Solidaire Grants $14 Million in Multi-Year Grants to Groups in Black Liberation Movement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2021
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Bilen Mesfin Packwood, [email protected]
Solidaire Grants $14 Million in Multi-Year Grants to Groups in Black Liberation Movement
May 28, 2021 – In its first round of grantmaking from the Black Liberation Pooled Fund (BLPF), Solidaire Network is awarding $14 million over two years to 102 organizations in the movement for Black freedom. Through multi-year, general operating support grants, the Black Liberation Pooled Fund is fortifying Black resistance organizing, emboldening the imagination and creation of liberatory Black futures, and investing in the development of Black movement infrastructure.
“These movement partners are doing some of the most innovative work anywhere to advance Black freedom,” said Janis Rosheuvel, Solidaire Network’s director of movement partnerships and grantmaking. “This cohort of grantees are youth and elders. They are Queer. They are in large and small cities and rural places. They are immigrants, land stewards, artists, and healers. They are fighting to protect the vote and to defund jails and prisons. They are working to mitigate the climate crisis and build grassroots power. We hope our commitment answers the call of the Black liberation movement to fund in deeper and longer term ways and helps to mobilize even greater resources to these efforts.”
By funding these groups, Solidaire Network is expanding on its founding commitment to stand in solidarity with Black and multi-racial movements for social change over the long haul and for a generation. During the Black Liberation Pooled Fund grant cycle, Solidaire received over 800 applications. What emerged from these submissions was a partial survey of today’s Black freedom struggle. The groups that are being funded through this process are immersed in powerful work across all geographic regions in the U.S. and Puerto Rico on a range of deeply intersectional issues including: land, housing and climate justice, abolition and decarceration, electoral justice, media and narrative shift, Trans justice, leadership development and building and sustaining movement infrastructure.
“I am honored, humbled, and awestruck by the dynamic work we have encountered through this application review process,” said Leigh Gaymon-Jones, Solidaire Network’s movement partnerships and grantmaking practitioner. “Ultimately, I am inspired and motivated to work even harder to channel more resources with no strings attached into this work.”
Since 2013, Solidaire Network members have moved over $7 million through Solidaire and over $20 million in aligned giving to the Black-led social change ecosystem. Solidaire launched the Black Liberation Pooled Fund in 2020 to pool more resources that can be allocated to the powerful ecosystem of Black-led social change organizations around the country. In 2020, Solidaire also granted more than $3.3 million through the Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund, a subset of the Black Liberation Pooled Fund, to meet immediate needs of personal security and protection for movement leaders and organizers.
Solidaire Network conducted a year-long assessment of its legacy aligned giving strategy and funding to the Black liberation ecosystem in the process of formulating the Black Liberation Pooled Fund. The Movement Oversight Committee guides the fund, providing regular assessments on the state of Black organizing and directing Solidaire’s grantmaking strategy.
“We believe that Black-led social change is about justice for Black communities and broad and deep societal transformation for all,” said Rajasvini Bhansali, Solidaire Network’s executive director. “We know that accountability to movements is essential in the ongoing practice of solidarity. At Solidaire, we are ready to liberate wealth and forge partnerships in new ways to demonstrate our deepest solidarity with the Black liberation movement ecosystem.”
Stay connected to Solidaire via its website to learn more about what the network is learning about partnership, grantmaking and solidarity throughout the Black Liberation Pooled Fund.
About the Solidaire Network:
Since 2011, inspired by the progression of movement moments from anti-austerity, to the Arab Spring and Occupy, Solidaire Network has worked to create a more radical model and vision for giving. As a community of donor organizers, the network supports social movements and grassroots efforts led by Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other marginalized communities. Through its donor organizing and grantmaking, Solidaire Network aims to build a fair and just society and a healthy, thriving planet where all people flourish and have the power to shape the decisions that affect their lives. Learn more at https://solidairenetwork.org/.
