News + Events
The Black Led Organizing Giving Project is a groundbreaking project for SJF and consisted of 18 amazing community members living in Seattle. The all-Black Giving Project raised $324,528 from 240 donors to fund organizations led by and organizing Black communities in the Northwest. This all-Black Giving Project was unprecedented for Social Justice Fund NW, the largest all-Black fundraising for the Giving Project model, and was a resounding success.
The group made two-year grants of approximately $21,000 to 14 organizations. See grantees below.
Black Lives Matter Portland Portland
BLM Portland programming falls under three overarching areas: community organizing, political education, and community care. BLMPDX will expand programming and engagement in Black-led organizing.
Black Star Line Seattle
Black Star Line engages in the transformational processes for youth development. Black Star Line’s goal is to continue a process of interruption of internalized oppression as a preventative factor for ourselves and our children who are depending on us to demonstrate a healthy, salient, and actualized identity.
Eugene/Springfield NAACP Eugene, OR
Eugene/Springfield NAACP seeks to increase community organizing of Black communities by building the presence of the Black community and its local history and hope to grow the effort. In partnership with the Mims family who own the oldest black owned home in Lane county, Eugene/Springfield NAACP serves the Black community’s needs, while offering a safe place to grow and engage.
Hilltop Urban Gardens Tacoma
Hilltop Urban Gardens (HUG) works to support building a neighborhood food system that includes first foods and medicines, organizing for land and housing liberation, teaching community how to grow their own food. In the next two years, HUG will continue providing neighborhood grown produce for at least 25 households each week, train Black and non-Black people how to grow their own food, expand their Urban Farm Network, and continue being an inspiration to the local and regional community.
Liberation Medicine School Seattle
Liberation Medicine School aims to build a school and a place of healing that A) centers the indigenous knowledge and narratives of the Black community; B) engages healers and medical practitioners in undoing pathologic systems of power that undermine the health of Black folks; C) celebrates the central role of Black trans and gender non-conforming people in anchoring Afro-indigenous medicine. Ultimately, Liberation Medicine seeks to embody a humane medical system that supports Black autonomy, healing, humanity, and right to thrive.
Mother Africa Kent, WA
Mother Africa, based in Kent, Wash., supports African immigrant and refugee women and their families to reach their highest potential. Mother Africa works with women that are rebuilding their lives here in a new country, providing women’s groups for creating a safe space, sisterhood, and access to resources.
S.A.F.E. (Standing Against Foreclosure and Eviction) Seattle
SAFE builds internal capacity to create stronger communities and strengthen the network of resistance against displacement, focusing on the South Seattle community, and create space for at-risk populations. The work centers college-aged youth, homeless, working class people, people with disabilities, immigrants, and veterans (especially disabled vets, and vets of color) in South Seattle.
Seattle Black Child Development Institute Seattle
Black Child Development Institute-Seattle will teach child literacy development to Black families and community members – bringing the teaching of reading to Black children back to the Black community. The goal is to equip Black families and community members with the skills and tools they need to track their children’s reading progress in school or teach Black children how to read themselves. As a result, Black parents will be able to hold more schools and districts accountable to improving the literacy proficiency of Black students.
The Noble Foundation Kelso, WA
The Noble Foundation will develop the “SW Washington Communities of Color Coalition” a coalition that works cross-culturally from a community-based, community-led, and community-driven approach. Their work will support Black led community-based organizing, leadership development, and Black-led organizing strategies to deepen community outreach and support to Black community members in multiple cities.
The Montana Racial Equity Project Bozeman, MT
The Montana Racial Equity Project (MTREP), a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, advocates equity and justice for historically marginalized, disenfranchised, and oppressed peoples in Montana. MTREP’s goal is transformational change in the personal, social, systemic, and structural arenas.
The Portland African American Leadership Forum Portland
The Portland African American Leadership Forum (PAALF) will implement an Integrated Voter Engagement Model (IVE) that combines ongoing organizing, leadership development and strategic voter engagement that result in campaign victories and provide real and immediate improvements in Portland communities.
The Village of Hope Seattle
Village of Hope organizes with Black families and communities to reclaim history as a strategy for moving families and communities towards wholeness and health and creating communities where everyone is thriving.
Umoja Kijana Shujaa Portland
Umoja is a Portland space dedicated to the Black radical tradition born out of the civil rights era when young folks took the lead to mobilize, organize and helped to create the type of world we all deserve. This program works to empower Black youth through political education, group dialogues, and critical thinking. Umoja enhances the skills youth already have and applies them to grassroots organizing.
WA-BLOC – Washington Building Leaders of Change Seattle
WA-BLOC seeks to transform culture and space at Rainier Beach High School (RBHS) and in South Seattle by building intergenerational place-based leaders of change to disrupt educationally embedded systemic racism for the purpose of dismantling the school to prison pipeline via 1) a six-week Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) Freedom Schools for (50) 9th and 10th graders and (50) K-6th graders and 2) school-based restorative justice practices facilitated students most impacted by exclusionary discipline practices through mentorship and training.
Meet Grantee Portland African American Leadership Forum
The Portland African American Leadership Forum (PAALF) is a unique grassroots organization that unites people of African descent to advance equity through community organizing, civic participation, leadership development and strategic voter engagement. (PAALF) envisions a world where people of African descent enjoy the rights, resources and recognition to be a thriving, resilient and connected community.
Meet Grantee Mother Africa
Mother Africa, based in Kent, Wash., supports African immigrant and refugee women and their families to reach their highest potential. Mother Africa works with women that are rebuilding their lives here in a new country, providing women’s groups for creating a safe space, sisterhood, and access to resources.
Women within Mother Africa’s communities often face additional barriers to becoming stabilized in their new lives here due to stereotypes against immigrants in our current political system, racial and gender discrimination and a lack of experience knowing how to self-advocate inside of complex U.S. systems. Mother Africa supports women to find their footing and their voice.
Meet Giving Project Member Andriana Alexis
Andriana reflects on her Giving Project experience:“The selling point for me, like many of our peers on this [Black Led Organizing Giving Project], was the rare and unique opportunity to do the work with an ALL Black group on behalf of organizations led by Black folks doing services for Black folks. Joining this Giving Project was absolutely an opportunity to tell our stories and to tell them loud and wide.
- To tell stories about our resilience and our creativity and our talents.
- To tell stories about our struggles, our commitments, our communities.
- To tell the stories of our ancestors, our aunties, our cousins, our children, and our families by blood and by water – and all Black.
I joined this Giving Project because my responsibility to my community coupled with my capacity and desire to make a difference for Black folks and alongside Black folks – through a model specifically designed to be for us and by us is not only my birthright and burden, but also part of our collective Black legacy.
The process of coming up with my meaningful gift was difficult for me. It took awhile for me to decide on a number partially because I was trying to decide what would feel meaningful and risky, but mostly because it was important for me to step onto the philanthropic scene in a bold way. One of the most meaningful parts of this project for me is that I am making my largest (so far) philanthropic gift to the benefit of Black led organizations. As someone in this industry professionally and someone who believes in participating in community – it was important to me that this gift was larger, more intentional, and “riskier” than anything else I’ve given. Giving myself permission to give a gift like this was probably the most difficult ask I made. For that reason, my gift is such a special, personal accomplishment.”