Blog Post

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…

Dear JustFund Community,  It’s happening! There are so many more dynamic conversations in motion today about how to truly center equity in philanthropy. The most recent one I heard was at the PEAK 2022 Grantmaking Conference last week, (if you didn’t attend this year, be on the lookout for next year’s conference!) where the opening speakers, Amoretta Morris, Vu…

Dear JustFund Community, JustFunders are off and running in 2022 as they center equity in their grantmaking and work to move more resources to historically excluded organizations. Our team has supported 177 grant cycles for 56 funds and foundations to date, giving more than 6,000 organizations the chance to apply for funding through the nation’s…

Dear JustFund Community, I continue to be struck by the exclusionary and expensive nature of traditional philanthropy, which makes funding accessible to only select nonprofits with the right expertise and networks, not to mention prohibitively costly for organizations and funders to seek and distribute funding.  We can and we must do better.  Our JustFund team…

Dear JustFund Community, JustFund was developed a few years before the revolutionary trust-based philanthropy movement came to be, as a way to operationalize best practices in grantmaking that are rooted in equity and built on trust. The most recent Trust-Based Philanthropy in 4D guide talks about a holistic approach that uses “trust-based values to guide your philanthropy’s…

When we first launched JustFund in 2017, our mission was to simplify grantmaking and build a solution rooted in equity, trust, and transparency. By disrupting old models of giving and offering new ones that are equitable and trust-based, JustFund has fostered a collaborative, values-aligned community of grantmakers and grantseekers. Together, we’ve moved critical funding to under-resourced groups that are often excluded from traditional philanthropy.  After four years of moving funds to…

Dear JustFund Community, At JustFund, we understand the systemic problems in philanthropy that prevent money from moving to the chronically underfunded— like the $141.95 billion in assets sitting untouched in Donor Advised Funds, or the disparities in distribution causing big nonprofits to get bigger, and small nonprofits to get smaller. As I stated in my latest blog, “If we are…

If you are a funder who wants to reset philanthropy and explore what it can be, consider adopting any or all of the following practices as you prepare for your next grant cycle.