Why This Pledge? BIPOC-led groups on the frontlines of social justice fights face sustained attacks from well-resourced, powerful opposition forces, putting their lives and organizations at risk and compromising their ability to secure victories. Movement groups report digital, physical, and psychological security threats; politically motivated attempts to strip them of their nonprofit status; and political prosecutions for their constitutionally-protected activism. At the same time, the BIPOC, queer, trans, and migrant communities in which they organize are also under political attack, facing targeted surveillance and criminalization as well.
Sadly, these threats are not new. Social justice movements have always been met with vigorous and often violent opposition, dating back to this nation’s origins of slavery and genocide. In recent years as social justice movements have gained increasing visibility, these threats have gained reinvigorated steam.
Defining Safety and Security
For movement groups, “safety” is “the condition of being and feeling protected from danger, risk, or injury and creating the conditions where those injuries can’t happen.” “Security” refers to “the process of ensuring safety.” “Safety and security” encompass a broad range of conditions, practices, and feelings that allow for thriving, self-determined, and liberated communities and impactful social justice movements. From Funders for Justice’s 2022 Safety & Security Institute Report.
The stakes are high, and the need is great. We believe that philanthropy’s failure to provide BIPOC-led social justice groups with robust, long-term support has made it nearly impossible for movements to build durable safety and security infrastructure. We have come together with a sense of urgency to align our giving and mobilize a robust philanthropic response that matches the scale, duration, and sophistication of the attacks BIPOC-led social justice groups face. We encourage our philanthropic colleagues to join us in taking the pledge.
“Security at our organization looks like some forms of digital knowledge and security, having conversations with folks who have movement related security to provide voice to smaller things we can do while we do not have a security and safety team, and following through on suggestions from those who we receive wisdom from on safety and security for our organization.”
Markasa Tucker-Harris
Executive Director of the African American Roundtable (AART)
As a group of philanthropic institutions, we pledge to do the following:
1. BUILD TRUST, LEARN, AND EDUCATE
Build strong trusting relationships with, and learn from, our grantees and movement partners about the threats they face and what they say they need to keep themselves safe. Educate others in philanthropy about what we’ve learned.
2. ASSESS OUR GRANTMAKING
For alignment with the needs of movement organizations and funders who share our values and are mobilizing resources for this work.
3. FUND AT SCALE
Move more flexible financial resources that are responsive to both short- and long-term strategies and approaches that build movement safety and security.
4. STRENGTHEN INTERNAL SAFETY AND SECURITY PRACTICES
Strengthen our own safety and security practices across all internal functions, including grants management, legal, and operations. Protect the confidentiality of grantees.
Principles of Alignment
- Philanthropic investments in movement and communities must match the scale, duration, and sophistication of the intensified attacks that movements are facing. Such attacks must be understood as the latest in a centuries-long history of attempts by state and non-state actors waging fierce and violent opposition against social justice movements.
- Funders must revise grantmaking strategies and approaches to account for the interlocking, compounded impacts of surveillance technology, White Nationalist threats, and collusion between state, police, individual actors, elected officials, and corporations.
- Building safety and security requires embracing movement frameworks that uphold racial justice.
- Building safety and security is an ongoing, holistic process and requires long-term, bureaucracy-free investment strategies in BIPOC, queer, trans, migrant, and low-income communities.
How FFJ Can Support You
No one foundation can meet the needs alone, and continuous learning is required to be responsive partners to movement groups. FFJ is here to help your foundation do this work, through the following:
- 1:1 strategy and implementation support for you and your institution
- Education opportunities with movement partners and other funders to learn about the field’s evolving safety and security needs and strategies.
- An extensive set of resources from movement organizations for safety and security
- Recommendations for where to fund, and connection with peer funders who are supporting that work.
About FFJ’s Safety and Security Money Moves Group
The Funders for Justice (FFJ) Safety and Security Money Moves Group envisions a future in which BIPOC-led movements secure liberation and justice, free from threats and harm to their physical, emotional, spiritual, and economic well-being. The Group mobilizes money, resources, and support for social justice grassroots groups and BIPOC communities to develop holistic safety and security approaches in the face of pervasive, escalating threats from far-right state and non-state actors and agencies, as well as dangers rooted in climate crises, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and imperialism.
Sign-On Funding Institutions
