Stories and Updates

We are witnessing a full-on attack on data, research, and knowledge. As we honor our embodied community wisdom, we know and understand that data is an important tool to offer necessary context and clarity about the society we inhabit. 

We are excited to announce our latest cohort of We See You grantees! When we built the Fund in 2020, we didn’t aspire to do philanthropy the Eurocentric way. We wanted to do it Blackly— focusing on community wisdom, healing, and relationships.

In Black communities, the act of mothering has always extended beyond biology. It is a practice rooted in care, protection, and collective responsibility — a radical form of love that emerges not just from family ties, but from communal bonds.

This morning, as I stepped outside my door, I found a dead sparrow lying still on the earth. I paused, caught off guard by the smallness of it, the surprise of it, the quietness of the moment. Elders have taught me that when we see something dead, it means its medicine or symbolic power has been fully incorporated.

For generations, Black communities have turned to cooperative economics as a means of survival, resistance, and self-determination. We take this moment to reflect on the history of cooperatives, and the impact that they hold in our present day.

On November 1st, 2024, Black Future Co-op Fund met in the executive conference room at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle for a full day retreat. In this piece, Tawfiq Abdulaziz shares his experience observing the fall retreat.

In this moment, we must remember that we stand on the shoulders of giants. We are the result of generations of activists, healers, artists, changemakers and table shakers. We are the beneficiaries of unceasing and uncompromising faith in a brighter tomorrow.

In 2023, we returned to the motherland. Over two trips to Ghana, Black leaders from across Washington had the opportunity to reconnect with their ancestral past and gather inspiration and wisdom to chart a radically free future.

As this season of gratitude unfolds, I’m reminded of the profound power of giving — not the transactional kind that perpetuates our current economy of commodification and extraction, but the sacred, relational kind that is inherent in the natural world.

Our team has had the opportunity to grow and learn alongside our philanthropic peers at some of the largest conferences in the sector. Check out our reflections from these amazing gatherings.