One Year Later: The Fund for Black-led Change
A year ago, the Meyer Foundation announced the Fund for Black-led Change (FBLC). The Fund, dubbed by our former Director for Strategy & Equity Aisha Alexander-Young as her “love song” to Black organizers in the Greater Washington region, is an offering of what philanthropy could and should be doing to resource Black movements.
The philanthropic divestment from Black-led organizations broadly, and Black-led organizing and advocacy organizations specifically, is enough of a reason for the existence of this Fund. However, the history of Black organizing makes clear that by resourcing and supporting Black movements, we also provide support to a network of racial justice and racial equity-focused movements. In the Meyer Foundation’s vision of advancing racial equity, Black movements and Black changemakers must be centered.
In 2021, we’ve been able to make initial awards to a total of 17 Black-led organizations in the Greater Washington area. Those awards total $1.5 million in general operating grants, with plans to continue to increase awards in 2022 through 2025, and to cultivate relationships with 3-5 additional Black-led organizations working in Maryland and Northern Virginia. Grantee partners in the Fund for Black-led Change organize and advocate to combat systemic anti-Blackness through the lens of immigrant rights, food equity, policing in schools, voting rights, tax justice, housing rights, and more.
I’m pleased to formally share the two newest groups that will join the inaugural cohort of FBLC grantee partner organizations:
- Black Women Radicals, a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender expansive people’s radical political activism. Rooted in intersectional and transnational Black feminisms and Womanisms, they are committed to empowering Black transgender, queer, and cisgender radical women and gender expansive activists by centering their political, intellectual, and cultural contributions to the field of Black Politics across time, space, and place in Africa and the African Diaspora.
- Dreaming Out Loud, which rebuilds urban, community-based food systems through cooperative social enterprise increasing access to healthy food, improving community health, supporting entrepreneurs and cooperatives from low-income communities, and creating opportunities for at-risk residents to earn sustainable, family-supporting wages and build wealth.
In my role as Director for the Fund for Black-led Change, I have begun to build relationships with FBLC grantee partners and to understand what their capacity needs are to strengthen their organizational infrastructure. What makes the Fund for Black-led Change unique amongst the Meyer Foundation’s core grantmaking, is that this Fund is solely and specifically targeted as an infrastructure fund. This means that the goal for all of the FBLC grantee partner organizations — organizations that are Black-led, Black staffed, and centered on systemic change in Black communities — will be to increase organizational capacity through organizational budgets, staff size, staff wellness, and other indicators of structural growth.
Meyer has also been able to support the capacity of FBLC grantee partner organizations through connecting these organizations to accounting services, database management systems, communications training, healing retreats, and convenings. Moving into 2022, these capacity-building initiatives will continue, as well as specific opportunities for fundraising support.
As one FBLC leader said, “fund Black-led change like you want Black-led change to win.”
The Fund for Black-led Change grantee partners are doing deep systems change work, with a strong commitment to Black communities in the Greater Washington area. As one FBLC leader said, “fund Black-led change like you want Black-led change to win.”
I look forward to collaborating with other philanthropic partners to increase long-term funding to these organizations and others within the ecosystem of Black-led changemakers. I also look forward to continuing to build the cohort and deepen Meyer’s support and relationships with current FBLC grantee partners. Please take some time to learn more about our FBLC grantee partners and support the amazing, vital work that they are doing.
