Grassroots Funders Unite with Resilia to Co-Design Capacity Building Solutions for Black and Latinx Communities

Read about Resilia’s past EMPOWER workshops here.

In 2020, more than $11.9 billion in new philanthropic capital was pledged to advance equity and racial justice - but one year later, less than 15% of funds can be tracked to recipients and the social sector is closely watching to see how this extraordinary commitment ultimately reaches - and serves - those leading movements for change.  Across the country, new initiatives are springing up to address this legacy of philanthropic neglect for communities of color and underinvestment in the movements that lead to systemic change.  

But how can funders partner with grassroots and BIPOC-serving organizations to enact transformational change? Beyond the dedicated financial support, how can grantmakers invest in the long-term success of racial equity and justice? Resilia’s ongoing EMPOWER workshops ask these questions and through in-depth conversations with leaders in the fields, launches solutions to address the true challenges that changemakers nationwide are grappling with. 

In Resilia’s latest EMPOWER workshop, Constellation Fund’s Kate Genereux and Danyale Green,  Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Michelle Fries and Leticia Gonzalez, and Cleveland Foundation’s Courtenay Barton identified the top challenges facing grassroots organization in their communities. “There’s a lot of alignment in what we are experiencing,” noted Courtenay. 

Major areas included: 

Leadership Sustainability and Development: From founder burnout and exits to the persistent need to support living wages for employees, all participants agreed that investing in leaders was a key challenge. Not only do organizations need to invest in their senior leadership, but nonprofits struggle to “build the bench” of coached and trained leaders outside of the executive position. 

Systems Change: How can changemakers target the root causes of inequality and advocate for large-scale change, rather than addressing the resulting scenarios and issues caused by inequality? Guests discussed advocacy within cross-field ecosystems and how changemakers can build and share power. 

Fundraising and Financial Acumen: Grassroots organizations and changemakers bring all their experience to the table - and while they might have tremendous experience outside of running a nonprofit, 501c3 accounting and compliance requires training and skills building. 

Facilities Management: Real estate and space for programming presents unique challenges in different communities. While organizations in the Bay Area struggle to access affordable workspace, leaders in areas with lower occupancy costs tend to seek facilities before their organizations are ready for the logistical and financial challenges. 

As the discussion continued,  these areas of capacity-building support were prioritized into three areas: 1) Leadership Development 2) Fundraising and 3) Finance: Organizational Budgeting and Strategy

Resilia’s team, inspired by these learnings, committed to immediately actionalizing learnings from this conversation into new resources and identifying where existing resources can be leveraged to support BIPOC led nonprofits. Of the 31 capacity-building areas identified during the 2-hour workshop - Resilia’s existing platform, peer-to-peer learning, and coaching addressed 30 of the areas where nonprofits need resources and support. Each of these areas will be strengthened and further developed within the next four weeks, inspired by the learnings from leaders at Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Constellation Fund, and the Cleveland Foundation. 

Our team is excited to put the valuable insight we gained into action for our nonprofits. Stay tuned for highlights from our next series in EMPOWER.