Azariah, an 18-year-old artist and activist working with Chicago’s A Long Walk Home, collaborated with a dozen neighborhood teens to transform an abandoned liquor store into a fresh produce market. Austin Harvest, as it is called and where Azariah also works, now sources fruit, healthy food, and flowers from local suppliers across the city and provides nutritious and healthful choices for her community.

Azariah and her peers are an example of what we can accomplish when we trust and abundantly invest in the leadership of girls and gender-expansive youth of color. Research reveals young Black and Latinx girls are more likely than others to identify as leaders and yet, women and girls of color collectively receive less than 1 percent of all philanthropic investments.

Meanwhile, girls youth show us every day the transformative power of their leadership. Young people like Emma, Maria, and Cielo served as youth consultants and facilitated a healing retreat for queer and trans youth of color in the South. They collaborated with Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement and created a safe space for young people to heal and step into their full potential through the lens of rest and play.

Young people are pushing our communities and leaders to expand our visions of justice and equity. This includes developing a gender analysis that includes girls and femmes as they articulate the dynamic nature of their identities. To fully elevate and amplify girls’ leadership, we must invest in their wellbeing. This means we must recognize how girls youth show up in leadership — this requires adults to both cede power and seed power.

To cede power is to release it. To seed power is to leverage our own resources to grow opportunities for leadership. This is the commitment of many adult community leaders, liberatory educators, advocates, and others who understand that only when we release some of the power that adults inherently hold, are we able to co-construct the type of communities that fully appreciate and develop the power of young people. When we lean into their wisdoms —and their leadership— we’re able to bring to life their visions for justice and freedom.
Because if we look around, we start to notice the leadership skills young people like those in G4GC’s community named above, and their colleagues, have already shown.

It looks like the work of the young leaders at The International Mayan League, which promotes, preserves,and transmits the cosmovision, worldview, culture, history, and ancestral contributions of Maya people. Some of these Maya youth have courageously challenged injustice at great personal risk— they were forced to flee Guatemala due to the defense of their peoples and land. Still, they are steadfastly working intergenerationally to engage in practices that restore their cultures and languages, which create healing spaces through relearning their cultures and ceremonial practices. Through interpretation training programs for Maya peoples, these youth are revitalizing their languages, preserving oral traditions, and enforcing the fact that Indigenous communities have specific needs, knowledge, and solutions we must center.

Leadership also looks like the young people at Freedom Inc. in Madison, WI,who successfully organized to remove the Madison Police Department off of Madison Metropolitan School District campuses, and continue to advance justice in schools and communities for Black and Southeast Asian youth. These youth are working to make schools truly safe for all students. As part of their work, they launched the Black Sanctuary Pledge to ensure that schools are sanctuaries for Black students, which expands my own work and the work of others to facilitate schools as locations for healing.

Organizations that support women and girls receive only 1.9% of philanthropic giving in the United States. Girls receive only a portion of that. If girls and gender-expansive youth can make this level of transformative impact with the scarce resources to which they currently have access, imagine what they could accomplish if we committed to a daily practice of ceding power where necessary, and seeding power by pouring into the financial, human, and institutional resources that will help them realize their full potential. As we celebrate the International Day of the Girl, let’s make this day mean more than just visibility. Now, more than ever, it is time to invest in the transformative power of girls.

Dr. Monique Couvson is the President and CEO of G4GC and the author of six books, including Charisma’s Turn (The New Press, 2023), a graphic novel about girls and their gifts.

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Shé:kon sewakwé:kon, greetings community, 

May 5th is the National Day of Action for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW, also referred to as Murdered and Missing Indigenous Relatives (MMIR), Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women Girls and Two Spirit (MMIWG2S).

I am Rana LaPine, and today I invite you to pause and recognize the National Day of Action, and learn about the important awareness projects some of our grantee partners are leading. We recognize that there are many individuals who are often left out of these conversations, including but not limited to: Trans and Gender-Nonconforming people, Afro-Indigenous communities, Indigenous migrants, and more. We see and support all who have not come home.

Since joining Grantmakers for Girls of Color (G4GC) as the Fund Manager for our New Songs Rising Initiative (NSRI) a partnership with Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, we have been focused on deeply engaging with our grantee partners and communities through  facilitated listening circles with young people and their relatives.Together, we have been exploring ways to expand opportunities Indigenous girls and to support multi-generational healing and organizing. 

In recent years, the epidemic of violence against Native American and Indigenous women, girls, and gender-expansive relatives started to become well-known beyond Indian Country. Non-Natives have supported Native-led efforts to create taskforces; they have strengthened Native American and Native Hawaiian-related language and protections within the Violence Against Women Act; and they have created statewide Days of Awareness. 

And yet, the harrowing cycle remains unbroken; Indigenous communities experience a lack of federal, state, and robust non-Native support in the fight against this gendered violence. Communities and families across the country and continent who have missing relatives continue to bring awareness to this underreported reality, to bring their loved ones home, and to name and honor those who have been lost.

“We believe that the national crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit Relatives is a direct consequence of ongoing colonial violence and oppression; including brutality against Mother Earth at the hands of extractive industries and man camps, and the continued institutional racism which prevents families and survivors from seeking justice. May 5th is a day we take action, heal, stand in solidarity with survivors and their families, and honor those who have not returned home.”

-Tia Oros Peters (Zuni)

CEO, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples

Grantmakers for Girls of Color is proud to support the work done in Indian Country, including efforts by urban Native populations, to stop and prevent the continuation of violence against women, girls and gender-nonconforming relatives. For the last two years, our New Songs Rising Initiative has offered general operating support grants to resource community efforts responding to this crisis. This year, we offered 10 grants totaling over $70,000, towards grantee projects with a focus on MMIW. In the spirit of solidarity and trust, we fund work that is already being done in the community, and included projects that were referred to us by existing grantees. Additionally, our continued relationship with the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples has included support of critical work steward by their team, particularly that held within their Thriving Women programming. 

Below we include details about these critical, community-led and community-centered projects, all of whom gave consent to share information. We also support a number of projects that requested their work remain private, because of the security risks associated with doing this work. In the coming months, we’ll share out exciting NSRI updates from our recent learnings, including: updates on a youth-led decision-making process for grants,  more forward-facing celebration of Indigenous girls, femmes, and gender-expansive young people; descriptions of our grantee partners; and information about the strategy of the New Songs Rising Initiative. 

Where appropriate*, I encourage you to say the names of those who have not come home. Attend a march, offer a spirit plate or other sacred offering, and, always, celebrate the love and power of Native and globally-Indigenous girls, women, and gender-diverse peoples.

Ó:nen ki wáh i,

With gratitude,

Rana

* Native nations are diverse, varied communities with infinite differences in their practices. Some communities do not allow naming for those outside of their respective family. Others encourage naming as a way of guiding one’s spirit to its next destination. I encourage you to look into the appropriate course of action for the community of those you name, today and always.

Grantees projects:

G4GC is proud to support and recognize the work being done in Indian Country to shed light on and stop violence against women, girls and relatives. Below are some of these projects (this list does not include those that requested to be kept private).

Gedakina will host a screening of the film Sisters Rising in Indian Township and Sipyiak followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers for their Braiding Sweetgrass group of Native PhD students at UMASS Amherst and the University of Vermont. The coordination of MMWIGR-themed t-shirts, travel and transportation for staff to attend these events is funded by Grantmakers for Girls of Color. 

Indigenous Justice will hold a MMIW/Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) prayer walk in Sacramento, CA. In addition, they will support MMIP families during a California Department of Justice event, in order to center their safety and wellbeing and offer support in sharing their survivor stories

Indigenous Vision will co-host a MMIWG2SP event at the University of Montana, including various speakers, survivors, and families of survivors. They will record a live, on-location podcast, promote their Indigenous Mapping Projects, and register attendees for self-defense kits that include mace, custom knuckles and USB from Umatilla MMA fighter Kola Shippentower’s Wisáwca project.

Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition will organize a two-week art workshop in partnership with the Missing and Murdered African American Women’s Task Force, as well as a march for Missing and Murdered Indigenosu Relatives (MMIR). In the workshop, participants will make two tipis (bringing the total at the related art installation event to ten), red dresses to symbolize MMIR, and additional symbols from the African American community. There will be food, a drum group, and community and cultural speakers. 

Sacred Pipe Resource Center will host an event in recognition of the Day of Action. Leading up to this event, they will gather video testimony from Native women in the area in order to document the extent of this crisis, and will observe locations where women in the community have been exploited. They will continue to provide outreach support in order to meet needs and ensure safety, and will be providing Native women with Care Kits that include personal hygiene products and other goods.

Seven Dancers Coalition will work in partnership with tribes throughout New York State in order to create and disperse a MMIW-focused t-shirt to increase advocacy and visibility of the issue. Additional awareness materials will also be distributed. 

Wiconi Wawokiya will host a walk on the May 5th Day of Action, with a series of workshops leading up to the event. Topics will include a ribbon skirt-making workshop, a culturally-appropriate sex-trafficking training for local law enforcement, and a movie screening, with a panel, discussing how sex-trafficking has impacted their community.

Xinachtli Girls: Xinachtli Comadres National Colectiva is launching their Annual MMIWGR Coalition and Week of Action Campaign in collaboration with KLBRI to have a successful, healing-centered, socially distant awareness, education, and action campaign to bring light to the issue of Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women Girls + Relatives, transnational femicides, and gender-based violence. Their campaign will display publicly their collective voices and expand on the transnational scope of the MMIWGR movement. Twenty-five member organizations will be engaged as weavers, healers, storytellers, and advocates to uplift transnational movement and solidarity actions in the United States with a platform, tools, and resources to assist in awareness-building, education, and advocacy. Healing will be central to this coalition and its impact, including the organization of healing programs and campaigns.

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I still remember the day I met Tina Turner at Tower Records as a 5-year-old Black girl. She filled the room with her lovely laugh, big smile and even bigger energy. It was exhilarating to see her, a Black woman artist owning the entire store. I was in awe of the presence of this powerful  example of a Black woman artist.

As I got older and my world became bigger, I grew to even more deeply appreciate the power of Black artists and innovators, and what they offer to Black people living in a world that is not built for us. This is why I now work to move institutions and donors to invest into the artistic visions, innovation, health, safety, research, brain trust, and joy of Black girls and gender-expansive youth. Black Girl Freedom Fund, an initiative of Grantmakers for Girls of Color, is one example of that work. In addition to mobilizing investments, BGFF and #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign co-hosts the Black Girl Freedom Week, a weeklong space where Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth across the country can see themselves and be celebrated.

The theme of this year’s series of events centers the artistic vision, activism and innovation of Black girls and gender expansive youth. From February 13 to February 19, we will gather virtually to spotlight Black women, girls and gender-expansive youth, including award winning director, writer, and producer Gina Prince-Bythewood, who most recently directed the blockbuster hit “The Woman King”, and Leila Mottley, author of the New York Times Bestseller, Oprah’s Book Club pick, and Booker Prize nominee debut novel “Nightcrawler.” 

These luminaries not only light the way for the next generation of Black artists and innovators, they are the cultural influencers who help us see the full embodiment of Black girls’ and Black people’s lives, beyond tropes of tragedy and sadness, to include the infinite possibilities that await them and the liberated futures they are creating. They help shift the narrative and change hearts and minds about Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth, who are essential to achieving a more just world. Yet, we know that Black girls, femmes and gender-expansive youth are the least seen, recognized, or invested in. Research shows that less than $15 million, about 4.2%, of philanthropic giving was specified as benefitting Black women and girls in 2017, the most recent figures available. Black women and girls received $17,000 less in grant support compared to a median of $35,000 for all foundation grants. 

The Black Girl Freedom Fund and the #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign aim to change that. Since 2021, the Black Girl Freedom Fund has invested more than $7 million into over 80 organizations across the United States. From cultivating educational opportunities in STEM, to deep healing, leadership development, and beyond, the work our grantee partners are doing is not just changing the lives of Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth — they are fundamentally changing how others understand the role of Black girls in our communities and the world. 

The #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign is the first-of-its-kind movement to mobilize a $1 billion dollar investment in Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth. The eight co-founders of the #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign drive the strategic direction and priorities of the campaign, and they continue to advocate for investment in Black girls and gender-expansive youth through each of their respective organizations and personal advocacy work.

“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible,” goes the saying from legendary cultural and community worker Toni Cade Bambara. We know that art, culture, innovation, and ingenuity are integral parts of a continuum of social justice, advocacy, and healing. We get to invest in our Black girl, femme and gender expansive creators because they deserve it. They are the light of possibility that is so necessary in these turbulent times. 

Cidra M. Sebastien is the Fund Manager of the Black Girl Freedom Fund, an initiative of Grantmakers for Girls of Color. The organization is a fiscally sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Sebastien is an auntie, educator, youth advocate, and runner. To learn more and donate, click here.

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Dear Community,

As we close out another momentous year at Grantmakers for Girls of Color, we want to extend our gratitude to you for all of your support, and share some highlights. This year, we focused on growing our team and refining our internal infrastructure, launched inspirational new projects and partnerships, hosted meaningful gatherings (both virtual and in-person), and most importantly, grew our investment into our community of girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of Color. 

We’re proud to say that by the end of 2022 we will have awarded over $9 million, to our grantee partners across the country and territories, including Washington D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico. Since our launch as an intermediary in 2020, we have raised and disbursed $16,690,400 in grants to more than 250 organizations in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico. Our commitment to abundantly resource and amplify the work of our grantee partners who center the leadership, wisdom, and joy of girls, femmes and gender-expansive youth of Color is unwavering.  

Intentional rest

After a transformational staff retreat at the end of 2021, Grantmakers for Girls of Color began the year with an intention to prioritize our staff’s wellbeing and address the burnout that is too common in the workplace, and that has unique challenges for leaders in the social impact spaces, particularly women, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of Color. We made this decision not only for ourselves, but also to create space and affirmation for our grantee partners and movement leaders to do the same. 

To provide time for rest and rejuvenation, in 2022 we implemented organization-wide quarterly breaks, and a winter break to give our team the spaciousness to experience the wholeness of their lives and nourish all parts of their being. We will carry this intention into 2023. This winter break, our offices will be closed from December 17, 2022 until January 8, 2023. When we return in January, we will be doing some internal planning and retreating, and may be slow to respond to outreach. Your patience is appreciated.

Below you will find details about some of the many highlights from this year, and you can dive into deeper insights in this 2022 Executive Summary.

Thank you for your boundless support, and the multiple ways that you are working towards liberated, joyful, and thriving futures for girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of Color. From everyone in our G4GC team, we wish you and your families joy, peace and abundance in the coming year, and the gift of rest beyond the physical and mental, so that your emotions are grounded and your spirit continues to thrive with a deep sense of purpose.

In Community,

Dr. Monique Couvson
President & CEO, Grantmakers for Girls of Color

Here are some of the highlights of 2022 as our G4GC team closes the year:

• Continuing to fund grantee partners: 
  • As the nation’s only philanthropic intermediary exclusively focused on mobilizing resources to support the transformative organizing work led by girls* of Color, we continue to gain important insights about what is truly required to effectively strengthen these movements and organizations working to dismantle systems of oppression in the U.S.
  • In 2023, we will share updated data about our full impact this year. We are excited to share that by September of this year, we moved 167 grants – with 91 new and distinct grantee partners. Of the $6,997,700 we awarded between January-September 2022:
    • $768,000 went to the Midwest across 22 organizations. 
    • $2,238,600 went to the South across 51 organizations. 
• Creating convenings for powerful engagement and conversations: 
  • Black Girl Freedom Week 2022 was a triumph with phenomenal guests including Marley Dias, Tracee Ellis Ross, Rashida Jones and Sanaa Lathan, who joined us for our second annual week-long event celebrating the leadership, freedom dreams and power of Black girls, femmes and gender-expansive youth. Programs throughout the week highlighted the artistic vision and genius of Black girls, femmes and gender-expansive youth, and advanced narratives that Black girls feel are important to achieve the justice they are seeking. Find videos of the week at the link and stay tuned for Black Girl Freedom Week 2023, happening Feb 13-19 (More information below)!
  • G4GC’s 2022 Virtual Convening, Reclamation & Reciprocity: Harvesting Just & Liberated Futures for Girls, Femmes, and Gender-expansive Youth of Color, was an invaluable opportunity for connection with our various communities of co-investors–G4GC staff, funders, grantee partners, and youth. We kicked off the convening with a powerful keynote address from civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, and learned from so many amazing organizations and young people about the futures they are building and the importance of robustly resourcing this work. Check out the link to watch the amazing plenary sessions! 

“Joyous Futures: G4GC Youth Celebration” was an unforgettable, beautiful gathering at the end of our week of convening. We gathered young people and organizations in Brooklyn to celebrate and center the joy, wellness, culture, rest, play, creativity and the vibrancy of girls, femmes & gender-expansive youth of Color! You can see highlights from the event in this video:

Black Girl Freedom Week 2023: Arts, Activism, and Innovation!

Make sure to save the dates February 13-19, 2023, for a week of virtual events elevating the activism, creativity, and joy of Black girls, femmes and gender-expansive youth. The week will end with our Black Girl Freedom Fund Manager Cidra Sebastien running a 60K trail race in Arizona to raise funds for organizations that support the brilliance and leadership of Black girls*. 

Intentional infrastructure building:

Next year will resume our intentional infrastructure building as we continue to shape G4GC to best serve our team, our community of  grantee partners, and our broader philanthropic community. 

In 2023 we will continue to be intentional about analyzing the systems and structures that make our organization and partnerships thrive. Part of this effort will result in quarterly newsletters instead of monthly ones. If you’d like to announce an opportunity in our newsletter next year, please send us the information via Email to info@g4gc.org with “newsletter” in the subject line for consideration. 

We’re overjoyed at how we’ve spent another year supporting and uplifting our grantee partners and look forward to what’s ahead for our community. We wish you all the best in the coming weeks as we transition into a new year of opportunities.  

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*When G4GC refers to “girls of color” we include  any cis, trans, gender-expansive, non-binary and/or any girl- or femme-identified person age 25 and younger who identifies as Black, Indigenous, Latin, Asian, Arab, Pacific Islander, and/or other People of Color.

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Trans girls and gender-expansive youth of Color deserve to be safe, free, and thriving.

But today, trans and gender-expansive communities are facing multiple, interlocking systems of oppression. Across cities and states, trans communities are under attack from anti-trans legislation that aims to direct physical, psychological, and spiritual violence in homes, schools, facilities, and communities. This includes legislation that specifically targets youth, as well as trans folks who are Black or come from other communities of Color.

In 2022 alone, there have been more than 100 bills introduced in state legislatures across the country targeting young trans people. Beyond political targeting and systemic discrimination, too many young people coming into their trans and queer identity find themselves on the streets compared to their cisgender counterparts.

One year ago, Grantmakers for Girls of Color and the Black Trans Fund, incubated at Groundswell Fund, created the Holding a Sister Initiative, the first national fund explicitly dedicated to resourcing and uplifting trans girls and gender-expansive youth of Color. We created this necessary space for cis and trans girls of Color to build solidarity and community with one another. To date we have invested $2 million in more than 20 organizations serving, and led by, trans girls and gender-expansive youth of Color through this initiative alone.

Our incredible grantees work everyday to ensure that trans girls and gender-expansive youth of Color have access to gender-affirming care, which includes hormone replacement therapy, mental health support, as well as affirming clothing and spaces, all of which serve as healing tools. They work to ensure trans youth can meet their basic survival needs including help with securing short- and long-term housing, food, and other necessities. Our grantees do the important work to shift and dismantle the systems that continue to perpetuate violence on trans youth of Color. They are engaged in work to advance research, respite and healing, activism towards liberation, policy work, and –most importantly– joy, play, and power.

This is why the Holding a Sister Initiative was created: to resource places to heal, find joy, and to co-create a world in which trans girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of Color thrive. Through our work of deep listening and relationship building with our grantee partners, we affirmed two critical and primary needs we need to fulfill to achieve this goal.

First, we need to create and hold dedicated spaces for our trans girls and gender-expansive loved ones to heal from the layers of trauma they have accumulated throughout their lives. Second, trans girls and gender-expansive youth need to feel safe in their own bodies and in all aspects of their lives. They need connection among one another so they can build a community of care, affirm their own humanity, advocate for themselves and their rights, and have access to opportunities for growth and development. They need their own spaces to celebrate their authentic and unapologetic selves.

Trans people deserve to exist as the artists, healers, visionaries, caregivers, and builders that they are and have always been. When we look back to history, trans people were held up as divine keepers of deep knowledge that exists beyond masculinity and femininity. In Native culture, two-spirit identity was widely believed to be the result of supernatural visions or dreams. In many Native Nations, two spirit people filled special religious roles as healers, shamans, and ceremonial leaders. And in the Hijra community in South Asia, they are considered to be a third gender and have been revered throughout history.

Trans girls and gender-expansive youth of Color are their own examples of people leading successful, happy, loving lives. They have a depth of knowledge and wisdom that we can all benefit from, if only we let them. By centering the leadership of Black trans women and girls, we can secure all of our safety and vitality.

As funders, those of us who support racial and social justice must also resource our trans, femme, and gender-expansive youth of Color siblings, niblings, and cousins.

Philanthropic organizations and leaders can invest deeply into and partner with existing funds and foundations created by and for trans people, especially those led by and serving Black trans and other trans people of Color. They can invest in queer and trans led intermediaries and philanthropic serving organizations like the Black Trans Fund, Third Wave Fund, Funders for LGBTQ issues, Fund for Trans Generations, and our own Holding a Sister Initiative. They can take the GUTC pledge and begin the journey to meaningfully increase and track their investments in trans communities, and ensure that trans girls of Color are included in those investments. Finally, they can help influence their philanthropic colleagues to follow their example of centering trans communities.

As we commemorate this year’s Trans Week of Awareness and Trans Day of Remembrance, let us memorialize our Black and Brown trans femmes and folks. Let us keep creating and expanding space for trans joy, and working towards a world where trans girls and gender-expansive youth of Color are robustly invested in – and loved.

Dr. Monique Couvson (formerly Dr. Monique W. Morris)
Dr. Couvson is an author and social justice scholar whose work has been profiled by Forbes, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, MSNBC, CSPAN2, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, and PBS, among other national and local print, radio, and television media. Dr. Couvson is the President and CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color, the nation’s only philanthropic intermediary explicitly focused on resourcing movements and organizations led by, and in support of, cis and trans girls and femmes of color. Her research and practice intersects race, gender, education and justice to explore the ways in which Black communities, and other communities of Color, are uniquely affected by social policies.

Nahr Suha
Nahr Suha (they/she) is a Black environmentalist and advocate for trans & gender-expansive youth. They manage the Holding a Sister Fund Initiative at Grantmakers for Girls of Color.

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Black women and girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of color deserve abundant investments in supporting our liberated futures. Tragically, philanthropy has always underfunded us.

In 2018, just $15 million out of almost $428 billion in philanthropic giving in the United States reached Black women and girls. That means less than 1 percent goes toward supporting the voices, visions, and experiences necessary for the liberation of Black girls and all people. The lack of funding in the Global South is even more dire: Funding for Black women, girls, and trans people constitutes roughly 5 percent of funding designated for human rights efforts—both in dollars and number of grants.

In the past two years, a growing movement of Black women leaders have been working to transform this inequality. In September 2020, we partnered with a collective of other outstanding Black women leaders to launch the #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign. Our goal was to mobilize robust investment in Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth’s leadership, genius, wellness, power, and capacity to thrive. The campaign was launched on the anniversary of the racist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four Black girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley–and wounded another, Sarah Collins.

Black girls and young women must play a central role in discussions about discrimination in education, health care, sexual assault, and policing. Yet, our stories are notably absent from public narratives, policies, and justice movements most crucial to addressing inequality and racial trauma. A bold call for investing $1 billion over 10 years in organizations and movements focused on supporting the liberated futures of Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth shows us the way forward.

The $1 billion goal is not only achievable; it is also an intelligent and essential investment. We established two signature funds—the Black Girl Freedom Fund and the Black Feminist Fund—that have demonstrated how investments in Black girls and gender-expansive people not only remains an urgent need, but produce direct and residual outcomes for others in their homes and neighborhoods. This return on investment makes these funds essential agents for community economic development, and we know that Black women and girls are worthy of investment even without such evidence.

In the two years since we launched those funds, other essential initiatives centering Black women and girls have emerged and/or expanded, including the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium’s Black Girl Dream Fund, the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund, and the Black Women and Girls Fund at the Baltimore Community Foundation. Together, we have invested millions more into the brain trust, innovation, health, safety, education, artistic visions, research, and joy of Black women, girls, and their families.

While we celebrate this milestone and the necessary gains, we must keep this momentum going.

The same energy that led organizations in the philanthropic, public, and private sectors to pledge significant investments—more than $4 billion—toward racial justice efforts in recent years should also drive decisions to invest in Black women, girls, and femmes in this moment. Now is the time to fulfill those unmet commitments. Philanthropic efforts that lack an intersectional analysis, and those that deprioritize funding racial justice efforts at the intersections of our communities’ identities, contribute to the harmful narrative that Black girls and femmes do not require investment. This lack of intersectional analysis will only undermine efforts to grow funds that resource young people whose experiences are often the result of compounded traumas associated with race, gender, sexuality, and age.

Philanthropists who care about racial justice must realize that people who are closest to the problem must be part of the solution. Black women are political, social, and cultural leaders. We are power players shaping our country today despite being grossly underfunded, under-resourced and underestimated. We must keep giving abundantly to this community because we know that all social justice efforts benefit when we place value in Black girls’ and women’s lives and leadership. And we must center Black women-led funds.

Imagine what 2030 will look like if there is a significant investment in the lives and livelihood of Black girls and women’s leadership, innovation, wellness, and advocacy. We will be closer to our vision of collective freedom and liberation.

Dr. Monique Couvson is president and CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color. Tynesha McHarris is founder and principal at Black Harvest and co-founder of Black Feminist Fund.

Originally published in philanthropynewsdigest.org

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