On June 23rd, the Building Movement Project (BMP) released Move The Money: Practices and Values for Funding Social Movements and launched the new project with a national webinar featuring Crystal Hayling (Libra Foundation) and Kris Hayashi (Transgender Law Center) along with BMP’s Co-Director, Sean Thomas-Breitfield and Director of Strategic Initiatives, Deepa Iyer. Move The Money […]
About the Workshop: Grassroots work is critical to movements, community action and local change. What makes an organization grassroots, though? What makes grassroots organizations different? Partnering with and funding grassroots work can be an incredibly powerful way to give, but what do you need to know to make the most of your good intentions? Join […]
Like all of you, here at Building Movement Project, we are grappling with the sudden changes affecting our workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities. These are times of uncertainty and confusion. At Building Movement Project, we are centering ourselves in our communities, networks, and partnerships. For 20 years, BMP has been deepening our understanding of non-profit leadership, […]
Written by Sean Thomas-Breitfeld Around the country funders are coming together to support community organizing in black communities. Earlier this month, I moderated a panel discussion at the North Star Fund’s “Let Us Breathe” forum, which served “as a call to community members, donors, grantmakers, activists, organizers, and all New Yorkers to support the movement against […]
Written by Frances Kunreuther Last week, Sean and I participated in the Grantmakers for Effective Organizations conference on supporting movements. We did an introductory session for funders on the basics of movement building, and were joined by Laura McCargar from the Perrin Family Foundation and Peter Bloch Garcia from the Marguerite Casey Foundation who both did terrific presentations on how they are supporting organizing and social […]
Written by Frances Kunreuther Every couple of years, new phrases suddenly permeate the air. In the nonprofit sector right now there is “scale”, “collective impact”, “network”, “movement”, “evidence-based”, “transformation” and of course ”innovation.” These terms can be deeply meaningful or they can be maddeningly empty depending on the circumstances. But how they are adopted (and […]
Written by Caitlin Endyke Despite our recent disappointment with Michigan governor Rick Snyder (you might have seen our discussions of the governor’s passage of the Emergency Manager Law against popular vote this Spring), we are happy to see that a motion to expand Medicaid benefits was passed in the legislature yesterday, partly due to the governor’s […]
from Kim Klein and the Commons Written by Kim Klein This post originally appeared on Kim Klein and the Commons. Last week, the Nonprofit Quarterly featured a piece announcing a large grant that the Skillman Foundation had awarded the Detroit Bus Company, an independent transit provider in the Michigan city. The grant was for $100,000 and will support […]
We’re pleased to share that BMP’s Uniting Detroiters team has received a Scholar-Activist Award Grant from the Antipode Foundation. They were one of five projects who were selected out of 105 applications. The Antipode Foundation Scholar-Activist Project Awards are intended to support collaborations between academics, non-academics and activists (from NGOs, think tanks, social movements, or […]
How many times have you heard someone at your nonprofit say, “We just have to do more with less”? The recent financial downturn, cuts to government services and rising costs have led nonprofit organizations across the country into a state of crisis. How do you continue to provide your much needed services when funding streams […]
