Black-and-brown-led community organizations are calling on Chicago foundations to examine more closely whether they’re spreading their dollars in as diverse a way as possible.
La’Keisha Gray Sewell of the Girls Like Me Project said there’s been a gross inequity of funding of black and brown-led community organizations by foundations.
“We know there are many who desire to do good, to do the right thing yet they, too, are bound to a system that by its very nature is engrained with oppressive practices,” Sewell said.
Sewell said, in many cases, foundations admit they hadn’t even heard of a particular community organization.
That lack of adequate funding for those groups is what one leader said is behind the twin pandemic of the last couple of years - COVID and an increase in violence.
Cosette Nazon-Wilburn of Luv Institute said, “Part of reason saw that we saw that because small black and brown organizations didn’t’ have the resources to really address the needs of community.”
Nazon-Wilburn said the organization leaders are thinking of ways to expose groups to major funders.
“We’d have speed dating where new organizations could present their ideas to funders that they haven’t been funded to before,” she said.
The organizations also challenge Chicago foundations to fund the full cost of their efforts and value the groups’ work the same way academic research or outside consultants are valued.
Foundations are being asked to honestly examine where their dollars go and how they can funnel more to black and brown community groups.