Why should funders give to abolitionist BIPOC-led orgs?

Co-Executive Director Annette Price and Policy Liaison David Johnson at the Grassroots Leadership office in Austin, Texas.

The answer is straightforward — it’s time to fund BIPOC-led organizations whose work centers around abolishing systems that have lasting harm to those who are in marginalized communities.

Grassroots Leadership (GRL) is a Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization led by folx who live with the trauma after encountering the harsh realities of the carceral systems.

I started working at GRL nearly four years ago; in 2020, I assumed the role of Co-Executive Director. However, my role and existence in the organization are more than that. I am also impacted by the criminal in-justice system.

With the majority of our Grassroots Leadership staff being directly impacted, we, unfortunately, bear witness every day to the devastation of how the criminal legal systems harm our communities and our society.

Understanding these issues can be a breakthrough for individual donors and philanthropists looking to expand their understanding of abolition. It’s a chance to understand the implications of our work entirely and why there should be several pipelines of funding needed for abolitionist organizations like ours.

Here are some practices to help dismantle these harmful traditions in the nonprofit sector:

1. Remove racial bias from the grant application process. Our community and work are rooted in intersectionality. This includes being transparent about what our society would look like if the police no longer had a role.

2. Understanding that the community’s needs are constantly changing. Funders should understand their investment lies within the people, not the dollars. These harmful practices can increase patriarchal and white supremacist systems we are looking to dismantle.

3. Take time to learn best practices and decolonize your mind on how funding has shaped the history of wealth in the nonprofit sector and how breaking the generational wealth gap means developing new practices toward giving.

4. Understand that we are challenging the systems of oppression we know will improve the lives of our community, so we need philanthropists and funders to understand the road to their investment will be a long-term commitment.

5. Funders need to be comfortable with BIPOC with lived experiences at a leadership level to speak about our systemic issues. As a result, nonprofit organizations led by people of color receive less money than white-led organizations.

6. Philanthropy needs to be expanded across all intersectionalities of gender and race. Due to racist state policies, migrants are facing increased criminalization and discrimination, particularly in border counties, where Operation Lonestar is in full effect.

7. Over the years of fundraising for Grassroots Leadership, I’ve learned that a fifth of funding donated by larger donors goes to those in marginalized communities or BIPOC organizations. Black-led organizations have 24% smaller average revenues and 76% fewer unrestricted net assets than their white counterparts do, according to a report published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. This holds, especially for BIPOC-led organizations with a social justice lens.

Our calls to abolish modern-day policing and surveillance, or have a political vision to eliminate imprisonment and create lasting alternatives towards more community healing, are usually not the topic on the funder’s agenda. Most foundation leaders remain uncomfortable when funding Black leaders and communities who have lived experiences of racial oppression, which is the most direct path to ensuring solutions that will genuinely address the challenges of these experiences.

Philanthropists need to understand the need for unrestricted funding and be uncomfortable moving in unconventional spaces when donating. Funding-forward work requires long-term investments that center on movement organizers’ knowledge, vision, and expertise.

Philanthropists have the ability to reverse the pattern of historic underinvestments for BIPOC organizations. To funders reading this: you can help build the political, economic, and social power required to create lasting social change for our community.

This article was originally shared on Medium.

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Grassroots Leadership is a Texas-based national organization that works for a more just society where prison profiteering, mass incarceration, deportation, and criminalization are things of the past. Follow us on Twitter @Grassroots_News.