Our Approach
What We Fund
Our program areas reflect large and overlapping fields of activity. While each program has its own strategy, our overall grantmaking prioritizes supporting organizations whose work:
- Addresses the root causes of racial and social inequities through long-term systems change work, which includes challenging the status quo and changing the policies, practices, priorities, and cultures that create and perpetuate inequities.
- Uses the following strategies to advance justice: advocacy, organizing, coalition building, movement building, policy engagement, narrative change/strategic communications, field building, and/or direct services that connect to a systems change strategy.
- Prioritizes the people and communities most affected by structural inequities, including systemic racism.
- Takes an integrated approach that recognizes the forces that shape people’s lives are interrelated.
- Demonstrates a commitment to regularly and consistently collect feedback to drive learning and improvement.
- Is grounded in evidence.
How We Fund
We prioritize unrestricted general operating support grants. We make multi-year unrestricted grants when possible. There are occasions when we make project-specific grants when, in dialogue with a grantee, we find that our interest is in a particular area of an organization’s work. We provide grantees with additional support beyond the grant, based on grantees’ individual needs, and we have a particular interest in supporting leadership development.
We are as flexible as possible with our requirements to allow grantees to remain focused on their mission. We strive to exclude grant requirements that are needlessly onerous or that place undue burdens upon groups most affected by injustice.
We aspire to establish trusting relationships with others, especially our grantee partners.
Grant proposals are by invitation only. We do not accept unsolicited proposals.