28 Foundation Leaders Urge Peers to Channel More Funds to Black-Led Nonprofits
By Alex Daniels
Contributor
February 1, 2023 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A group of 28 foundation leaders on Monday called on their peers to make a long-lasting commitment to support Black-led racial-justice organizations following the police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
Nearly 1,200 people were killed by police last year, the most in a single year since the nonprofit Police Mapping Project has been collecting such data, according to the foundation leaders.
An open letter posted by the leaders was circulated by Marc Philpart, executive director of the California Black Freedom Fund, a pooled fund created in 2021 with a goal of raising $100 million over five years. Board members and executives from foundations that have contributed to the fund, including the California Endowment, the Libra Foundation, and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, signed the letter.
“Our letter is a call to action for everyone concerned with the brutalization of Black people and Black communities,” the letter says. “Our letter is a call to action for those who might dare to dream of a world where police violence is a mere figment of our past — a distant object in the rearview mirror of our nation’s history.”
To date, the California Black Freedom Fund has distributed $26 million to Black-led organizations, including some specifically focused on policing such as the Anti Police-Terror Project, the Black Organizing Project, the California Black Power Network, the Love Not Blood Campaign, Live Free California, Los Angeles Community Action Network, and Students Deserve.
Often, the letter says, support flows from donors who are inspired to give immediately after a shocking event comes to light, such as the release of the video showing the police beating Nichols.
Those surges in funding are often short term, or narrowly focused, the letter says.
“Then, when the urgency of the moment recedes, new momentum to build lasting, organized power in Black communities is lost, and resources to build multiracial coalitions disappear.”
