OVERVIEW: The Kataly Foundation is a progressive funder that works toward “a world in which Black and brown people have the resources, power, and agency to execute their own visions for justice, well-being, and shared prosperity within their communities.”
IP TAKE: Backed by a Pritzker family heir, the Kataly Foundation is an important funder to know about for BIPOC-led community organizations working in Kataly’s focus areas with a clear power-building lens. Kataly is a spend-down funder that intends to give its endowment rapidly within a loose ten-year timeframe. Known for its unique approach to funding, Kataly pursues different forms of participatory grantmaking, and views its grants, loans and impact investments as part of an overarching goal to democratize and redistribute wealth. All funding occurs through gender, equity and justice lenses.
In an interview with IP, Kataly executive director Nwamaka Agbo clarified that to achieve this goal, Kataly empowers “practitioner funders” who have experience with on-the-ground movement work to help select grantees, develop programs, and more generally to “figure out how to resource projects accordingly over the time it actually takes to create real change.”
Kataly does not accept unsolicited grant applications, and each of its core programs has a different practice for selecting grantees and partners, as we explore below. Kataly ultimately only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations and doesn’t accept unsolicited applications for funds.” It’s own site does not show an open application, LOI, RFP, or public proposal process; it invites funders—not grant seekers—to contact Kataly to learn more about who it funds. The most likely path forwards he best path is not a cold proposal. This funder requires warm outreach through existing Kataly-funded or Kataly-adjacent movement networks.
Kataly often provides large, multi-year grants to organizations as their first grant since the foundation’s spend-down prohibits sustained support. For interested grant seekers, patience pays off here in terms of reading through Kataly’s Medium articles about its approach, which you can find at the bottom of every Kataly program page. Kataly’s latest 990-PF public grant recipients are largely intermediary/DAF/fiscal-infrastructure vehicles, so direct 990 recipient lists understate the ultimate grassroots/movement beneficiaries.
PROFILE: Established in 2018 by Regan Pritzker and her husband Chris Olin with $445 million in assets, the Kataly Foundation is a spend-down foundation committed to social justice and racial equity. Regan Pritzker is the daughter of Nicholas and Susan Pritzker, whose Libra Foundation has emerged as a leader in progressive philanthropy. In an IP interview, Regan Pritzker said she set out to establish a foundation that functions differently than the philanthropic status quo. “It feels a little different than having a very top-down mandate with a mission that’s then carried out by people slotted into very particular roles,” Pritzker said. “It’s really a collection of activists who have found a home together for a period of time… to make the change in the world we’re all trying to accomplish.”
Kataly’s mission is to move resources “to support the economic, political and cultural power of Black and Indigenous communities, and all communities of color.” Believing that philanthropy’s responsibility involves far more than just moving dollars, Kataly’s CEO, Nwamaka Agbo, who also serves as the Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund, offers some clarity: “Ultimately, philanthropy’s responsibility to social movements isn’t just to move money — it is to be specific and measured in moving resources to those that are building power for impacted communities and creating systems rooted in justice, equity, and liberation.” The Kataly Foundation makes grants through the Restorative Economies Fund, Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective, and Mindfulness and Healing Justice.
Grants for Economic Equity and Community Development
Kataly’s Restorative Economies Fund seeks to close the racial wealth gap and transform the financial system by reinvesting resources into community-owned and governed projects led by Black and Indigenous people and all people of color. It supports projects that create shared prosperity, self-determination, and collective political, economic and cultural power.
- REF an integrated capital fund: it combines grants with non-extractive investments such as loans, loan guarantees and lines of credit, plus non-financial support such as technical assistance or strategic advice.
- Kataly’s related funding flows to community-owned/governed projects led by Black, Indigenous and other communities of color. The site identifies strategies including land and housing stabilization, community-governed capital vehicles, equitable economic development projects, built-environment infrastructure, technical assistance, organizing, policy/electoral/legal strategies and power-building.
- Kataly’s Funder Readiness Checklist is of particular note here.
Grants for the Environment and Climate
The Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective (EJRC) is a group of nine women of color environmental justice movement leaders formed in 2020. It resources work that builds power in communities of color and grows movements for racial, social, economic and environmental justice, led by and for communities most affected by environmental racism, climate change and unjust systems.
- As in other areas of its work, Kataly shares reflections on its environmental justice work, which may help prospective grantseekers better understand how Kataly thinks about environmental justice.
- Kataly lists three priorities: collective healing; community infrastructure and collective land strategies; and strengthening movement power. Strategies include challenging private ownership of land and displacement, Indigenous and Black land reclamation, alternative and sustainable food systems, regenerative agriculture, land stewardship, integrated voter engagement, leadership development and policy advocacy.
- While the Collective largely focused on the environment, its work is underpinned by the overlap between reproductive justice, economic justice, gender justice, healing trauma and more.
- Best fits here are grassroots and movement-led environmental/climate justice work by and for communities of color, especially Black and Indigenous communities.
- The EJRC page says grantee partners receive general operating and customized capacity-building support, and says to contact Kataly for a list of grantee partners; it does not provide an RFP, LOI or application process.
Grants for Mindfulness, Equity and Justice
Not quite a health program or one focused fully on the LGBTQ or immigrant communities, the Mindfulness and Healing Justice (MHJ) supports “community-based mindfulness programs, teacher training, leadership development and healing justice practices for Black and Indigenous communities and all people of color.” It frames mindfulness and healing as part of racial justice, power-building and collective liberation.
- MHJ is not a general health, criminal justice or LGBTQ grant program; it is a BIPOC mindfulness/healing justice program whose priority populations include people impacted by incarceration, criminalization, deportation, youth, and queer/trans/nonbinary communities.
- It also supports land liberation, rematriation and capital projects for BIPOC-led healing and transformative practice spaces, with attention to areas with fewer such spaces, including the South, Midwest and rural areas.
- The MHJ page says to contact Kataly for a list of grantee partners; it does not describe unsolicited proposals, open applications or LOIs.
- Land liberation, rematriation and capital projects aimed at creating “Black, Indigenous, and people of color-led spaces for mindfulness, healing and transformative practice.”
Other grant opportunities:
Kataly’s Capacity Building opportunity is a password-protected resource for existing grantees only
Capacity building appears to include workshops, trainings, resource-sharing, grantee network development and movement infrastructure support for existing Kataly grantee partners.
The foundation also ran a rapid response grantmaking program in 2020 to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and to respond to the summer of protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis. Grant amounts through this program ranged from $20,000 up to $375,000. Past grantees include Jubillee Justice, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and National Bail Out Collective. More grantees are available here.
The Kataly Foundation also gave $40 million to Impact Assets in 2019 as a way to quickly redistribute funds to groups while its own grantmaking structure was still in development.
Important Grant Details:
Grants range widely from about $10,000 to tens of millions, but most grants average between $25,000 to $500,000. The foundation’s FY2024, filed Nov. 17, 2025, showed $237.8 million in total assets, $74.5 million in charitable disbursements, and $86.2 million in total expenses.
- About $69.36 million to three intermediary/public-charity recipients: ImpactAssets, Possibility Labs and Amalgamated Charitable Foundation.
- The Kataly Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals or requests for funding.
- Kataly’s current grantee page/directory states that it includes only grantees who have consented to public sharing.
- Grantseekers can contact the foundation at info@kataly.org with general questions.
PEOPLE:
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