Midwest 2022 Year-End Newsletter: Rest, Adaptation, + Fireside in January!

These shorter, colder days have required me to rest more, slow down, and re-arrange my work days to catch the daylight for myself and little ones. And it always feels so hard because it disrupts and challenges how I have been taught to survive racial capitalism: to use urgency as a default reaction and accept extraction.   🌱 Forming the program’s…

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Midwest Fall 2022 Newsletter: Holding Change with Care 🍂

I hope you are finding rest and warmth as we traverse this season of transitions. In our home, the little ones and I have been tracking the colors of the leaves and we’ve been celebrating with loved ones the Mid-Autumn Festival and the upcoming Día de Muertos. Fall has already been filled with reminders that change is…

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2022 October Amplify Newsletter

Dear friends, Our commitment to deep, relational grantmaking means that, in addition to our long-term commitment to racial justice powerbuilding, we respond during crises of all kinds. Crises that affect 1) all our grantees partners, like COVID; 2) individual grantee partners; and 3) grantee partners in just one of our eight places as was the case…

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IRSG Rural Organizing Dialogue Series

Over the course of the summer, IRSG held a Rural Organizing Dialogue Series. This series was educational and genuine! It was a space for funders in IRSG’s network to get to know this work and the rural leaders that are holding and leading it. The dialogue featured many of IRSG’s Movement Advisors and created opportunity to…

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Event Recap: 9/15 Indiana Co-Governance Funder Briefing

In Indianapolis, gun violence is down 20% so far this year for the first time in a decade; a new crisis response system supports people in crisis to get the care they deserve rather than ending up behind bars; and the nation’s strongest civilian oversight body over law enforcement, created just nine month ago, has…

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Midwest Summer 2022 Newsletter: Collective Courage ✨

With all we are holding, I hope you are also finding sweetness in this final stretch of our Midwest summer. Each day, I have the honor of working with movement workers and funders who teach me what it means to be courageous enough to build the world we want. Individual brave acts are powerful. So…

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Midwest Spring 2022 Newsletter: Seeding Change 🌱

I am so honored to say hello to you as the Program Manager of the Midwest Organizing Infrastructure Funders (Midwest Program) at Neighborhood Funders Group. I shifted into this role from Sr. Program Coordinator last month, a transition that has paralleled the Midwest’s journey into spring. In recent years, I have begun gardening vegetables, which has been…

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Amplify Fund Collaboration Grants

Aligned with our initial theory of change that stated a commitment to “fund an ecosystem of groups and prioritize deep collaboration,” in 2021 we introduced collaboration grants. These grants support work that Amplify grantees are taking on with other trusted allies. In 2021, Amplify granted $634,000 to 16 collaborations. in two rounds of funding. In…

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