How Solidaire Is Funding Black Liberation—and What Other Funders Can Learn From It
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A 2020 Black lives matter march in salt lake city, Utah. Quinton Batchelor/shutterstock
George Floyd’s murder and the wave of protests that followed continue to have a profound impact on the nation—and philanthropy. Following a summer of uprisings, many funders have committed to increasing their support of Black-led racial justice work.
But as Kataly Foundation CEO Nwamaka Agbo and Solidaire Network Executive Director Rajasvini Bhansali previously wrote for Inside Philanthropy, while this increase in funding for Black-led nonprofits is long overdue, philanthropy must go further to ensure that the movement has what it needs, not just in the short term but for the long haul, as well.
Solidaire, a network of progressive donors and donor organizers, is no stranger to supporting Black-led organizations; it’s been doing so since its inception back in 2013. In 2020, following a year-long evaluation of its previous work, the network launched a multi-year initiative called the Black Liberation Pooled Fund (BLPF) to support the national ecosystem of Black-led social change. The fund drew big support, including $20 million from the Packard Foundation, and received more than 800 applications.
Now, its first round of two-year grants has been announced, moving $14 million to a whopping 102 organizations, including the Alabama Justice Initiative, the Anti Police-Terror Project, the Black Girl Freedom Fund, the Black Organizing Project, Families for Freedom, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, the BlackOUT Collective and the UndocuBlack Network.
“We are not necessarily aiming to support a singular movement, but again, hoping to uplift an ecosystem of folks who are working to uplift the lives and futures of Black people... and therefore, kind of uplift the liberation of all people,” said Leigh Gaymon-Jones, movement partnerships and grantmaking practitioner at Solidaire.
The second round of grants will go out next year. Solidaire’s Movement Oversight Committee, made up of representatives from a dozen funders and practitioners, will guide the effort, provide regular assessments on the state of Black organizing, and direct Solidaire’s grantmaking strategy.
Among the flurry of racial justice commitments made in the past year, Solidaire’s initiative is noteworthy for several reasons, and might provide other foundations and pooled funds with insights on how to support broad-based social movements. Aside from the sheer number of organizations funded to carry out their work all over the country, BLPF is the product of years of funding and learning in this space, including an intensive, year-long effort to build relationships and really understand the movement. And organizers say they’re in it for the long haul.
“At the Solidaire Network, we believe that Black-led social change is about justice for all Black communities in the diaspora, and also broad and deep social and economic transformation for all,” said Ingrid Benedict, member of Solidaire Network’s Movement Oversight Committee and co-chair of Solidaire’s board of directors. “The Solidaire Network operates in solidarity with grassroots organizers in Black communities, working to coordinate deeper and longer-term resource mobilization for networks and ecosystems of Black-led movement efforts.”
“A really critical moment”
After five years of funding Black-led organizations, Solidaire engaged in a year-long assessment of its Aligned Giving Strategy for the Movement for Black Lives. Through conversations with movement leaders—including those who had received funding and those who hadn’t—funders, individuals from member organizations and funding allies, Solidaire looked at how it could deepen its support.
“After doing that work [the Aligned Giving Strategy], making really deep connections with various movement partners and then doing a deeper view of that work, we were excited to shift our commitment to Black liberation into something that was a little bit more expansive than the work we had done before,” said Gaymon-Jones.
The evaluation was already taking place when Floyd’s death rocked the nation in the summer of 2020.
“It was a really critical moment,” said Janis Rosheuvel, director of movement partnerships and grantmaking at Solidaire. “Work that... was our normal work just had a different level of potency because of the uprisings and the crisis and the grappling that the whole nation was doing around issues of racial justice, particularly with Black folks and the Black communities.”
What is Black liberation?
Although the Fund is called the Black Liberation Pooled Fund, Solidaire chose not to dictate to its grantees what Black liberation looks like. For Rosheuvel, Black liberation is about resistance, building anew, and creating the most just world possible, one that undermines anti-Black racism and white supremacy. This, however, is only her view.
“So much of how we work at Solidaire is about our movement partners defining the term for themselves and in their specific context and around the specific issues they work,” explained Rosheuvel.
Gaymon-Jones added that Solidaire wrestled with this issue. Is Solidaire as a philanthropic organization and institution positioned to define Black liberation? “I don’t think we are.”
“Through our grantmaking, we partner with many organizations, businesses, groups, collectives, cooperatives that are really rooting their work in a Black liberation framework, so in many ways, that’s being defined by each of those individual groups, and I think it’s appropriately reflective of the diversity of Black life and the Black experience.”
Gaymon-Jones named the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement as examples. Both, she said, were needed, and both happened at the same time. Similarly, Solidaire believes in supporting a variety of Black-led organizations.
“I can say that our approach of supporting an ecosystem of Black liberation at Solidaire or through Solidaire funding is by really thinking about that ‘both-and’ approach. So how are we supporting folks who are working in resistance, as well as folks who are working on innovative futures?” she said.
Beyond the grant
BLPF is funding a wide range of issues that intertwine with Black liberation, including abolition and decarceration, land and climate justice, and land stewardship, which includes tenant rights and climate justice issues, among many others.
In addition to focusing on a diverse set of issue areas, Solidaire is also intentionally funding in diverse regions throughout the U.S., including the South, Southeast, Southwest, Midwest, Pacific Northwest and the extreme Northeast—beyond New York City.
“We are always looking at funding away from the kind of traditional centers where resources might be more abundant,” Rosheuvel said.
Another unique aspect of the BLPF is that Solidaire did not set a funding range on its application. According to Rosheuvel, Solidaire instead asked finalists what a meaningful contribution would look like, both financially as well as beyond a grant. Just as Solidaire didn’t impose a definition of what Black liberation is, it also did not dictate what grantees needed.
Gaymon-Jones described the BLPF’s grants as no-strings-attached funding, meaning Solidaire is forgoing common grant practices like extensive reporting, quarterly check-ins, documentation, specific expectations of donor engagement or an expectation of a set number of site visits.
Having worked on the other side of the funder-grantee relationship, Gaymon-Jones understands that these practices can have a negative effect and can pull people out of the work at hand.
“We asked about what a successful partnership would look like,” said Gaymon-Jones. “We’re taking those responses and turning them into some specific strategies that we can engage to support the grant partners’ work in addition to the funding itself. So there are no strings in terms of the expectations of their work, but instead, we’re trying to find ways that we can... meet their stated needs and further amplify and resource their work.”
This partnership extends to funders, as well. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, for example, contributed $20 million to the BLPF. Carlin Johnson Politzer, program officer within the office of the president at Packard, said this was done with the knowledge that Solidaire would direct those funds to where they were needed most.
“Solidaire maintains deep and trusted partnerships with Black-led organizations that are leading the charge in the movement for social and racial justice. We see how close they are to the issues and trust them to recognize opportunities for change,” Johnson Politzer added.
Greater impact
BLPF has the potential to impact other racial and social justice movements throughout the nation.
“A lot of social movement work is led by Black folks,” said Rosheuvel. “Historically, when Black folks organize and win change in the United States, it has a knock-on impact on pretty much every community.”
Gaymon-Jones added, “I really hope that this fund sparks imagination and creativity and possibilities, and offers the breathing room by offering multi-year funding, by offering general-ops funding; I really hope that it offers the breathing room for some really powerful work to emerge out of these organizations that were already doing really powerful work.”
Beyond getting money to the field, however, Rosheuvel said she also hopes philanthropy as a whole can learn what it means to fund through deep and long-term partnerships.
“I think it will be really crucial learning for us as an institution, but it’ll also be learning for our movement comrades, as well as our colleagues within the philanthropic sector,” said Rosheuvel.
She added, “We’re doing the work internally to unburden and release wealth.... I’m in solidarity with folks who are doing that and always strongly encouraging for that to be the standard rather than exception.”
