What iF philanthropy were community-centered?

Participatory Grantmaking and Capacity Building

iF implements a participatory grantmaking approach for our community power grantmaking program. This approach “cedes decision-making power about funding decisions – including the strategy and criteria behind those decisions – to the very communities that a foundation aims to serve.” (Source: Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking, Grantcraft) 

This means that a committee of community members of the global majority—hailing from the District of Columbia, Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties in Maryland, and Northern Virginia—with lived experiences of racial inequities who are engaged in organizing and advocacy, select the grant recipients.

We support community-based and nonprofit organizations in the Washington, DC region that operationalize racial equity and justice and undertake community organizing, community engagement and advocacy.

In 2021, our capacity building program focuses on LGBTQI organizations working at the intersection of race and gender identity in the movement for social justice. 

Community Power School

iF implements a participatory grantmaking approach for our community power grantmaking program. This approach “cedes decision-making power about funding decisions – including the strategy and criteria behind those decisions – to the very communities that a foundation aims to serve.” (Source: Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking, Grantcraft) 

This means that a committee of community members of the global majority—hailing from the District of Columbia, Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties in Maryland, and Northern Virginia—with lived experiences of racial inequities who are engaged in organizing and advocacy, select the grant recipients.

We support community-based and nonprofit organizations in the Washington, DC region that operationalize racial equity and justice and undertake community organizing, community engagement and advocacy.

In 2021, our capacity building program focuses on LGBTQI organizations working at the intersection of race and gender identity in the movement for social justice. 

Roots Rising

iF implements a participatory grantmaking approach for our community power grantmaking program. This approach “cedes decision-making power about funding decisions – including the strategy and criteria behind those decisions – to the very communities that a foundation aims to serve.” (Source: Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking, Grantcraft) 

This means that a committee of community members of the global majority—hailing from the District of Columbia, Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties in Maryland, and Northern Virginia—with lived experiences of racial inequities who are engaged in organizing and advocacy, select the grant recipients.

We support community-based and nonprofit organizations in the Washington, DC region that operationalize racial equity and justice and undertake community organizing, community engagement and advocacy.

In 2021, our capacity building program focuses on LGBTQI organizations working at the intersection of race and gender identity in the movement for social justice. 

Internal Healing Justice Journey

Our internal health justice journey blends both theory and practice and is informed by Cara Page, a Black Queer Feminist cultural/memory worker, curator and organizer. Cara introduced us to healing justice as a framework that identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds. 

We have experimented with the following as a board and staff: Qi Gong, massage, Zone of Genius, Tree of Life storytelling practice, breathwork, meditation, summer weeks off for rest, and a mid-year organizational pause devoted to rest, reading, relationship building and reflection. We also draw inspiration from the Nap Ministry and its powerful message of rest as resistance.

Between 2017 and 2019, the CHF board and staff told each other stories about the role race, class and gender played in shaping the people we have become.