February is Black Futures Month, and the Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF) is inspired by the Movement for Black Lives’ proclamation to use “this time to both consider and celebrate our Black radical history and to dream and imagine a world in which we are free and self-determined.”
BLMF realizes we hold an important role in helping to make Black folks’ access to freedom, safety and security more than a dream, but a reality. We also understand philanthropy’s responsibility to resource the many folks on the ground working to create a world rooted in Black liberation.
This Black Futures Month, we are proud to share that in the Fall of 2021 the Black-Led Movement Fund directed $3.897 million to 80 grassroots, Black-led organizations working to uplift all Black people.
BLMF invests in powerful local organizations that anchor progressive, Black-led organizing networks, such as Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), as well as the movement infrastructure that amplifies their collective work. We exist to ensure that more progressive, Black-led movement organizations have the resources, visibility, infrastructure, and leadership capacity to sustain their day-to-day work of organizing, advocacy, and collective care needed to combat anti-Black racism, cis-heteropatriarchy, and state violence in their communities and achieve transformational and lasting change.
On top of continuing our general operating grantmaking in the form of core support grants, we were able to offer four special opportunity grants, enabling under-resourced movement organizations to experiment with new ideas and strategies, as well as over $1 million in rapid response funding to small, emergent and local organizations that connect to multiple movements, such as land and food access/security, im/migration, healing justice, and climate change.
BLMF’s current slate of grantee partners include:
33 Core Support Grants (general operating grantmaking)
- Action St. Louis
- Black Feminist Future
- Black Lives Matter Louisville
- Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity
- Black Trans Fund
- Black Trans Nation
- Black Visions Collective
- BLM Grassroots/One Love Global
- BYP100 Education Fund
- Dream Defenders Education Fund
- Equity And Transformation
- Essie Justice Group
- Every Black Girl
- Freedom, Inc.
- Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy
- Highlander Research & Education Center
- In Our Names Network
- Interrupting Criminalization
- Law for Black Lives
- Marsha P. Johnson Institute
- National Black Food & Justice Alliance
- National Council of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls
- North Carolina BLOC
- People’s Advocacy Institute
- Solutions NOT Punishment Collaborative
- Southern Power Fund
- Southerners On New Ground
- Spirit House NC
- TGI Justice Project
- The Black LGBTQIA Migrant Project
- The BlackOUT Collective
- UndocuBlack Network
- Women With A Vision, Inc.
4 Special Opportunity Grants
43 Rapid Response Grants
- People’s Advocacy Institute
- TransLash Media
- Project South
- Texas Organizing Project
- BLM Memphis
- The College and Community Fellowship, Inc.
- Prometheus Conspiracy
- The Transgender District
- Black Immigrant Collective
- The Black Collective
- Fix SAPD
- Yes 4 Minneapolis Education Fund
- Community Empowerment Fund
- Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
- Workers’ Dignity Project Essie Justice Group
- Drinking Gourd Farms
- Music Freedom Dreams
- People’s Budget Coalition
- Operation Liberation / Freedom to Be
- In Our Names Network
- Sisters PgH
- TransCending Women
- House of Tulip
- Life After Release
- Fireweed Collective
- Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP)
- TransCending Women
- The Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED)
- Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children
- Dream Defenders
- The Knights & Orchids Society
- Solutions NOT Punishment (SNaPCo)
- Haitian Bridge Alliance
- AfroResistance
- ReThink New Orleans
- Operation Restoration
- Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants
- Florida Student Power
- Free Hearts
- Minnesota Youth Collective Education Fund
- Alternate ROOTS
- Freedom ROC
- Workers Center for Racial Justice
Thank you to our generous donor partners for committing to listen and respond to the needs of Black organizers and Black communities. And we remain in awe of our incredible grantee partners whose innovation and steadfast dedication to Black liberation is paving the way for a truly equitable world.
Join our efforts to fund Black-led movement work!
To learn about partnering with Borealis Philanthropy’s Black-led Movement Fund and the powerful work of grassroots groups and organizers please contact the Black-led Movement Fund at blmf@borealisphilanthropy.org or our Development Officer at development@borealisphilanthropy.org.