Giving Compass' Take:

• Limay Ho, writing for National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, describes the importance of prioritizing funding and philanthropy for the South. 

• Why are long-term investments in the South beneficial to all of us?

• Here's why philanthropy needs to stop excluding the South. 

I was born and raised in North Carolina, and Southern values of community, hospitality, and mutual aid run deep for me. Even though I no longer live in the South, its ways infuse all of my organizing. After being steeped in Southern organizing, I was disappointed when I moved to DC and experienced firsthand many national advocacy organizations either ignoring the South entirely or only wanting to parachute in to push short-term, top-down campaigns that undermined the place-based, relationship-based organizing that already existed.

Unfortunately, this dismissal of the South is replicated in too many philanthropic spaces. That is why I was thrilled to see the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) issue their in-depth report As the South Grows, making the case for why it so important for funders to make long-term investments in grassroots organizations in the South. As they say in their report, “Our new national reality of unified, reactionary, anti-democratic government has been a reality for Southerners off and on for more than a generation. Therefore, national and non-Southern organizations have much to learn from their Southern counterparts.“

As a national community of progressive young people with wealth, Resource Generation has an important role to play as proactive and just partners to Southern grassroots organizations on the frontlines of struggles for racial and economic justice today. Funding in the South is one way to start to repair the harm we or our families may have caused through extracting wealth from the South.  We can be part of reversing institutional philanthropy’s systemic disinvestment from the South.

Read the full article about philanthropy in the south by Limay Ho at National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.