From Surdna Foundation: Join us at the Surdna Foundation for light bites and a panel discussion with Nonprofit Quarterly.

You’ll hear from NPQ editors, authors, and movement leaders exploring themes from NPQ’s latest economic justice issue about how movements today are advancing economic justice, and how grassroots efforts can be amplified by resourcing a national media platform.

Panelists will be in conversation with NPQ editors Steve Dubb and Rithika Ramamurthy:

Emily Kawano, U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and Co-Director of Wellspring Cooperative
José Garcia, Ford Foundation
Esteban Kelly, U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives.

Please RSVP by Oct. 6 to attend and let us know if you would like to invite any colleagues.

From Justice Funders: A new model for philanthropy, the Just Transition Integrated Capital Fund offers foundations a learning vehicle to move endowed assets to BIPOC and working class controlled funds and grassroots projects through non-extractive financing in the form of 0% loans and catalytic grants.

The Just Transition Integrated Capital Fund (JTIC Fund) operationalizes the Just Transition Investment Framework in the form of a democratically controlled integrated capital fund governed by five democratically controlled investment funds stewarded by movement partners.

The guiding values of the JTIC Fund are local community control, non-extractive finance and right relationships, rematriation, and reparations.

Learn more about the fund here.

The Zellerbach Family Foundation is thrilled to welcome Chibueze Crouch as its first Community Arts Fellow. An Igbo-American artist & writer, Chibueze Crouch (they/she) performs and creates immersive, experimental live art spanning ritual theater, song, movement, video, and text. 

“We’re thrilled to introduce this new fellowship and Chibueze’s selection for its inaugural year,” shares Zellerbach Family Foundation President and CEO, Allison Magee. “The fellowship is part of a broader commitment the foundation has made to deepen its engagement with the arts community and reaffirm the important role arts and culture hold in the health, vitality, and future of our region.”

Chibueze organizes with BlaQyard, a land collective centering QTBIPOC in the East Bay, and they perform with BANDALOOP, an internationally touring vertical dance company. They also curate and produce shows with the Performance Primers, KH FRESH Festival and Queering Dance Festival. They are co-director of OYSTERKNIFE, a postdisciplinary performance company, with Gabriele Christian. Chibueze is also the 2019 RHE Foundation Artistic Fellowship recipient, and a 2021 California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow.

The Community Arts Fellowship emerged from the foundation’s effort to activate its strategic framework: an integrated approach to grantmaking that promotes belonging, connection, and a shared sense of safety among people and communities across the Bay Area and California. In their role as Community Arts Fellow, Chibueze will help the foundation actualize its belief in the power of arts and culture to bring people together, change hearts and minds, and imagine a better future. 

“The Community Arts Program at the Zellerbach Family Foundation has a long-held commitment to collaborative decision making,” says Margot Melcon, who leads Arts and Culture grantmaking for the foundation. “We engage a panel of artists from the community to recommend how funding is meaningfully distributed to artists and arts organizations across the Bay Area. This Fellowship is an extension of that commitment, a way for us to further bring the community into our grantmaking process, to transparently share who we are as a foundation, and to learn from the valuable insights community members bring to our work. Chibueze joins the foundation with years of experience as a practicing artist, community organizer, and activist, and we are so excited to build this Fellowship together.”

The Community Arts Fellowship is a new opportunity for learning and professional development in arts philanthropy. This compensated, year-long fellowship provides on-the-job training in arts administration and arts philanthropy, supporting all aspects of the Community Arts grantmaking program, including operations, project management, communications, and learning and evaluation, as well as individual mentorship and experience with participatory grant-making and collaborative decision-making models. The foundation intends to make the fellowship an annual opportunity to engage with an arts leader for mutual sharing and learning.

This fellowship opportunity is offered in partnership with Independent Arts & Media (IAM), a San Francisco-based nonprofit community organization. IAM currently supports over 100 affiliate projects dedicated to non-commercial work in media and the arts, including publishing, theater, dance, music, visual art, film and video, journalism, history, and public-events production. The partnership with IAM is a key component to ensuring an equitable recruitment process and assurance that the foundation was continuing to work closely with the community. “This program promises to offer the fellow a unique perspective into the grant-making process through direct engagement with one of the Bay Area’s key arts and culture funders. We are excited and honored to support such an innovative opportunity,” said IAM Executive Director Lisa Burger.

From Pam Breaux for NASAA: “I recently joined state arts agency leaders for the NASAA 2023 Learning Series session, Leading in the Face of Disaster. We all know that unexpected disasters are often devastating for communities, and the arts community is certainly no exception. Whether we’re thinking about weather and climate disasters like floods, fires and hurricanes or about other kinds of emergencies, in the aftermath of catastrophe there are important roles state arts agencies can play, especially to help the arts community connect to resources and pertinent information needed to begin recovering.”

“Unfortunately, weather and climate disasters have become so numerous and intense that it’s challenging to name all those most recently impacted. Top of mind for me at the moment are our colleagues in Florida because of recent storms, our colleagues in Vermont due to unprecedented flooding this year, and our colleagues in Hawaiʻi because of the devastating fires in Maui. There are certainly others, and the current hurricane season steadily making headlines isn’t helping any of us rest easily. In each of these examples, state arts agencies are leading and going about the work of understanding and illuminating the impact of disasters and connecting the arts community to much-needed resources.”

“Our speakers shared valuable perspectives, learning and resources that can help prepare state arts agencies to respond to disasters. Please check out the webinar and its related resources. I know you’ll join me in thanking our speakers for their leadership in this space and for sharing their knowledge with us.”

Read the full piece here.

From Leela Dance Collective: Leela Dance Collective, the Los Angeles-based internationally-touring kathak dance company that combines classical dance from North India with contemporary influences, announces today that it has reached its initial $1 million goal for The Leela Foundation. This endowment fund is the only one of its kind, designed to support the future of kathak dance and Hindustani classical music in the United States.

In 2020, The Leela Foundation granted inaugural Artist Awards, providing direct support to some of today’s leading musicians.These first Artist Awards were presented to artists Jayanta Banerjee, sitarist, musician and composer; Ben Kunin, sarod artist and senior disciple of the maestro, Ud. Ali Akbar Khan; Debashis Sarkar (posthumously), vocalist and musician; and Satyaprakash Mishra, tabla percussionist. In 2021 the fund supported three kathak dance artists: Gretchen Hayden, Joanna DeSouza, and Madhuri Devi Singh. In 2022, The Leela Foundation supported bansuri artist Jay Gandhi (Hindustani flute).

“A $1 million endowment is modest in the world of philanthropy and Western fine arts, but huge for our field of kathak and Hindustani classical music,” continued Mehta. “So many incredibly talented and acclaimed classical Indian dance and music artists struggle to support their artistry and lives financially. This endowment fund aims to provide artists with the support they need to thrive and advance these art forms. Without such support, these artists and artistic traditions are at risk. I know this is just the beginning for what our community can build together, to secure and grow the future of our art form. We are so incredibly grateful to the individuals and funders who have helped us reach this initial goal.”

“Leela Dance Collective is one of the very few professional touring companies elevating classical Indian dance and music on the world stage,” commented Shirish Dayal, Executive Vice President of the Tarsadia Foundation. “We believe in their mission to advance and sustain cultural traditions and strengthen infrastructure for kathak dance and Hindustani classical music, and are proud to provide lead support for The Leela Foundation.”

Read the full announcement here.

From Cora Daniels for Chronicle of Philanthropy: For me, it was a mic-drop moment. Morgan Dawson, co-CEO of Threshold Philanthropy, was speaking on a panel about Black women in philanthropy during this year’s Essence Fest, commonly touted as the largest annual gathering of Black women in the nation.

“In philanthropy,” she said, “we often talk about community, but in the way of being better philanthropists, and I wish it was in the context of being better neighbors.”

What would a world look like in which philanthropy considered Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people true neighbors?

Well, for one, it’s unlikely that just $5.48 in philanthropic funding would go to each woman and girl of color in the United States every year, according to a Ms. Foundation study — “pocket change,” as the 2020 report puts it. That report offers the latest data on giving to this group, which itself shows how little time the field spends thinking about the issues and challenges facing women and girls of color. Given the chronic underfunding, however, it’s unlikely that even after 2020’s massive racial justice protests and donor promises to give more, the situation has changed significantly.

My practical reaction to Dawson’s point was this: Here was another time in which a Black woman showed how it’s done. Dawson’s mic-drop moment was simply her response to the first question asking panelists to introduce themselves. If this is how the discussion begins, imagine the potential for philanthropy if the genius of Black women was the model for leadership that the whole field followed.

I dream of the day when philanthropy embraces the leadership lessons of Black women. That includes valuing collective leadership, fearlessly funding advocacy and anything else necessary to tackle structural inequities, and understanding that rest is a powerful act to achieve social change. With thanks to Fred Rogers, what a beautiful day in the neighborhood that would be.

Read the full piece here.

“Artificial intelligence is quickly transforming the way we live and work — and nonprofits are no exception. From using ChatGPT to jumpstart your grant proposals to building out responsible and secure A.I.-use policies, nonprofits are grappling with new questions on how to leverage the technology to advance their mission — while proactively navigating the risks,” said Sara Herschander for Chronicle of Philanthropy. “We spoke with several A.I. experts about the promise and perils of this technology for nonprofits, and what you need to know to get started.” 

Today, A.I. is the algorithm that filters your incoming email or fills your social media with eerily specific targeted ads. If you’ve browsed Netflix, searched Google, or listened to Spotify — you’ve used A.I.

In other words, “you’re already using it, you just don’t know it,” says James Ellis, managing director of EV Strategic Partners, which provides technology and A.I. consulting to nonprofits. And those uses have only exploded in the last couple of years as AI has grown by leaps and bounds.

Going beyond just recognizing patterns, generative A.I. — the type of advanced technology behind ChatGPT — can use data to generate entirely new text, images, and other media.

Fundraisers have used ChatGPT, which is free (for now) and simple to use, to offload time-consuming tasks like drafting thank-you notes to donors, completing lengthy grant applications, and scheduling social media posts. Other tools on the market, like Grantable, an A.I.-powered grant-writing assistant, and DonorSearch, which uses machine learning for donor prospecting, have made A.I. accessible to even the smallest nonprofit fundraisers.

Nearly 80 percent of nonprofits used automation for online fundraising — including 15 percent who used A.I. for donor prospecting — in 2021 and 2022, according to Nonprofit Tech For Good’s 2023 report.

Fundraisers have used ChatGPT, which is free (for now) and simple to use, to offload time-consuming tasks like drafting thank-you notes to donors, completing lengthy grant applications, and scheduling social media posts. Other tools on the market, like Grantable, an A.I.-powered grant-writing assistant, and DonorSearch, which uses machine learning for donor prospecting, have made A.I. accessible to even the smallest nonprofit fundraisers.

Nearly 80 percent of nonprofits used automation for online fundraising — including 15 percent who used A.I. for donor prospecting — in 2021 and 2022, according to Nonprofit Tech For Good’s 2023 report.

Read the full piece here.

Our community for executives of color grows. We’re thrilled to officially announce Catalyst Collective Cohort 2, drawn from our continued partnership with Kresge Foundation’s Arts and Culture & Human Services grantees! Through the ProInspire Catalyst Collective, these 18 senior leaders–all women of color–embark on a 12-month journey anchored in self-care, community care, and racial equity. Please join us in welcoming the members of Catalyst Collective Cohort 2 below.

The Catalyst Collective is a community of practice designed to support BIPOC leaders as they navigate the professional and structural challenges that leading nonprofit organizations often create. Our community of practice prioritizes holistic well-being, shifting organizational culture, and sustainability. Leaders also create meaningful connections and build shared power to advocate for tangible changes that will foster a more supportive and sustainable experience for BIPOC leaders.

Program Intentions

The vision behind Catalyst Collective is to create a space where leaders can show up fully and change decision making power within the social sector by bringing the dreams, desires, and self-determination of leaders of color to the forefront. Through virtual convenings and collaboration, Catalyst Collective will:

Provide opportunities for leaders to practice prioritizing their well-being and discover ways to model community-care in their organizations
Support leaders with understanding how their identity, in particular racial identity, informs their leadership approach and needs
Leaders build trusting and meaningful connections with other BIPOC leaders in the sector
Help leaders with building technical and adaptive strategies to accelerate race equity within their organizations

Learn more about the program and cohort here.

From Nonprofit Leadership Alliance at the University of Houston: Vu Le (“voo lay”) is a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and the former Executive Director of RVC, a nonprofit in Seattle that promotes social justice by developing leaders of color, strengthening organizations led by communities of color, and fostering collaboration between diverse communities. Known for his no-BS approach, irreverent sense of humor, and love of unicorns, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts at NonprofitAF.com.

Anyone interested in the nonprofit sector and social justice work in general is encouraged to join us for this virtual conversation. Feel free to share this invitation with other students, alumni, staff, and faculty.

The NLA program is open to UH undergraduates from across degree programs and Master of Social Work students. We support and empower students interested in a career in the nonprofit sector by helping them develop the skills and knowledge they need to be thoughtful, capable, and effective professionals.

The event takes place on Tuesday, October 3 at 6pm CDT. Learn more and register here.