"I feel like readers of NPQ are going to be interested in the decision the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which you lead, has made to increase its spending at this moment. But I wanted to start further back. Because this is an extraordinary moment. We're used to a certain back and forth ideologically, but we're not as accustomed to a full-on rise of White supremacy, a wholehearted attempt to consolidate authoritarian power. How were you thinking about things last year? What scenario planning was going on?"
"We were preparing for this moment, in earnest, starting in February 2024. Everything we heard from our grant recipients sounded radically different from what we were hearing from the media and from progressive philanthropy. Communities were already struggling in places like Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, even while organizations were winning certain social justice victories. "As a Latin Americanist in terms of my studies-and as a Latina with parents from Venezuela and Nicaragua-this moment here is not new to many of us.""
Marguerite Casey Foundation moved to increase spending to address mounting threats to communities and civil society. Preparations began in February 2024 after grantees reported conditions that differed markedly from media and progressive philanthropy narratives. Communities in Arizona, Texas, and Tennessee were already struggling even as some organizations achieved social justice gains. A Latin Americanist and Latina perspective stated that such authoritarian moments are familiar to many. Institutionally, leadership prioritized safeguarding grantmaking capacity, ensuring commitments could be fulfilled, and considering major interventions to alert and mobilize in response to developments including the release of Project 2025.
Read at Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]