Posts by Iara Duarte Peng

“We’ve crossed 200 million dollars moved!” If that isn’t the best message to receive from the team, I don’t know what is.   When I launched JustFund in 2017, I had one singular vision: to simplify grantmaking and figure out a seamless way to move money in service of racial and social equity.  Today, we’ve reached…

Dear JustFund Community, It takes, on average, 15-25 hours for an organization to apply for funding. That translates roughly into $5,000 spent every time an organization seeks a grant, which they will only receive 30% of the time.  For the 6,600 organizations using JustFund, they spend about an hour applying for funding using our common…

Dear JustFund Community, Philanthropy and its systems and structures have a racial bias that results in the chronic underfunding of multiple communities, including groups that are BIPOC-led. One way our racial bias manifests in grantmaking is through access: who gets to apply for funding? Usually, the answer depends on who you know. Do you have…

Dear JustFund Community, We know that technology is starting to change the way we give, yet the impact is still slow to take hold at scale. When you consider that there is $142 Billion currently sitting in Donor Advised Funds and that there is a sustained interest within philanthropy to fund historically excluded communities, the impact…

Dear JustFund Community,   A few years ago, I remember reading an email about a (then) new initiative called “Black Mama’s Bail Out Day.“ Organizers from Southerners Organizing on a New Ground were raising money to bail out as many mothers and caregivers as possible so they could be home on Mother’s Day. Funds would go toward…

Dear JustFund Community,  When I started JustFund back in 2017, there was one goal in mind: to move more money to movements. Back then, I was working at Solidaire Network, a community of donor organizers mobilizing critical resources to the frontlines of intersectional movements for racial, gender, and climate justice.   We, like many other donor networks, collaborative…

Dear JustFund Community,  You’ve heard us say that Money Moves at the Speed of Trust™ and undoubtedly you’ve been in a meeting or read a piece using the phrase “trust-based philanthropy”. People are talking about centering trust in their grantmaking, but what role does trust play?   At the very basic level, we rely on trust when we…

Dear JustFund Community,  Did you know that JustFund is the nation’s first – and only – national common application grantmaking solution? We launched the common proposal in 2017 with three funds: Solidaire Network, The Emergent Fund, and Defending the Dream Fund. We moved about $200K in our first year of operating and over 800 organizations were able to utilize…