In 2023, the BLMF moved $7.5 million in renewal grants and $1.5 million in rapid response grants to 61 Black-led organizations and organizers working towards community safety, justice, and liberation. The BLMF is committed to moving resources to dismantle anti-Blackness and to create a future where none of its kin are left behind. Since its inception in 2016, the BLMF has moved nearly $30 million to Black-led organizations.

Last year’s grantmaking marked the Fund’s full shift to a participatory model of decision-making. The BLMF’s participatory grantmaking committee of 10 community organizers brought an abundance of lived and learned experiences related to distributing resources to Black movement including various aspects of community power building, including land, food, and black cultural systems.

In June 2023, the CTPF announced $3.9 million in multi-year grants to 26 grassroots organizations based in 24 localities, 14 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.Including multi-year grants from the previous year, in total, the CTPF moved $5.24 million to 85 grantee partners in 2023. This was achieved through the CTPF’s participatory grantmaking committee, which consists of organizers and advocates across the country who have been directly impacted by policing and the criminal legal system.

Last year, the CTPF prioritized healing justice by launching its first ever healing justice and community care fund, moving $200k to current grantee partners. Grantee partners used these resources to build out culturally responsive organization-based arts healing practices, to send staff to wellness retreats, to provide mental help services to those with the direct experience of police violence and more. The Fund also partnered with Borealis’ Spark Justice Fund and Resonance to launch a Narrative Power Building Cohort and Peer Learning Series. Each participating Narrative Power Building cohort member received a $5,000 honorarium. The CTPF continued to support organizers’ right to protest, including the Stop Cop City campaign in Atlanta, which CTPF Director, Jeree Thomas, wrote about for Nonprofit Quarterly rallying philanthropy to do the same.

The CTPF also provided a series of capacity building opportunities for grantee partners including the Invest/Divest Learning communities led by Andrea Ritchie, Eroding the Power of Police Fraternal Associations cohort, free access to the Community Resource Hub’s George Jackson Organizing School, and one-on-one coaching from Andrea Ritchie, Wes Ware, Jared Knowles, Chandra Anderson, and the Alliance of Black Women Accountants.

In December, the DIF announced $4.1 million in grants to 58 disability-led organizations and organizers using disability justice, rights, and inclusion to build joyful futures free of ableism. The DIF’s cohort includes organizations across the country engaging in a broad range of work—from affordable housing to voting rights, equitable access to assistive technologies, and supporting formerly incarcerated Deaf and/or disabled people—all of whom are working at the intersections of social justice movements.

Last year, in partnership with the Ford Foundation, the DIF launched the inaugural cohort of the DIF x Tech Fund to resource disability-led projects and organizations at the intersections of disability justice and public interest technologies. The team also continued to learn and invest in disabled-led joy through Joy Grants. This disability justice-led practice uplifts joy as a vital movement practice, expanding grassroots organizational capacity to rest, reflect, and sustain frontline strategies.

In January, the ELLC Fund announced $2.2 million in grants to 30 organizations–its largest annual grantmaking to date. ELLC Fund grantee partners are working to build power, fight against homophobia and transphobia, and create a world where all people are safe and free. Its grantee partners are young, LGBTQ people of color who have worked for years on the frontlines of movements and are best positioned to offer a vision ensuring that everyone has access to bodily autonomy, safety, and wholeness.

In 2023, the ELLC Fund also prioritized the growth of its Young Trans Women of Color (YTWOC) grantmaking program, which invests in trans leaders organizing across movements. This program acknowledges that trans women of color’s leadership has been underfunded, yet is essential to build connected, inclusive, and powerful movements. The ELLC Fund provides YTWOC grantee partners with multi-year leadership development support, a contribution towards their total salary of the organization they are part of, and additional resources for peer learning.

In 2023, the FTG awarded $727,000 in renewal grants to support 18 grantee partners and $670,000 in rapid response grants to 69 trans-led organizations and leaders to advance their work in today’s hostile political moment and beyond.  The Fund’s grantee partners are working to secure sanctuary housing and address houselessness, deepen organizing and legal advocacy in response to anti-trans legislation, create workforce development programs to offer training and career development opportunities to transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) communities, and meet TGNC folks’ basic needs through varying forms of mutual aid.

The FTG is committed to seeding a diverse set of movement organizations and leaders to advance their work in this current political moment and beyond given the rise of legislative and physical violence against TGNC communities. The Fund does this by providing both general support grants, capacity building grants and support, and rapid response funding to grantee partners so that they can determine what is best for their organizational and leadership needs. Since its inception in October 2016, the FTG has moved over $10 million dollars to trans-led organizations.

In 2023, the REACH Fund awarded its biggest year of grantmaking yet, moving $1.9 million in grants in continued support to 19 leaders and organizations working to advance racial equity across the nonprofit ecosystem. With the increased demand for equity services and resources for nonprofits, the Fund continued its investment in practitioners to develop and scale tools and strategies for the benefit of the broader nonprofit and philanthropic sectors.

The REACH Fund spent much of 2023 preparing the release of Meeting the Moment, Keeping the Momentum: Stories of Racial Equity and Liberatory Practices from the Field, a report they co-authored with Research Action and Design (RAD) that captures wisdom and learnings from REACH grantee partners. Through written narrative and vibrant, in-depth case studies, Meeting the Moment, Keeping the Momentum outlines how organizations working for social change can—and must—transcend the limits of the existing nonprofit model to imagine new possibilities of organizing movements.

In October, the REJ Fund awarded $5.4 million in grants to 58 news organizations serving communities of color across the country. The REJ Fund is the only, collaborative fund within the journalism sector positioned to connect, convene, support, and thread the BIPOC journalism ecosystem from legacy to emergent journalism, traditional to movement journalism, and publishers to field builders and community organizations.

Last year, the REJ Fund focused on two funding areas: Publisher Grants to strengthen Black, Indigenous, Latine and Asian American/Pacific Islander news media organizations that produce original reporting and information across all media platforms to advance community and civic engagement; and Field Building Grants to develop and support the BIPOC media sector’s coalition building and structural improvements to foster a more equitable media environment. The REJ team also spent much of 2023 traveling, from the Dominican Republic to Germany, discussing REJ’s role in encouraging the growth of regenerative economies through newsrooms and citing all that it takes for legacy BIPOC newsrooms to keep their doors open despite limited resources.

As we announced in October, the Racial Equity in Philanthropy Fund will sunset in 2025. Since launching, the REP Fund has supported philanthropy-serving organizations (PSOs) working toward informing, educating, and equipping funders to integrate racial equity into their work, providing $28 million since 2017.

While there is still a long way to go to achieving a philanthropic sector rooted in equitable values and practice, we have watched our grantee partners make incredible progress. Over the last six years, they have created cutting edge approaches and built impactful collaborations. As we shared in our announcement and in conversations since, Borealis believes that “a new level of commitment and philanthropic investment is required to meet this moment…one that includes long-term, direct funding relationships able to support PSOs in scaling and further shifting the philanthropic landscape in support of transformational racial justice movements.” The urgency of building and supporting racial equity infrastructure in philanthropy has never been greater, and we are eager to see how this work and impact unfolds.

In August, the SJF announced over $1.9 million in grants to 22 grassroots organizations leading powerful work. The Spark Justice Fund remains committed to resourcing grassroots groups working to decarcerate, redirect resources from jails to communities, and transform our collective vision of community-led safety and justice. To further this work, in 2023, the Fund made it their mission to prioritize groups operating in the Midwest, South and rural areas due to a lack of philanthropic dollars directed towards these communities.

Over the past several years, we’ve witnessed the dissolution of our fundamental freedoms—from attacks on bodily sovereignty to the uptick of mass surveillance—and heightened criminalization of marginalized communities and protestors. In their day-to-day work, SJF grantee partners are organizing against not only carceral systems but also the institutions that empower carceral systems, policing, the criminalization of poverty, and other practices that contribute to incarceration in the U.S. Grantee partners are working on a wide range of campaigns and priorities which include: Policy Reforms and Budget Advocacy, Jail Closure Campaigns, Abolishing Cash Bail, Piloting Community-Led Alternatives to Safety, and Mutual Aid and Power Building.

SJF also provided grantees with a Healing for Liberation Series focusing on: Introduction to Healing Justice, Establishing Healing Practices for Individuals and Organizations, Exploring Ceremonies, Traditions, and Other Tools for Developing Healing Practices, and Understanding Structural Healing: Utilizing Healing Justice as a Strategic Approach for Success.