With profound sorrow and love, the Solidaire team is sharing that the giant that is now our movement ancestor, Ravi Khanna, has passed on. We are taking the week to mourn collectively. We will continue to uplift his work and contribution to the movement.

Ravi Prasad Khanna, age 69, passed away peacefully, surrounded by his children and loved ones, after valiantly fighting squamous cell carcinoma. He was born in 1953, in Lucknow, India and moved to the United States in the late 1970s. He is survived by his wife Shirley, five beloved children – Anjali, Asha, Shyam, Quinn and Priya, and five grandchildren.

Throughout Ravi’s incredible life of service, he worked to uplift the voices of people most marginalized by those in power. His work included nurturing progressive philanthropy; organizing policy and advocacy campaigns; hosting a news and opinion website focused on amplifying the voices of activists from the Global South; and producing documentaries on the so-called “war on drugs”, stopping child labor, and disrupting corporate globalization. He also provided training for immigrant-led organizations; raised funds to support frontline organizing; and served as a philanthropic advisor.

In an illustrious career spanning five decades, Ravi worked with many social justice organizations including Solidaire Network and Solidaire Action, Centro Nacional de Comunicacion Social (D.F., Mexico), Grassroots International, Haymarket People’s Fund, Movimiento Ciudadano por la Democracia (D.F., Mexico), Oxfam America, Peace Development Fund, Resist, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, and Women’s Rights International. When not building grassroots power, Ravi could be found cooking, sampling new cuisines, planning travel adventures and enjoying quality time with his children and grandchildren.

Ravi was committed to operationalizing his core values of love, solidarity and interdependence as Solidaire’s Director of Finance and Operations, since 2018. He led the path to Solidaire Network becoming an independent 501 c3 organization, led our first audit and put into place justice-centered policies and practices that continue to grow a strong culture of care. Most recently, in his role as our Elder-in-Residence, he began to engage in research, documentation and conversations with movement elders to reflect on their life’s work and share key movement building lessons for intergenerational dialogue. He wanted us to honor and celebrate the many movement elders in the United States and from the Global South on whose shoulders we stand. We now consider Ravi one of our movement ancestors, guiding us in the next phase of our work for collective liberation.

 

Learning and Reflections Report: Evaluating our Theory of Liberation

We engaged independent professional evaluators to assess Solidaire’s progress in implementing our Theory of Liberation, a ten-year vision. They produced a Learning and Reflections report that offers a critical look at our progress and gives us valuable insights into potential paths ahead of us. View the interactive, digital Learning and Reflections report here.

The Solidaire Network Learning and Reflection process has been a true blessing to our organization. We set out to evaluate our progress against our 2019-2022 theory of liberation and we have accomplished that and so much more. Thank you to everyone who has supported this important process.

Through the insights of this report, we understand ourselves as bold and successful. We also understand ourselves as committed to learning, building, and fulfilling more and more of our freedom dreams. We take our role seriously, as critical protagonists in the racial, gender, and climate justice struggles of our times. We are committed to enhancing our strengths and addressing our growing edges.

We will not waver in this orientation until long-term progressive power in the United States is a reality. We are consistent, responsive and trustworthy. We are a trusted and powerful partner to movement organizations. We will continue to respond to these extraordinary times with extraordinary vision and rigor.

As we develop a refreshed strategic direction, we know that our work has only just gotten started. Thank you to our evaluative consultants, movement partners, members, board, and staff. You are each an indispensable part of this journey and propelling us forward.

Our Commitment to Reproductive Justice

Today the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and we are overwhelmed with feelings of anger, frustration, and determination to fight. Thirteen states have trigger laws making abortion immediately illegal and we know there are more to come. We are inspired by the immediate wave of organizing against these laws and for systems to help birthing people access safe, affordable abortion. The resistance we have seen is only possible by long-term investment into the ecosystem of organizations leading this work. Reproductive justice is intersectional work. It is essential for Black liberation, economic justice, trans liberation, and so many of the movements that Solidaire members are devoted to.

There is hardly any more fundamental human right than the ability to control what happens to our bodies. This is why we say: reproductive justice is central to Black liberation. —Paris Hatcher, Black Feminist Future

We are steadfast in our commitment to abortion access and body autonomy. We know that reproductive justice is essential for our collective liberation and that it requires both full abortion access and gender-affirming health services. Denying these rights disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and working-class birthing people. Now more than ever we need to uplift the work of our movement partners leading in this field.

Groundswell Fund is a fund dedicated to intersectional grassroots organizing for reproductive justice that we contribute to through our Social Justice Fund portfolio. Please sign the pledge from our coalition of philanthropists committed to reproductive justice and learn about the powerful organizations we are able to support through our partnership with Groundswell. Our movement partner Feminist Women’s Health Center provides safe, affordable abortion in Georgia. Also in our Black Liberation Pooled Fund are SisterSong, the largest national multi-ethnic Reproductive Justice collective, SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW fighting for reproductive justice across the South, and Sister Reach reproductive advocates in Tennessee.

Our current movement partners fighting for reproductive justice and body autonomy include:

• Black Women’s Blueprint
• Feminist Women’s Health Center
• Official Black Lives Matter Memphis Chapter
• SisterReach
• SisterSong
• SpiritHouse NC
• SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW
• Hmong American Women’s Association
• Monsoon Asian and Pacific Islanders in Solidarity
• Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains
• Groundswell Fund
• Third Wave Fund

Our movement partner Black Feminist Future launched their Abortion is Freedom campaign to mobilize Black-led actions across the country. We want to highlight our movement partner the Movement for Black Lives recommendations for how to support local abortion funds and abortion access hotlines.

Our members have been educating themselves about the urgency of this movement using tools like our Reproductive Justice Reader and Black Feminist Future’s Abortion is Freedom Action Toolkit

We will continue to flank reproductive justice and trans liberation and prioritize the work of those most impacted. As Paris Hatcher from Black Feminist Future wrote in her timely op-ed today, “There is hardly any more fundamental human right than the ability to control what happens to our bodies. This is why we say: reproductive justice is central to Black liberation.”

Trends in 2021 Grantmaking: An Update from Solidaire

 

In Fiscal Year 2021 (July 2020 – June 2021), we continued our movement philanthropy by moving $14 million to social movements. We were able to do this by taking lessons from our first seven years, best practices from the field, and innovative ideas to help build a new process to support learning from our relaunched programmatic areas via the Black Liberation Pooled Fund, Movement Infrastructure Fund and limited-time Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund.

 

Some important trends to highlight:

 

• Continuing commitment to funding the south: Solidaire’s commitment to funding the South means we understand the need to fund historically under-resourced geographies. We fund at an ecosystem level to demonstrate how funding must support community-driven efforts. Communities are creative, responsive and deep in their power-building approaches. Our funding supported several anchor organizations of the Southern Power Fund, a key movement-led formation that organized to move millions to the south in the past two years.

 

• Undergirding national and local movement infrastructure: Solidaire’s grantmaking bolsters local and national movement infrastructure. Solidaire’s grantmaking bolsters local, regional and national movement infrastructure. We define movement infrastructure as aligned resource providers, networks and alliances, political homes, and self-determined movement entities that strengthen grassroots organizing in the long term.

 

• Expanding investment in land-based organizing and infrastructure: Land Justice is the largest area we fund via grantmaking to groups protecting farmland, organizing tenants, fighting for climate justice with frontline communities, cultivating safe land spaces for targeted communities, and nurturing and growing land cooperatives.

 

• Moving grants at larger sizes: We gave larger grants to fewer groups to ensure that the grants can help respond to the threats movements are facing, meet their needs, and help them emerge from current crises stronger. $25K (previous average) ^ $67K (2021 average)

 

• Supporting Black and Indigenous leaders: Virtually all of the organizations we fund are led by Black, Brown, and Indigenous people with intersecting identities working to advance a vision for multiracial, pluralistic democracy of the future. This has long been a mandate of Solidaire’s and continues to be.

 

• Centering healing and protection in a multiplicity of ways: All our pooled fund vehicles work to advance organizational strengthening, healing justice, safety, and protection of community organizers.

 

 “If you were engaging in Black liberation because it was a hot item, don’t stop now. That creates more harm. We need long-term support and investment in our communities because there have been 400 years of oppression and disinvestment.” – Black Liberation Pool Fund Grantee Partner

 

We’re proud to report that in FY2021, we have moved $14 million through 157 multi-year partnerships, in addition to 86 one-time grants through the Movement Protection Fund.

 

 

Here’s what we’re focused on in FY2023 (July 2022 – June 2023):

1. Expand grantmaking at an ecosystem level
2. Move and organize more money to meet movements’ stated and evolving needs
3. Keep innovating in our grantmaking via our liberatory learning and evaluation process
4. Organize philanthropy, then keep organizing to move more money, more justly
5. Develop a set of accompaniment & capacity building efforts for current grantee partners
6. Launch the Social Justice Funds Portfolio with 9 additional multi-year grantee partners

 

“The whole experience was a learning experience because we were presented with an opportunity we never considered before. Helped recognize all the ways we were vulnerable—in digital, event and physical security. We just accepted it in the past as part of the work.” – Movement Infrastructure Fund Grantee Partner