Dear friend,
In August, we announced our vision for Neighborhood Funders Group: to be a space for philanthropy and movement leaders to strategize together around a 50-year liberation journey that is aligned around shared values and leans into principled struggle. Our collective liberation requires intentional community building, holding nuanced conversations, and asking the challenging questions that get us beyond canned responses to a position of accountability and activation.
Throughout conversations with members and movement partners, we’ve continually heard the importance of honoring the “neighborhood” aspect of Neighborhood Funders Group. Leaning into this and our vision to be a container for philanthropy to exercise wonder, imagine, and dream, we are hosting NFG’s Salons to provide a dedicated space for intimate, place-based relationship building and truth-telling between funders and movement leaders because local community is at the heart of where transformation begins.
Our Salons take inspiration from those of the Harlem Renaissance, honoring the long history and tradition of Black communities gathering to exchange ideas and experiences, feel seen, be vulnerable and honest, and experience joy in community. Each Salon is designed to reinforce values of community care, agency, and self-determination as core components of long-term movement strategies.
Even as conversations can challenge our emotions, we carefully curate these spaces to bring down our nervous systems and lean into supporting each other as individuals so we can strengthen relationships that act as an antidote to authoritarianism. The need for trust is a common desire from movement partners we are in conversation with. Salons create opportunities for us to clearly define and build trust so philanthropy can show up through solidarity and allyship with frontline communities.
Through facilitated conversations led by NFG staff, Salons work to activate funders who are ready to move resources both immediately and over the long-term, and to organize their peers to do the same. By connecting funders and movement leaders around a 50-year liberation journey, our Salons have the capacity to hold painful realities our communities are facing, while also surfacing the skills, tools, and conditions needed for a just and sustainable future for generations to come. And through these nuanced and intentional conversations are where radical love and imagination take hold and transformation for collective liberation is seeded.
These conversations are just the beginning. Our intention is to continue NFG Salons after Junction this Fall to provide funders across the country with the opportunity to engage with each other in meaningful ways that seed what is needed for a 50-year liberation journey.
We invite you to join us at Junction this October 27-28 in North Carolina as we bring philanthropy together to explore what it will take to build and sustain the future we want to see. We also welcome you to reach out to bring an NFG Salon to your community so we can continue to build relationships and strategy around the generational work for liberation.
