2025 Annual Report

LETTER FROM OUR PRESIDENT

Community,

Borealis Philanthropy was born, at the urging of frontline movement organizers, a little over ten years ago. In the revelatory and beautiful decade since, we’ve dedicated ourselves to the very frontlines that called us into being: those embedded in their communities, defending our collective rights, shifting culture, and building the infrastructure and systems necessary for all people to thrive.

We do this work because we—people of color, queer and trans folks, migrant and disabled folks—know that democracy necessitates justice. It is for this reason that we have always understood democracy as a verb: as the many actions that ensure safety, care, wellbeing, and belonging for everyone. Working across these intersectional areas of justice—community safety and justice; economic justice and inclusion; media, journalism and narrative change; movement infrastructure; and race, gender, and disability justice, our grantee partners are doing just that.

From the rural South to urban coasts, our network of over 450 partners are advocating for families and communities across all fronts. Through budget appropriations, reallocations, and mutual aid networks, they are ensuring essential housing protections, the enforcement of fair labor standards, and greater resources for neighbors in need. They are making civic participation more possible, legislation more comprehensible, and vital information more accessible. They are leading with an understanding that our liberation is bound together; that as authoritarianism and criminalization rise, so, too, will disenfranchisement, disparity, and disability. And in doing so, they are addressing a growing sense of civic disempowerment as well as working to concentrate power where it belongs: in the hands of the people.

This annual report is a celebration of their work, and ours. It is a reminder that—especially in times of collapse—well-resourced partnerships offer us the trust that rebuilding is already underway. It is a reminder that

“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

As you read it, please join us in honoring the work and wins of today’s exquisitely interconnected movement ecosystem, and in visioning what is possible through our collective commitment to their success: a truly inclusive multi-racial democracy.

With love and deep gratitude,

Amoretta Morris

President, Borealis Philanthropy