We stand with you.
The Libra Foundation stands in solidarity with grantee partners and social justice funders who are responding to the COVID-19 crisis with bold, swift, and equitable action. Here, we are sharing some of the resources our team has received from our partners, including information for nonprofits seeking financial support, the philanthropic sector’s response, and a snapshot of Libra grantee relief efforts.
We want to be as helpful as we can, so please let us know if you have additions to this list at info@thelibrafoundation.org.
Covid-19 Resources for Grantees
Financial information for nonprofits:
- Nonprofit Finance Fund has a thorough list of financial tools and resources for nonprofits.
- Updated Daily: Help for Nonprofits During the Coronavirus and Uncertain Economic Times (Chronicle of Philanthropy) is a useful daily compendium of news and tools.
- Candid’s resource hub is a pop-up website to help inform nonprofits about the latest funding opportunities.
- Must-know tips for small businesses and nonprofits considering stimulus loans from Common Future.
- Olamina Fund seeks to build tangible and sustainable community wealth by investing in access to asset-building, high-quality jobs, and self-determination for low-income communities. Here’s how they are showing up right now.
- Payment Protection Program resources for artists, freelancers, and independent contractors compiled by Fractured Atlas.
- Economic, employment, housing, and other critical information on Environmental Health Coalition’s Blog for Environmental Justice, specifically for folks in San Diego and across California (can be found in multiple languages here).
- TechSoup is offering technology resources to help nonprofits meet their missions, serve communities, and support staff.
Philanthropic response & resources
- North Star Fund has an extensive list of funding opportunities, organizing tools, mutual aid efforts, and much more.
- Funders for LGBTQ Issues is compiling Rapid Response Funds for the Trans Community.
- Native Americans in Philanthropy launched the Native American Community Response Fund.
- Funders for Justice (a program of Neighborhood Funders Group) is gathering everything on everything.
- Philanthropy California is gathering relevant policy briefs and rapid response loans.
- The Council on Foundations hub includes response funds, news, and government agency efforts.
- National Center for Family Philanthropy in partnership with GivingCompass are compiling response funds here.
- Media Impact Funders is tracking media funding resources in this spreadsheet.
- Borealis Philanthropy’s Fund for Trans Generations, Destination Tomorrow’s TRANScend Community Impact Fund, and Third Wave Fund are announcing the launch of the COVID-19 Collective Fund for Trans Communities to get financial resources to trans-led organizations and transgender, gender nonconforming, and non-binary communities who are organizing in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
- Mosaic launched an RFP for environmental and climate justice organizations based in the U.S to provide tools, tech and resources during COVID-19.
- How Groundswell Fund is adapting to the COVID-19 crisis and recommendations for social justice funders.
- “Philanthropy, this is our “Matrix” moment…what will you choose?” The latest by Dana Kawaoka-Chen, Executive Director at Justice Funders.
Grantee Responses to COVID-19
Photo Credit: Eileen Jimenez via Amplifier
The Libra grantee community is setting up rapid response funds and mutual aid strategies, collaborating in coalitions and deep partnerships, and providing critical information so community voices are heard loud and clear. Learn more about this stellar group of activists are doing and how to help here – we’ll be updating this regularly.
Libra’s grantees are close to the ground, and therefore, they are in the best position to provide critical funds to their communities as they see fit. Here are some of their relief and rapid response efforts:
- The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice (CCAEJ) is organizing a COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund to make sure working class families and immigrants in our communities get what they need to stay home and stay healthy.
- Justice for Migrant Women joined together with Hispanics In Philanthropy to raise immediate funds to help keep farmworker families safe from #COVID19 as they perform “essential” work to feed us.
- NDN Collective stands in solidarity and in deep relationship with Indigenous communities who are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic — health crisis and other disaster-related events by providing rapid response funding to established, Indigenous-led, community-based organizations and tribes.
- Based in the US South, Southern Vision Alliance (SVA) kickstarted The Frontlines Leaders Fund to move small grants to as many grassroots efforts as possible organizing in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
- Emergent Fund is organizing A People’s Bailout that is committed to acting swiftly and responsively with deep trust in Indigenous, Black, and people of color organizers and those closest to harm.
- As COVID-19 spreads through communities, GAIA knows that the dangers this virus poses will not be felt equally – that’s why they launched the Emergency Solidarity Fund.
- The 805 UndocuFund is a joint effort of immigrant-serving organizations in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties to provide disaster relief to local immigrant families hit the hardest by the virus.
- The COVID-19 Economic Emergency Fund: From People to People, established by the Border Network for Human Rights, to support essential workers and their families left out of the federal financial assistance efforts because of their immigration status or other extenuating circumstances.
- Communities for a Better Environment launched a Community Fund prioritizing low income communities of color. (They also have a resource guide here.)
- Thousand Currents are supporting indigenous communities around the world with the Above & Beyond Solidarity Fund.
- Seventh Generation Fund is moving resources via the Flicker Fund, which provides support to Indigenous communities of the front lines.
- In response to the public health crisis and an abrupt interruption to critical local fundraising caused by the novel coronavirus, the National Network of Abortion Funds launched the Abortion Funds Crisis Relief Campaign.
Organizations must be funded to demand and closely monitor government and corporate accountability. These grassroots groups and campaigns are stewarding democracy and reigniting social justice in communities for years to come.
- As a part of #CareNotCages, URGE: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity, BYP100, and partners orchestrated a week of action to raise awareness about the need for access to reproductive care for young womxn who are incarcerated.
- Many Libra grantees including CURB, Initiate Justice, Ella Baker Center, Critical Resistance and more endorsed the demands made by the Justice Collaborative Letter to Governor Newsom, which calls on the Governor to release those in custody in order to save lives that could be lost to COVID-19.
- PICO California supports The California Partnership for the Future of Learning’s needs assessment because low-income students of color need essential hubs for connection, community resources, and learning.
- This pandemic is revealing the deeper inequities for Black and brown people that have always been present in our economy and democracy – that’s why Demos is demanding these actions to truly center racial equity.
- Climate Justice Alliance is calling for an immediate end to xenophobia and negligence, and a just recovery process that centers those most vulnerable.
- In light of COVID-19, No New Jail Coalition (consisting of TGI Justice, Critical Resistance, CURB, and more) successfully lobbied to close 805 Bryant, a jail in the Bay Area. Read about it here and how to get involved.
- SONG Power is a new sister organization advancing the power-building, organizing, and advocacy of Southerners on New Ground. Learn more about this work and their campaigns at their monthly membership meetings for organizers based in the South.
- With the support of 350.org, over 300 organizations across the globe are demanding that governments apply five core principles to tackle the COVID-19 crisis. Learn more about their plan for a Just Recovery.
- MediaJustice, Color of Change, Ella Baker Center, and many more released a statement demanding the projection of whistleblowers and other workers who have spoken out against corporate giants during the pandemic.
- Voice of the Experienced (VOTE) is amplifying the experiences of incarcerated individuals in Louisiana. Read their statement and demands here.
- A New Way of Life has opened its ninth safe home in South Los Angeles for women released from local jails and state prisons, as those facilities attempt to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
- From Grassroots International – “To stop this pandemic, we need to radically transform our world. To prevent more pandemics in the future, food sovereignty needs to be a central demand today.” Learn more about the intersection of food sovereignty and the pandemic.
This is a list of toolkits, resource guides, and other useful information for organizers and communities to stay engaged, healthy, and safe during the pandemic.
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- Domestic workers keep homes clean and safe, care for children, and provide support for elders and people with disabilities. The National Domestic Workers Alliance has everything you need to know to support these frontline workers, who are disproportionately low-income women of color.
- On March 30, Critical Resistance virtually convened hundreds of organizers to learn about grassroots campaigns fighting to get people out of prison. To learn more about these efforts around the country, check out this guide.
- As part of Equality Labs’ work to combat disinformation during COVID-19 and equip communities with the tools they need, it has created a medically vetted series of Coronavirus information cards, in an expansive array of languages.
- For our San Francisco neighbors, PODER and its community of allied orgs, is keeping track of resources for SF’s low-income Latino immigrants and other communities of color.
- ‘We Keep Us Safe’: Black Trans Women on the Frontlines of the Pandemic, this article on Prism includes current actions and resources supporting a Trans Agenda for Liberation in pandemic response efforts.
- What is Mutual Aid? A Primer by the Climate Justice Alliance
- Check out this beautiful portal featuring a number of artists in the Center for Cultural Power’s network demonstrating the speed and insight of diverse artists’ responses to a shared cultural moment.
- Astraea Foundation’s new Collective Care blog sheds light on the ways LBTQI communities are being impacted by the COVID-19 crisis and shares insights around the criticality of healing justice.
- Led by what WITNESS is hearing and learning from the communities of activism, human rights and civic journalism, they set up this page to support those using video to protect human rights during this pandemic.
- Movement Generation is hosting a four part web series titled Course Correction on how we can advance a just transition in the age of COVID-19 and is offering other thoughtful content here. Also catch MG on the latest episode of Dignity & Power’s podcast.
- Drug Policy Alliance is compiling resources specifically related to criminal justice both in California and on the national level.
- Important information from APANO, especially for folks in Oregon.
- Resources for Native communities updated by the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women.
- In an effort to step up advocacy for the communities and individuals most vulnerable, Opportunity Agenda has put together this toolkit of various messaging memos on how to talk about COVID-19, its disproportionate effect on communities of color, and the shared struggle ahead to contain it.
- California Environmental Justice Alliance sourced guides and information from its members here.