About Our Programming
FFJ serves as a collaborative learning space, networking home, and leadership development hub for our members to connect across funding silos of issues and place, and cultivate common commitment to mobilize resources to the field to end criminalization of people of color. We move members on a spectrum from education to action, in a process where participants learn from the field, from each other, and ultimately apply those learnings to their institutions’ grant-making strategies and at other funder tables.
FFJ’s programming is generative and co-developed by members and staff, which make up the collaborative leadership team. Members develop programming throughout the year, bring in new members, and mobilize their peers to move money to the field. FFJ leaders are active participants, are collaborative with staff and their fellow members, and practice solidarity with the field. FFJ members receive one-on-one support from staff to inform their grant-making strategies, specific grants, and networking and collaborations with their funder partners. FFJ creates many opportunities for our members to lead in funder spaces, promoting and supporting new leaders in philanthropy.
FFJ Core Practices
- Follow and promote leadership by and for people of color in movement and in philanthropy, primarily women and trans people of color
- Participate in collaborative learning, in which we lift up each other and community partners
- Elevate and amplify collective work led by communities and movements, and promote funding solutions guided by movements
- Organize new funders into FFJ and drive new resources to movements
Program Areas
Divest/Invest
Funders for Justice created this website for funders because we believe that our collective investments in housing, education, health, transportation, food security, and jobs will fail if we do not also proactively work to divest this nation’s resources from criminalization. Our partners in the field are organizing for divestment from the prison industrial complex, and understand that as critical to the work of transforming communities to be truly safe and secure. This website is a toolkit for grant-makers, donors, and funder affinity groups, to help funders in confronting criminalization. We ask you to listen, learn, and take action.
Healing Justice Strategy Group
FFJ’s Healing Justice Strategy Group was founded in 2017, to educate funders on a healing justice framework and move money in a way that best supports movements. The group’s goals are to 1) Learn from healing justice practitioners and establish a shared definition of healing justice as philanthropy can practice it within its own structures and behaviors; 2) mobilize resources for healing justice work of practitioners and movements; and 3) organize additional funders into this space. This group has been guided by multiple FFJ Movement Advisors.
In 2024 we transitioned this strategy group to become a general area of programming.
Eroding the Power of Police Unions Strategy Group
FFJ’s Eroding the Power of Police Unions Strategy Group was founded in 2019, to educate funders and mobilize resources to grassroots organizations leading accountability campaigns against police unions and associations. The group is grounded in ongoing political education and strategy guidance of three FFJ Movement Advisors.
This strategy group is now led by The Democratizing Justice Initiative.
Funder Organizing Intensive
The Intensive aims to introduce and equip emerging philanthropic leaders with the knowledge and tools necessary to advance equitable and just philanthropic practices that are in alignment with BIPOC-led movements to end criminalization. Through an exploration of the history and culture of philanthropy, intersections of power, and movements to end criminalization, participants will gain a foundational understanding of the complex systems at play in our collective work. They will also learn about the critical distinctions between philanthropic advocacy and funder organizing, and the strategic purpose of power mapping in advancing an organizing goal.
At its core, the intensive is designed to challenge systemic racism and the criminalization of communities of color, and to better resource BIPOC-led movements ending criminalization. With a focus on building capacity and knowledge, participants will leave this intensive with a solid foundation in the principles of funder organizing and tools to advance transformative change in their institutions and the philanthropic sector.
The intensive is geared towards early philanthropic practitioners seeking to deepen their understanding of philanthropy and move an organizing plan forward. Join us for an engaging and inspiring experience that will transform your approach to philanthropy and social change.
Fellowship
The FFJ Fellowship provides leadership development, concrete strategies for moving money, and a mechanism for holding each other accountable for moving resources directly to the field. This fellowship serves as an organizing school for grantmakers. It builds on FFJ’s leadership development and money-mobilization purpose, leveraging success thus far and creating a space for a set of members to go even further.
The first cohort is comprised entirely of women, trans, and gender queer people, and nearly all people of color. These members are in program director and program officer roles in a mix of private and public foundations, with a grantmaking focus on the intersections of gender justice, racial justice, and anti-criminalization, as well as economic justice, migrant justice, youth and multi-generational organizing, and LGBTQ rights.
Fellowship Goals:
- Build FFJ members’ skills, accountability practice, and support network to move money in line with FFJ values and purpose
- Develop FFJ leadership – build political alignment & organizing skills of core leaders
- Create a shared space and a community of practice between funders and field advisors, so that participating members are in right relationship with the field, and widen/deepen FFJ’s field partnerships
- Advance FFJ’s organizing goals & impact
This fellowship is an important new strategy for FFJ to deepen our impact on our central goal: mobilize dollars to grassroots organizing led by and for people of color, at the intersections of racial justice, gender justice, anti-criminalization, and models for community safety and justice. FFJ’s strength is building politically-aligned leaders most poised to take action. This fellowship connects these leaders more deeply to each other and provides them with additional support and programming to be more visible leaders in their work to activate more money to grassroots power building.
Movement Advisors
FFJ Movement Advisors are selected in recognition of their expertise and leadership in movements for racial and gender justice, anti-criminalization movements, and efforts to inform more impactful grant-making for community power-building. In their role as advisors, they will guide FFJ’s work in lifting up community safety and justice models, join FFJ for national panels and workshops, and share their visions for change and what’s needed from philanthropy in this moment. We hope you will look to them as thought leaders and partners in your own work as well.
Ad-Hoc & Emerging Projects
Strategy support and staffing for light infrastructure for ad-hoc and emerging projects that are critical interventions in the philanthropic sector. These are designed and led by our members.