Deadline: 29-Mar-21
The Community Foundation of Louisville is seeking applications for its Fund for Louisville which was created and is still supported by those who seek to strengthen community today and for future generations.
The Community Foundation of Louisville stewards this Fund, staying informed about the community’s evolving needs by regularly convening and having conversations with residents and civic leaders, and monitoring trends in community and neighborhood data.
Over the coming three years, the Fund for Louisville will offer direct multiyear renewable investment to nonprofit institutions led by and serving Black people with the goal of dismantling systems preventing racial and economic equity while constructing new systems promoting justice.
Funding Systems Change for Racial Justice
- Most Americans aspire to live healthy lives, build wealth, fully participate in the democratic process, and excel to their fullest potential. Established policies, procedures, laws, and systems – intentionally and unintentionally – make it difficult for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other people of color to achieve these aspirations.
- Recent data highlighted by the Greater Louisville Project shows longstanding and growing gaps in outcomes for Black Louisvillians. The challenges of 2020 further exposed and amplified these racial inequities. CFL is collaborating with partners and fundholders to intentionally invest in Black-led social change organizations advancing and informing systems-level change for racial justice.
Addressing Racial Inequity
- In recent years, the Fund for Louisville has supported capacity building for nonprofit organizations serving Louisville’s most under-resourced and under-invested ZIP codes. This work taught us that more intentional action was needed to address the challenge of entrenched, growing racial inequity.
- CFL’s Board of Directors approved that from 2021-2023, the Fund for Louisville: Racial Justice Cohort will support a group of nonprofit organizations in Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky that are working to change systems that result in unequal outcomes.
Funding Information
- Each organization may request an annual grant amount from $5,000 to $40,000.
- The budget for this grant program is approximately $500,000 each year for three years.
Eligibility Criteria
This cohort will be made up of:
- 8-12, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) public charities in good standing, or charitable projects that are fiscally sponsored by those organizations, located in Louisville, KY.
- Organizations who self-identify as Black-led social change organizations, which are those with predominantly Blackboard and executive leadership, staff leadership and constituents – if relevant – and whose primary organizational purpose is to work to build the political, economic, and/or social power of the Black community (including continental Africans, African Americans, Descendants of American Slaves, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, and people of mixed ancestry).
- Organizations who agree that Black or Blackness (the state of being Black) is defined as:
- The mix of physiological, geographical and cultural traits that define Black people as people of African descent, many of whom were moved to specific regions in the world through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade (including continental Africans, African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos and people of mixed ancestry who identify as being Black);
- Black or Blackness is a political and historical reality of shared colonization and oppression at the hands of Europeans and Anglo-Americans and the resistance to this subjugation. Blackness is a political construct of survival and resistance against racial oppression.
- A mix of organizations advancing systems-level change AND organizations delivering programs that seek to resolve a systems-level challenge or build the power of people to respond to systems-level challenges.
- Organizations who understand that systems-level change work includes a broad range of activities. It can include but is not limited to advocacy, lobbying, political power building, research, data collection, economic development, narrative development, leadership development and convening.
- Organizations understand that systems-level programs provide skills, knowledge, and tools for individuals and communities to consistently overcome systems-level barriers.
- Organizations who understand that systems-level change work and programs do not mainly focus on providing temporary support of food, clothing, shelter, dollars or other tangible resources.
For more information, visit https://www.cflouisville.org/grants-partnerships/fund-for-louisville-2020/