Our Message to Philanthropy & Foundations

From this day forward we are demanding that the Philanthropic Community respect Black Organizing once and for all. We demand the same respect that white women led organizations who organize around gender and sex equality receive, young latinos organizing around citizenship, immigration and xenophobia receive, white so called liberal and progressive groups organizing civic engagement receive, rural non black workers led agricultural and learning collectives and spaces receive and global Judeo-Christian based program and service institutions receive by funding us in the same manner. Why? Because all these issues affect black bodies at a similar if not higher rate as. We demand Fellowships for part-time and full-time organizers, adequate Global community organizing budgets and the relinquishing of long term solution based resources to educate, inform and uplift our people out of the condition we historically and currently live under while seeing a person who looks like, lives like them and is oppressed like them leading and driving this work. Over the next five years we will send out emails, social media post, videos, and articles outlining our plans for the funding, what was given to us and how successful these institutions were in funding to End Black Systemic Oppression. We demand this level of funding not only because other entities already receive this funding but truly because whoever and whatever entities you have been funding in the past is not working for Black People Globally. 

1. Global Initiatives 

For Funders, PHILANTHROPIST and Foundations 

Our ability to propel local movements into the National as well as Internationally stage is really contingent upon who steps up with those of us  while a movement is being built. We, who are most impacted must be given an adequate amount of resources and space to strategize and execute a plan that comes from the communities that will not only create a movement but will change the condition under which we live under on a daily basis.

The goals and objectives of these initiatives are to validate the lived experiences of black people globally through attacking the indicators for our conditions based on online and in-person research studies. We will take the overwhelming data and customize a plan based in each communities social-economic conditions, political landscape and organizing capacity to create the right plan for that community in particular.

What will make this different is that it will be our people leading the work. By that we mean Black Change Agents for Black Problems. The drivers of this work will not only be intersectional as well as intergenerational but more importantly the most impacted by the systemic oppression that they will be fighting. By centering the most impacted in the strategy from start to finish, we will see the power from  equipping  them with the intellectual and emotional tools to dismantle these complex systems of oppression. 

Our objective is to take communities who have been historically underserved and embolden them to become communities of resistance. Resistant to institutional Racism/White Supremacy, Resistant to inter communal oppression and Resistant to interpersonal and internalized oppression we inflict on ourselves ads well as on each other from living with the pain of being powerless un these systems.

Our end-goal is to uplift these communities in to Empowered Communities, where in which the people exercise social, cultural, economic and political customs that produce holistic community power and sustainability.  Without a full and consistent budget then none of these goals or objectives are possible but if we as a organization can team up with enough Philanthropic resources then the end-goal is not only possible but right around the corner because we believe that the ability to live in a world without oppression is just one generation away.

In order for us as poor and oppressed people to become part of a society that is meaningful, the system under which we now exist has to be radically changed. This means that we are going to have to learn to think in radical terms. I use the term radical in its original meaning--getting down to and understanding the root cause. It means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs and devising means by which you change that system.

~ Ella Baker, 1969 (Source: Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker & The Black Freedom Movement)

2. Organizing Fellowships

For Funders, PHILANTHROPIST and Foundations

Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure through broad organized aggressive mass action.

- A. Phillip Randolph 

3. Programs & Services

For everyday people who want to support equality, justice and peace

For far too long, black communities has been intentionally underfunded and undereducated to prevent organic leadership and collective power. Our communities have been organized for years by Black Organizations that have been unsuccessful in bringing forth structural change for us. At that same time, White Religious and Liberal groups have also centered themselves at organizing tables who claim to be organizing in the black community but rarely at the table are those who actually live there and those of us who will bare the brunt of the pain from failed campaign promises and misappropriated funds. TheIBFA will train organizers and strengthen communities on how to not only resist these narrow minded organizing models but will also work to put a plan together to Engage, Educate and Elevate these communities to become Beloved Community models. Long story short. If we build the communities in programatic ways to a point of internal sustainability then there will be no more need for these types of Organizations even us.

Black Consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time. Its essence is the realisation by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their skin - and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.

- Steve Biko