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 Le, and Satonya Fair talked about ways to operationalize an equitable approach to philanthropy across your grantmaking institution. They asked the question: when will we have a world where philanthropy and charity are no longer needed to support our communities? 

I’m incredibly grateful that there are so many leaders like them offering their bold visions and thinking through what we need to do in the meantime, ideas like:

“Funders need to follow the leads of communities of color.” 

“Stop making communities of color jump through 100 hoops for $10,000.” 

It is a privilege to support the hundreds of JustFunders committed to a common application solution to ensure organizations led by Black, indigenous, people of color have an easy and simple way to apply for funding.  I’m thrilled JustFund is making a targeted investment next quarter to build a new scoring tool that participatory grantmakers can use to easily move to an activist-driven decision making process that centers people closest to the solutions in their grant decisions.  We want to give grantmakers and grantseekers easy tools to center equity in their giving process – from adopting the common application to tools to support participatory grantmaking.

To create meaningful change, people with access to resources need to be willing to take more risks. In the words of Mary Hooks, who was evoked during that PEAK opening session: We need to take risks worthy of the people on the frontlines of change, risking their lives on the streets.

Thank you, JustFund Community, for being ready and willing to take more risks and move more money to chronically underfunded communities often left out of traditional philanthropy. We are nearly at $150M moved and hope to hit $250M by the end of 2022. If you’re not yet a JustFunder, what’s stopping you? 

• Are you an organization engaged in regranting? 
• Are you part of a collaborative fund trying to move more money, more quickly?
• Do you want to reimagine your giving and make it easier for your grantees to apply for funding?
• Are you looking for work to fund on the frontlines of social change?
   

Warmly,

Iara Peng, Founder & CEO