Established in 2016, Borealis Philanthropy’s Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF) is dedicated to resourcing and amplifying the work of the Movement for Black Lives and other politically-aligned organizations to better shape policy agendas for Black communities, create alternatives to harmful institutions, and build community power. In April 2024, the BLMF awarded $4 million in grants—$200K over two years—to 20 Black-led organizations at the forefront of dismantling anti-blackness and reimagining a world rooted in Black liberation, safety, and joy.
For the second year in a row, the Fund’s grantmaking cycle was guided by the wisdom and leadership of a participatory grantmaking committee comprised of Black artists, organizers, educators, and advocates from across the country. These leaders each brought deep care, lived and learned experiences, and a belief in the necessary realignment in power to this collective decision-making process.
This new group of grantees is comprised of young people and elders; queer, trans, and nonbinary individuals; formerly incarcerated folks; people who identify as disabled, neurodivergent, working class/low-income; parents; migrants; Southerners; and Midwesterners. These leaders organize across a range of intersectional areas—food systems, arts and culture, prison industrial complex abolition, sex worker decriminalization, workers’ rights, electoral, environmental, disability, and gender justice work, and so much more.
The result is a cohort that reflects the brilliance and vision of Black organizing at the intersection of multiple movements. From dismantling the carceral state to fighting for Black migrant justice, creating sanctuaries for queer and trans folks, stewarding land for healing, and building power in historically under-resourced regions, these groups are employing a wide range of strategies to bring us closer to collective liberation. Please join us in celebrating the BLMF’s 2024-2026 grantee cohort:
- Action St. Louis
- Anti Police-Terror Project
- Black Feminist Future
- Black LGBTQIA Migrant Project
- Black Organizing for Leadership & Dignity
- Darkness Rising
- Domestic Workers United, Inc.
- Holistic Empowerment Institute
- Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishments
- Imagine Black Futures
- In Our Names Network
- Lavender Rights Project
- NC BLOC
- Peoples Advocacy Institute
- Project South
- Solutions NOT Punishment Collaborative (SnapCo)
- The Knights & Orchids Society
- Transgender Gender-Variant Justice Project (TGIJP)
- Women with a Vision, Inc.
- Yellowhammer Fund
While we welcome new multi-year grantee partners to the fold, the cohort also includes renewed support for several of our existing partners—a reflection of the BLMF’s commitment to resourcing emergent work, while also sustaining broader and long-term efforts to build power. Additionally, the Fund welcomed 10 new grantee partners through the inaugural Black Disabled Liberation Project, a co-funding initiative with Borealis’ Disability Inclusion Fund intended to challenge the historical lack of investment in Black disabled activists and uplift their brilliance across the movement ecosystem.
We are endlessly grateful to our grassroots partners for leading work that is ushering in a new world—one that overflows with Black joy, abundance, and collective liberation. And we invite all those committed to justice, beauty, and liberation to partner with the Black-Led Movement Fund to flank the network of Black-led organizing across the United States. To learn more, please email us at blmf@borealisphilanthropy.org.