Diverse City Fund announces Fall Grant to Nurture Community Leaders (US)

Deadline: 30-Oct-20

The Diverse City Fund is inviting applications for its fall grant to nurture community leaders and grassroots projects that are transforming Washington, DC into a more just, vibrant place to live.

Through this collective grantmaking, the city fund identifies, support, and connect changemakers of colour whose efforts are centred in DC. The fund supports the development of community-level social change by funding projects that have less access to traditional funding sources.

The DC Fund only funds organizations/projects in which Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, women, LGBTQ communities, returning citizens, immigrants, people with disabilities, and excluded workers are at the core of their leadership. The fund defines these efforts as groups, coalitions, or organizations in which these intersecting communities hold a majority of leadership positions, including board members, staff, and volunteers.

Funding Information

The grant of up to $5,000 to individual organizations and up to $15,000 to coalition projects.
What they Fund:
- Social justice work;
- BIPOC led work;
- Work that centres DC residents;
- Work not funded in the last full cycle.
What they Don’t Fund:
- Direct services that do not have a social justice purpose or strategy.
- Regional organizations/projects that do not primarily impact current residents or recently displaced residents of the District of Columbia.
- Organizations/projects that discriminate against marginalized communities who also identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color, including women, LGBTQIA+, returning citizens, immigrants, people with disabilities, and excluded workers.

Eligibility Criteria

Diverse City Fund invests in social justice projects:
- Amplify the leadership and voice of those directly affected by issues and needs.
- Take action to create equitable outcomes and transfer of power and resources to directly-affected communities.
- Tackle root problems by engaging directly-affected communities to find solutions, organize against the oppression of all kinds, and create mechanisms for change.
Priorities include:
- Mobilization – work that mobilizes people for protest and resistance.
- Organizing and Advocacy – work that engages in organizing and advocacy, particularly around funding for public programs and services.
- Healing, Inspiration, and Liberation – work that brings communities together for cultural and mental liberation, the individual level work that prepares people to resist.
How they Understand DC-Based Work:
- Work that is organized or operated within the District of Columbia.
- Work that impacts DC residents.
- Work that impacts former DC residents and their communities.
- This means that people with deep roots to the city may no longer be able to afford to live in DC and now live elsewhere, and/or their communities are migrating elsewhere too.
- For the purposes of applications, identify displaced people and their communities as “former residents.”
What they Don’t Consider DC Based Work:
- Regional organizations/projects that do not primarily impact current residents or recently displaced residents of the District of Columbia.
- Organizations/projects/coalitions whose primary connection to DC is that the leaders live here.
How they Understand Coalitions:
- have a separate application for coalitions because they understand, and encourage, organizations/groups that are coming together because they have determined a strong need to do so, they want to amplify their organizing power, and they believe that organizing together makes things possible that wouldn’t be otherwise achievable.
- Please be aware that a coalition does not receive any more funding per member organization than a single organization applying alone.
What a Coalition is?
- An alliance of at least three (3) existing groups or organizations coming together for a project.
- An organization established as a coalition with at least three (3) member organizations.
- Any formation listed above in which Black, Indigenous and People of Color lead the work and make the decisions.
What is not a Coalition?
- A group coming together for a project with two organizations.
- A new group or existing group or individuals coming together that doesn’t have Black, Indigenous and People of Color as leaders with decision-making power over the work.
People of Color led projects:
- The DC fund will most likely fund:
  - A student organizing group in which all decisions about the direction of the group’s work are made by a leadership council of Black and Latinx youth that partners with a white-led education nonprofit solely as a fiscal agent.
- The DC Fund probably won’t fund:
  - A white-led economic policy nonprofit with a majority white-board in which a community outreach project is under the jobs of staff of colour, however, the staff of colour are managed by a white supervisor who has decision making power about who to reach out to, how to maintain the relationships, and who controls the timeline.
Impact DC residents or former residents:
- The DC Fund will most likely fund:
  - A cancel rent campaign whose organization member base is between Ward 7 and PG County, where some members have relocated to, so the campaign spans from the city to the county where current and former residents live.
- The DC Fund probably won’t fund:
  - A Virginia statewide organization, with a chapter in Northern Virginia, who is organizing an affordable housing campaign in which an only few members are DC residents.
Social justice work
- The DC Fund will most likely fund:
  - A newly formed coalition organizing resources to meet basic needs for excluded workers and their families, in mutual aid, as part of a long-term community-building strategy.
  - A healing collective curated by BIPOC-identified people that creates healing circles for organizers of colour throughout the city.
- The DC Fund probably won’t fund:
  - A food pantry project, organized a neighbourhood church, to feed their food-insecure members and other community members impacted by COVID-19.