As people of color, we constantly find our communities with the same foot, just a different shoe, on our necks, and showing up for each other has become an act of survival.

I choose this space and moment to honor the history and many contributions of Hispanic greatness across movement areas and sectors.

This year I began my work with NCRP as the new senior movement engagement associate, curating space within the Movement Investment Project to focus on reproductive access and gendered violence. These frameworks wouldn’t exist without the contributions of activists like Luz Rodriguez and the late Lorena Borjas.

I’ve tried to think of ways to support my comrades holding this work, sharing their content and sending what coins I have the capacity to give, but let’s remember there is a sector with greater means and capacity we can call in.

The erasure of transgender folks in philanthropic spaces cannot continue. Ensuring that it doesn’t involves making them explicitly visible in more of our quantitative and qualitative analysis.

That is why it is so crucial to hold space beyond October to discuss the ways funders can invest in the safety of all Latinx folks. Some ways that philanthropy can immediately be helpful include:

  • Supporting the leaders on the ground holding this work and holding their communities close.
  • Following movement leaders such as those at Project South, who have made it their personal missions to shut down the Irwin County Detention Center and fight for those that have been sterilized.
  • Funding abortion access work through the Janes Due Process whose team alerted the ACLU about Jane Doe’s case and is at the forefront of the fight for abortion access in Texas in these uncertain times.
  • Giving coins to the COVID Bailout, an organization committed to freeing incarcerated folks being held hostage by New York City’s bail system.
  • Expanding the number of those giving directly to groups led by and working for LGBTQ Latinx communities. A June 2020 study by Funders for LGBTQ Issues and Hispanics in Philanthropy notes that the community’s top 10 funders account for an overwhelming 68% of all grantmaking for LGBTQ Latinx communities.
  • Explore how you as a funder of other movement areas can allocate funding to the pro-immigrant movement and apply an immigration justice lens to your work with NCRP’s State of Foundation Funding for the Pro-Immigrant Movement brief.

Read the full article about how philanthropy can support the Latinx community by  Brandi Collins-Calhoun at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.