Watch the video on wcnc.com.

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Couvson’s more than three decades in the fields of education, civil rights, juvenile and social justice include roles at Mount St. Mary’s College of California, the University of San Francisco, and California State University, Sacramento. She was also an executive producer and co-writer of the documentary, “Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools,” which was based on two of Couvson’s books, “Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools,” and “Sing a Rhythm, Dance A Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls.” She has written several other books, including “Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century” and the graphic novel “Charisma’s Turn: A Story of Girls and Their Gifts.”

We recently connected with Couvson to discuss her latest book, “Girls, Unlimited: How to Invest in Our Daughters with More Than Money,” which looks at how and why everyone from philanthropists to parents and policymakers should invest in girls. Her book looks at several areas of investment, including increasing knowledge and awareness, dismantling the barriers to girls’ success, protecting girls from gender-based violence and supporting education and mentorship.

Read the full interview by Martha Ramirez on Inside Philanthropy.

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Monique Couvson was at Columbia University working on her master’s thesis on residential juvenile correctional facilities when her interactions with the young people in those centers led her to a realization: “Education is the foundation for everything.”

“When I walked into that juvenile detention center and I met with the girls that were there, I realized that there was very little difference between me and them, and the critical difference between us was that I had education and I had other tools to express my discontent,” says Couvson, now the president and CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color (G4GC), a philanthropic intermediary that invests in the leadership of girls and gender-expansive youth of color.

Couvson, 52, has three decades under her belt as a scholar and criminal-justice advocate dedicated to studying and countering the criminalization of Black girls in schools, and she works with what she calls a “participatory worldview.” What that means, she explains, is trying to center the views and desires of the communities she works for. For instance, through speaking to young people of color, she learned that while many of the young leaders she was working with did identify as girls, many identified as gender expansive.

“Here was a fluidity to gender that we felt was important for our organization to represent and to reflect,” Couvson says. “I would hope that any philanthropic body or any other organization would also seek to be a learning institution, because there’s power in knowing and there’s power in bringing in a collective way to explore very complex issues.”

In just four years with G4GC, Couvson has helped convene 100 funders from the U.S., moved more than $26 million to 400 organizations, and developed four signature funds–the Black Girl Freedom Fund, the New Songs Rising Initiative for indigenous girls, the Holding a Sister Initiative for trans girls of color, and the Love Is Healing Fund–and she co-founded the #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign.

“It’s about our young people being able to step into that leadership and in those capacities on their own, not in a tokenized way, not in a way that is exploitative or extractive, but in a way that honors their brilliance and leans into means to trust them and their wisdom in this very critical moment that impacts their lived experiences,” she says.

In 2014, Couvson founded the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, which works to interrupt school-to-confinement pathways for girls and reduce the barriers to employment for formerly incarcerated women. She noticed that no institution was dedicated to examining data specifically about how Black girls and women are experiencing the carceral system and how they might experience justice. “So I founded it,” she says.

But she knows organizations alone are not the answer. So over the years, her work has taken many forms: public speaking, documentary film, a novel, a graphic novel, a book of statistics, a nonfiction book. She loves when students and fans don’t just experience her work—like Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools or Charisma’s Turn, a fictional account of a Black high school student navigating school and family life—but respond to it.

“My favorite thing is when people come to see me at a book talk or at a lecture and their pages of Pushout are scratched up [with] ears on the page, and they mark it up, and they’re working with it, and they have questions in the margins,” Couvson says

Her goal, she says, is to reach diverse audiences about the conditions of society that uniquely affect Black girls. “I believe that in order for us to be transformative, in order for us to really move the public consciousness to the place where they begin to understand some of these really big concepts that are sometimes very academic and divorced from how people actually talk, you have to talk to multiple people at once,” she says. “You can’t just talk to policymakers or just talk to law enforcement, you have to also talk to the community.”

Correction, February 6

The original version of this article misidentified one of G4GC’s four signature funds; #1Billion4BlackGirls is a campaign, not a fund, and the Love Is Healing Fund was omitted.

TIME’s ‘The Closers’ magazine issue hit newsstands in print on Friday, February 14. You can read the full article HERE.
See other awardee’s of TIME’s 2025 Closers HERE.

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November 5, 2021

Hosted by The Takeaway’s Melissa Harris-Perry, this Facebook Live conversation featured Dr. Monique W. Morris, President and CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color, Bré Rivera, Program Officer at Black Trans Fund, and Imara Jones, journalist/founder of TransLash Media. The panel discussed strategies and resources for young people as they visit family during the holidays and encounter different levels of support and understanding around their gender identities. 

Watch the recording now to tune into their enlightening and honest discussion.

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Inside Philanthropy / Julian Leshay / Shutterstock

How Philanthropy Can Follow the Lead of Girls of Color

Oct 9, 2021

My family has always been philanthropic—from my grandparents hosting everyone on holidays, to volunteering with our church for back-to-school fairs and holiday drives, to the ways we show up for each other in both celebration and crisis. But it wasn’t until I became a youth organizer that I first learned about institutional philanthropy. I worked with a girls’ rights group on an education justice campaign, and we applied for and secured a grant from a youth intermediary fund. It was the first time I started to grasp how philanthropy can both honor and resource girls’ activism, and how adults can share power with young people.

So as we prepare to celebrate International Day of the Girl on Monday, a global campaign to advance girls’ rights, let’s lift up girls of color as leaders rather than just as beneficiaries. Those of us in philanthropy can better engage girls and gender-expansive young people of color. We can start by acknowledging the powerful breadth and history of girls’ activism, examining the current funding landscape, and reflecting on how we as funders can be more responsive and accountable to young people by resourcing their work and following their lead.

Girls and gender-expansive youth of color are visionaries and strategists. They mobilize movements across intersections and communities. We know girls of color have always worked to hold healing spaces, organize their communities and preserve their ancestral practices as storytellers. And over the last few years, we’ve witnessed young people working on the frontlines of the climate justice and immigrant justice movements, and using art to call out racist behavior.

Despite their efforts and impact, their leadership is not recognized. Girls, femmes and gender-expansive young people of color have been on the forefront of social, cultural, narrative and legislative change and transformation, and yet philanthropy has not responded by fully funding their leadership.

In Start From The Ground Up, a report from Grantmakers for Girls of Color (G4GC), researchers shared that while girls and philanthropists identify some of the same key issues, philanthropy often fails to fund what girls say is needed due to the lack of a shared political analysis. Girls of color stress the importance of dismantling structural inequities, but philanthropy often funds work that focuses on individual mobility rather than systemic transformation.

Girls of color are, at best, under-resourced, and at worst, expected to wait for trickle-down funding or support that doesn’t address the structural issues they are facing. According to the Ms. Foundation’s Pocket Change Report, the resources girls of color receive are miniscule compared to the total philanthropic dollars available. Less than one-half of 1% of the roughly $66.9 billion that foundations contributed in 2018 was specified as benefiting women of color overall, not distinguishing what amount went to girls of color, according to the report.

A world where girls of color are abundantly resourced is possible. As funders, we can honor girls’ leadership by co-constructing with them a philanthropic practice that centers them, their families and their wisdom. What would it look like for philanthropy to follow the leadership of girls of color and invest in their dreams and sustainability?

At Grantmakers for Girls of Color, I lead a youth engagement strategy that is co-constructed with girls and gender-expansive young people of color, and is anchored in their wisdom. Alongside young people, we are learning how we can be better partners in resourcing their work. From grantmaking, to operations, to communications, to culture, we are using participatory methods to ensure young people are centered as designers and leaders.

Participatory grantmaking

As a relatively new organization, we continue to learn from women’s funds, like New York Women’s Foundation, which has been practicing participatory philanthropy for decades. Earlier this year, Black Girl Freedom Fund designed a grantmaking process in which Black girls and gender-expansive youth defined the priority areas and made final decisions on which proposals would be funded. I witnessed the young people engaging with the proposals and assessing for inclusion and belonging in both organizational messaging and programming. This prompted me to revisit how I hold evaluation and learning in my own work. How might your institution’s grantmaking strategy and process engage the community as leaders?

Operations

We are aligning giving practices with internal operations by centering young people. We work with groups of young people of color who shape and inform our communications strategy and policies. They are steering G4GC’s adoption of social media platforms that engage younger audiences. I continue to learn from them about how to lean into creativity and prioritize accessibility. In a similar way, the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota launched #ShareTheMicMN, an initiative to elevate girls and their visions of policy change in the state. What role do your partners play in setting your communications and narrative change agenda?

Culture

Finally, shifting power and sharing leadership with young people boils down to co-creating the culture. Historically, philanthropy has tended to be an older, whiter, wealthier sector. In Dissonance and Disconnects, a survey report by Emerging Practitioners In Philanthropy, researchers found that many entry- and mid-level staff, and people-of-color staff, often feel discouraged about their future in the sector. In order for girls of color to see themselves in philanthropy, we in the sector must work with them to co-create a culture that welcomes them. If we want to engage them, we can and should ask young people what they need to show up authentically as themselves. And then we must respond to those needs, whether they ask for technology stipends or access to wellness practitioners.

For me, this means being mindful to not infantilize or adultify girls of color. I’m learning that I can both encourage intergenerational community-building that decenters adults, and prioritize and help organize youth-only spaces. How does the culture of your institution counteract the intersecting manifestations of ageism, sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia and class differences? What culture-building activities might you consider with your partners?

Girls, femmes and gender-expansive young people of color are some of our sharpest and boldest leaders in the fight for social justice. On this Day of the Girl, let us choose to resource them abundantly, make space for them as strategists, and follow their lead and wisdom as they imagine and build new worlds of love, community, healing and self-determination.

Kyndall Clark Osibodu is the Director of Organizational Health, Operations, and Learning at Grantmakers for Girls of Color. She is an educator, facilitator, and mindfulness instructor. Her work is anchored by her faith, womanism, and social justice. Contact Kyndall at kyndall@g4gc.org.

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Susan L. Taylor founder and CEO of the National Cares Mentoring Movement and Dr. Monique Morris, CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color, joined me to discuss the importance of mentoring young Black girls at the individual level and at the community level to provide the proper foundation for them to succeed.

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The needs of Black girls and women have long been ignored by the philanthropy world. In 2017, less than 1 percent of the $67 billion foundation contributions went to organizations focused on women and girls of color. That’s according to a report from the Ms. Foundation for Women. Just $15 million went to groups benefiting Black girls and women. 

Dr. Monique W. Morris, president and CEO of Grantmakers for Girls of Color, joined The Takeaway to discuss how Grantmakers for Girls of Color recognizes and uplifts the wisdom of the youth they serve.

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This spring and fall, we sent surveys to the G4GC network to learn more about how COVID-19 is impacting the offices and work spaces of organizations leading the work to support girls of color and gender expansive youth of color. We heard your questions and concerns. In response, we are hosting this webinar as an opportunity to hear from an expert, directly ask him questions, and share best practices and protocols with each other.

On Wednesday, November 18, at 2pm ET/ 1pm CT / 11am PT,  join G4GC Executive Director Monique W. Morris, Ed.D. as she leads a 90-minute discussion with infectious disease specialist and COVID-19 Health Care Task Force of the Congressional Black Caucus member, Dr. Lane Rolling, on how organizations can work to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in their workplaces and communities.

On the webinar, we’ll also share more on the COVID-19 Office and Workspace Survey responses, including that while 61 percent of organizational respondents plan to return to a office space when COVID-19 restrictions are eased, only 43 percent intend to return to their current office space, 20 percent do not plan to return to their existing office, and 37 percent remain unsure. In the survey, organizations in our G4GC network expressed the need for added support due to COVID-19 for personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, technology, legal resources to negotiate terms of a lease, as well as support for mental health, childcare, and a desire to share best practices and resources within the G4GC network.

This event is free and open to the full G4GC community. Those attending will have the opportunity to ask Dr. Rolling their own questions about COVID-19 safety. We hope to see you on November 18!

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Kaleem arrives at G4GC from the NoVo Foundation, where she worked as a program officer leading the foundation’s efforts to curb violence against girls and women. She managed a grantmaking portfolio focused on ending commercial sexual exploitation and spearheaded the development of the Life Story Grants, a three-year program supporting projects that close on-ramps into the sex trade while opening exit ramps for survivors.

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Girls of color face a variety of hurdles in the United States and around the world, but they receive a minuscule portion of philanthropic support—recently found to be less than 1%.

Grantmakers for Girls of Color (G4GC) aims to remedy this imbalance. The five-year-old philanthropic network and resource recently transformed into an independent nonprofit and grantmaker, and its first grants are directed to girls, fem(mes), and nonbinary/gender-expansive youth of color in response to COVID-19 in the U.S.

G4GC originally formed as an online platform and collaboration between the NoVo Foundation, Foundation for a Just Society (FJS), Ms. Foundation for Women, New York Women’s Foundation, Communities for Just Schools Fund and others. Fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, it carries out research, holds annual conferences and webinars related to current events, publishes toolkits, makes grants, and more.

Now that G4GC is a standalone entity, identifying as a “funder activist organization,” it is in the process of building and refining its infrastructure and strategy. The group has already taken several steps in this direction, including forming an advisory committee of women leaders from the feminist funding world. It has an annual budget of $3.5 million and an anticipated staff of eight to 10 people.

The organization also brought on scholar, educator and activist Monique Morris as its first executive director in April 2020. We spoke to Morris about her background and hopes for this burgeoning organization.

A Leader Focused on Freedom

Morris has long focused on Black girls’ needs and dreams. She’s the author of “Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls, and Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools,” and was an executive producer and co-writer of a 2019 documentary based on “Pushout.”

Before joining G4GC, Morris founded the National Black Women’s Justice Institute (NBWJI), which works to interrupt school-to-confinement pathways for girls, reduce employment barriers for formerly incarcerated women, and support organizations working to reduce sexual assault and domestic violence in African American communities.

Much of Morris’ work has focused on girls’ experience in systems of education, particularly in relation to liberty and discipline. Girls of color receive outsized levels of punishment from the U.S. teaching force, which remains mostly white and female. During the 2013-2014 school year, nationally, Black girls were more than seven times more likely than white girls to be suspended. Latina students were almost three times more likely to be arrested as white girls. Multiple Georgetown Law studies have found adults view Black girls as more adult-like and less innocent than white girls, starting with girls as young as five.

And girls and women of color are more likely to be funneled into the criminal justice system. They are the fastest-growing populations in American prisons, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. They also experience higher levels of physical and sexual abuse than their white counterparts.

Morris says she has long explored and “[interrogated the] overarching question of freedom, and I do it by considering all of the ways that racism manifests—structurally, individually, culturally and in internalized ways.” In her books, she covers the criminalization of youth as well as “culturally competent and gender-responsive learning environments for Black girls in confinement.” She considers all education work to be “freedom work,” and says this lens will inform G4GC’s vision of “girls and women having access to equity and justice.”

“It is my hope that in our efforts to resource the movement work that is currently manifesting, we are able to intentionally include a robust investment strategy that provides for the greatest opportunities for our girls to be free.”

A Dearth of Funding

G4GC focuses on increasing funding and other opportunities for girls of color and their organizations, as philanthropy is not centering these girls’ needs and priorities. In 2012, the Unequal Lives report from the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative found that of $4.8 billion in philanthropic investments for the U.S. South, 5.4% went to programs focused on women and girls, and less than 1% focused on Black women and girls.

During research for a 2019 G4GC report, “Start from the Ground Up: Increasing Support for Girls of Color,” the group held town halls with young women across the country. It found that of the grants awarded to organizations for girls of color in 2014, only 20% addressed issues these girls identified as critical, like mental health and affordable housing.

In early July, the Ms. Foundation for Women published a study on philanthropic giving toward the approximately 65 million women and girls of color in the U.S. Drawing on Candid grant data on groups who work with these populations, as well as funder and grantee surveys, it found philanthropic giving to women and girls of color accounts for about 0.5% of the $66.9 billion foundations gave in 2018 (using Giving USA data).

A few years earlier, in 2018, the Ms. Foundation released a five-year strategic plan that outlined a $25 million commitment to invest in women and girls of color and gender equity. Other major funding efforts that have targeted girls of color in recent years include Prosperity Together, a collaboration between the Obama White House, state-based women’s foundations and others; and NoVo’s 2016 $90 million commitment to “support and deepen the movement for girls and young women of color” in the U.S.

As we recently covered, NoVo has been a leading funder and ally for women and girls of color (including as a founding partner of G4GC) but recently took a big step back to revamp its focuses and strategies. It previously granted over $700 million to benefit crucial causes like adolescent girls’ rights, the leadership of women and girls of color, and efforts to end gender-based violence.

Earlier this year, to the dismay of many activists, it announced its “Advance Adolescent Girls’ Rights” team was departing, following other significant staff cuts, the departure of its long-term leader Pamela Shifman, and the abandonment of its ambitious Women’s Building project in Manhattan. NoVo reportedly intends to support adolescent girls through a new, yet-to-be-established freestanding nonprofit in the future. It also eliminated a grantmaking program called Ending Violence Against Girls and Women, along with most multiyear grants, which had been a lauded trademark of its funding style.

Morris declined to comment on G4GC’s current relationship with NoVo or to share any thoughts on their strategy shifts. A member of G4GC’s new advisory council, Tynesha McHarris, was part of NoVo’s now-defunct adolescent girls’ department. Other G4GC advisors come from Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, FJS, the Black Trans Fund, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Akonadi Foundation, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, and the Ms. Foundation.

Charting a New Course

Morris is concerned that “issues and experiences impacting the quality of life for girls of color—Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Muslim, Asian and Pacific American girls—will continue to be relegated as niche, which can lead to an under-investment and erasure that prevents the realization of their potential.”

To address this issue, along with serving as a funder resource and convener, G4GC is now making grants. Its Love is Healing COVID-19 Response Fund has awarded close to $1.4 million to 75 organizations across the country. Love is Healing has given out two rounds of funding to grantees including A Long Walk Home, EveryBlackGirl, Inc., NBWJI, Daughters Beyond Incarceration and many more.

Women and girls, especially those of color, face compounded challenges during this pandemic. Morris previously told us that funders who want to help girls of color at this time can support education access and “culturally responsive mental health services [and] improved protection from gender-based violence and sexual assault,” as well as supporting girls in institutions and group homes, among other strategies.

As its strategies to center and uplift these girls continue to evolve, G4GC is taking time to learn and listen. Along with a 2019 listening tour and related research, it is carrying out a series of surveys to better understand the needs of funders within its sphere. Morris says one major theme that emerged from discussions with members of the G4GC network “is the changing needs of organizations following the pandemic,” including the need for office space, which has risen for some groups and fallen for others.

G4GC will also form a Youth Advisory Committee and explore participatory grantmaking. The With and For Girls Collective, which carries out participatory grantmaking for girls on a global scale, offers one potential model.

Not surprisingly, G4GC released a statement of solidarity in response to the current racial justice movement. In it, Morris names Breonna Taylor, among other victims of police violence, and notes that the “police killings of Black girls, including Tyisha Miller (age 19), Darnisha Harris (age 16), and Aiyana Stanley-Jones (age 7)” have not been met with the “widespread outrage” that arose for their male counterparts’ murders. “We stand in support of Gianna, George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter. We stand in support of Darnella Frazier, the teenaged girl who witnessed and recorded the now-viral video of George Floyd’s killing.”

We’ve pointed out in the past that boys of color have received waves of attention from funders interested in supporting youth confronting racial barriers, including through the major initiative President Obama launched, My Brother’s Keeper. The California Endowment, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Open Society Foundations have all made significant investments in Black boys and other young men of color. And a new locally focused grantmaking program from the Akonadi Foundation will devote $12.5 million to support young people of color of all genders to “end the criminalization of Black youth and youth of color in Oakland.”

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