Valiente Fund

About

A donor and funder collaborative reimagining a new long-term scale of resources to unleash the beautiful and full potential of Latine change agents. Meeting the diverse expressions of Latinidad, across key geographies, we seek to build thriving infrastructures forging power in civic engagement and cultural shifts. Doing so well, doing it fast and doing it with integrity will be key to shaping the collective future we imagine, need and deserve.

To cultivate the deep bench needed, the first Valiente Accelerator in 2023-2024 will support emerging Latine groups with operational capacity to get them poised to grow while weathering the storms of electoral cycles and changing political landscapes. There’s no “one” solution, but our reflective practice will guide our ongoing strategy.

Housed at Way to Rise, Valiente leverages their expertise and experience in funding organizations agile and bold enough to take on the current day’s political challenges. Together with others, we are building the multi-racial democracy of the future; as if our lives and our planet depended on it, because they do.

If you are interested in joining the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and Democracy Fund in supporting the growth of the Valiente Fund, let us know! Schedule a time with Maria here to explore collaboration, or send her an email to maria@waytowin.us to be invited to the Fall 2023 briefing.

About the Host

Historically, the South and Southwest have been overlooked for long-term power building funding— as most democracy efforts focus on electoral timelines. But democracy undermined anywhere is democracy undermined everywhere. We know to build lasting multiracial engagement, in places as overlooked as North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas will take scaled resources and smart funding strategies. Way to Rise is the only intermediary in the democracy ecosystem that builds funding strategies that deliver change with the urgency that American multiracial democracy demands.

As intermediaries, our role is to fund organizations as well as develop and execute funding strategies that help organizations create breakthroughs to powerbuilding. Our relationships to donors and organizers along with our track record of power building and changemaking set us apart in the democracy landscape. Since 2018, we have co-created successful community-centered campaigns to protect and enhance democracy. These years of experience, added to our founders’ and team’s leadership and track record in movement spaces, have allowed us to create a powerbuilding framework to guide our funding.

This is how we rise—making certain that local voices are heard, represented and allowed room to be expansive with their experiments in organizing at scale, via leadership development, innovations in data, and narrative change.