new challenges - renegotiating leases, shedding unused space, adapting spaces to meet physical distancing requirements, even expanding to meet increased demand for services. Even without the staggering economic consequences of the pandemic, the future of nonprofit workspace is in flux as many nonprofits have moved to remote working arrangements and are considering alternatives to the future of workspace.