Building a Beloved Community

There's a new report out from the funders focusing on black male achievement - it's called Building a Beloved Community. (pdf)

It presents valuable strategic options that should matter to all funders, including:

• Now is the time to focus on changing narratives that have been built on decades of deficit thinking.
• Grassroots organizing, collaboration, and communication - with digital technologies - are important leverage points for institutional funders.
• To advance evidence-based practice, organizations must be explicit about goals, disaggregated data, and evaluate interventions.
• Systemic challenges require systemic solutions. It sounds so obvious, but we don't act this way.
• Longer funding commitments, permanent endowed funds, alternative models of support, and greater investment in organizational capacity are key to this field.
• Companies and faith organizations are key to the  networks that will make change happen
• Leadership, leadership, leadership. At both the grasstops and the grassroots. 

Read it.  It matters to everyone focused on social justice. And the rest of you.



*I had a tiny part in this work. I was overly honored by being asked to contribute the Forward.