Five years ago, George Floyd’s murder ignited a nationwide movement aiming to bring about an end to systemic racism with numerous foundations and donors making financial pledges. In California, a group of funders came together to launch the California Black Freedom Fund, a first-of-its-kind, state-based pooled fund dedicated to funding Black-led power-building organizations. Since its launch in 2020, the fund has awarded more than $45 million to 206 Black-serving nonprofits working across 17 issue areas, including the economy, health, education, youth development, criminal justice and food sovereignty.
Its original funders, who contributed a total of $34.2 million, include prominent, California-based social justice funders (or in one case at least, formerly prominent social justice funders) like the Akonadi Foundation, Annenberg Foundation, The California Endowment, the California Wellness Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Liberty Hill Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
Initially conceived as a five-year pooled fund housed at SVCF, the fund, now rebranded as the Black Freedom Fund, has established itself as a permanent, independent institution: the largest pooled fund for Black-serving organizations in the U.S. While the fund will continue to focus primarily on California, its name change means it will also be able to consider partnerships in other places. The fund has reached its original fundraising goal of $100 million and will now be looking to double that total to $200 million.
The Black Freedom Fund as it’s now structured does not have an endowment in the strictest sense. Instead, it has a board-restricted fund, which is similar to an endowment but has the advantage of providing, in many cases, greater near- and mid-term flexibility and control.
“It’s not necessarily a true endowment, but it’s the kind of thing that allows us to have returns on our long-term assets so that we can have our money make money,” said Marc Philpart, executive director of the Black Freedom Fund.
While the movement for racial justice may have stalled on several fronts over the past couple of years, especially given right-wing pushback and the current administration’s attacks on DEI, the fund’s focus, mission and goals remain the same as when it first launched.
“We are committed to being a Black community foundation and [serving] California’s 2.2 million Black people and the communities that they’re part of in ways that transform their outcomes for the better. We want to ensure that we’re a fulcrum of Black prosperity here in California,” Philpart said.
How funders and organizers came together to advance racial justice in California
After the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the protests that followed, the impetus was high for philanthropy to address past and ongoing injustices — especially in California, a hub for social justice funding during President Donald Trump’s first term.
“There was a small group of funders [in California] who came together in their grief and their anger and their deep desire to make a change in the world, and decided that part of what would be of service would be to set up an initial fund and to set a pretty ambitious goal for how we would support the Black community in California,” said Richard Tate, president and CEO of the California Wellness Foundation, which has helped support the Black Freedom Fund since its inception, committing a total of $1.2 million.
While many funders made their own, separate racial justice commitments, they also realized that there wasn’t a single organization or entity at the state level that was focused primarily on the interests of Black people in California, Tate said.
At the same time, organizers were also having similar conversations about what needed to happen. Rev. Ben McBride, who was heading up the community organizing network Pico California at the time and helped launch the Empower Initiative and LIVE FREE CA, was one of those organizers. He, along with other organizers, realized that instead of movement leaders attempting to respond to the moment separately, it would be more productive and transformative to have conversations with philanthropy.
“Those two universes came together in… a bridging effort, where both philanthropic leaders and those of us that were leading the work on the ground formed an actual community and unit where we were beginning to place and think together about what would it look like to pair together the financial power and the brain power of the philanthropic sector with the brain power and the social capital of those leading the largest organizing networks on the ground in California,” McBride said.
The Black Freedom Fund’s transition into an independent institution
When Philpart was hired as the fund’s executive director in 2022, it was clear to him that the it needed to either spend down or spin out on its own and keep its momentum going.
“The most important thing for us to do in this moment was to seek out a role for an institution, and to really think about… all the work we’ve done from the perspective not of raising and spending all of the money, but raising the resources and creating enough momentum to carve out space for an institution that could be a Black community foundation,” Philpart said.
With the support of SVCF’s president and CEO Nicole Taylor, whom Philpart described as a “tremendous partner” and a “phenomenal leader,” they were able to begin the process. The Black Freedom Fund was approved as a legally independent 501c3 last fall. Philpart described the move not as a breakup, but as a birth story, adding that the fund now has more latitude to do things that it couldn’t when it was part of SVCF, which has its own board and parameters.
“The thing that I am excited about as we step into independence is that we will have our own voice and our own level of self-determination that will allow us to speak out on so many of the heinous issues that are happening now and will likely be happening over the next few years,” Philpart said. “I think it’s so important to have the ability to speak in your own voice about the injustices you are seeing… and so I hope that we can continue to be in conversation.”
One big order of change for the fund will be its debut of a political advocacy and lobbying arm. The Black Freedom Fund wants to set up a 501c4 to “engage in offensive and defensive activities that really further Black prosperity and create a more just society for everyone… in the state,” Philpart said.
The fund has already had a significant impact on Black-led and Black-serving organizations in California. In response to the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action and subsequent legal rulings against racial-equity-focused organizations, the fund launched the Legal Education, Advocacy, and Defense (LEAD) for Racial Justice Initiative, which provides nonprofits with legal education, resources and tools so they can navigate the evolving legal landscape.
Earlier this year, the fund also partnered with the California Community Foundation to launch the Black L.A. Relief & Recovery Fund to provide immediate and long-term support for Black communities impacted by the wildfires that devastated parts of the Los Angeles region in January.
Is racial justice no longer a winning issue?
Of course, the Black Freedom Fund is entering its new era in a very different political and social climate from when it was started. With Trump’s victory last year and conservatives attempting to discredit and annul efforts to advance equity across a wide array of areas, many funders, businesses and politicians have retrenched on their earlier efforts.
Racial justice, some have argued, is no longer a winning issue. Instead, they maintain, it’s an albatross hanging over political and philanthropic leaders’ necks. While that may be going too far, there are pressing questions to be asked about whether, in the aftermath of 2020, progressive grantmakers backed positions and messengers that were too far out of step with public opinion, bringing on backlash.
Philpart said that if people look at racial justice merely as a meaningless catchphrase, then it’s not a surprise they may no longer find it necessary to fund now that the political winds have changed.
“[Racial justice] is not an empty catchphrase,” Philpart said. “It’s about people flourishing, and it’s about people living lives that are filled with opportunity and promise versus peril and threats… And so we’re just trying to do our part to ensure that people who have long been excluded from those conversations have a way in and can advance that dialogue in meaningful ways that change outcomes and change opportunities for all the people who we serve.”
He added, “Whether people see racial justice as a winning issue or not, it is something they have to contend with.”
While it is also true that some people of color appear to be shifting right, it is critical not to dismiss them, but rather try to understand why this shift happened, particularly by investing in institutions that truly represent communities to learn more about what they need.
“What are we not hearing in these communities? What do we not understand about the pain that these communities are in? What do we not know about the fears that they are in?” McBride asked.
He added that there are lessons to be learned. For instance, it’s important to consider that funders and organizers sometimes push money out in ways that aren’t targeted to get the results they need. It’s also necessary, McBride said, to do racial justice work in a way that revolves more around bridging and building relationships with other people who may not have the same views.
“So the work is more critical than ever, but I think the methods that we go about the work are as critical as the work itself,” he said.
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The advantages of permanence for the Black Freedom Fund
By 2022, the Black Freedom Fund was already halfway to its goal of raising $100 million. Finding the rest of the funding proved to be more difficult.
“We’re not immune to the vicissitudes of the sector,” Philpart said. “As an entity that has to fundraise and grant-make, we are feeling pressures on all sides of this. We have organizations that are relying on us for critical support. We have funders who have made decisions about strategic shifts, and those things put us in a bind… Doing so with less is never easy.”
There have, however, been a number of funders and foundation leaders who have remained unwavering in their support. Philpart pointed to Richard Tate from The California Wellness Foundation and Joanna Jackson from the Weingart Foundation, as well as leaders from the California Community Foundation, Liberty Hill Foundation, San Francisco Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as examples.
The Black Freedom Fund has also been successful in serving as a proving ground for efforts like the LEAD for Racial Justice Initiative. Philpart said he’s gotten calls from organizations and funders in other states who want to replicate it, and has since helped them deploy their own versions in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington.
Beyond the work it’s already accomplished since its launch, the Black Freedom Fund’s transition into a permanent institution is an example of philanthropy investing in the long term, something many have pointed out is sorely needed. Instead of being a four- or five-year effort, the fund will be able to continue its work in perpetuity, regardless of where political headwinds and grantmaking trends take the sector.
“[The fund is] a model for how we can and should be operating as a philanthropic sector moving forward as we continue to face a myriad of challenges, and as specific communities become targeted and threatened,” Tate said. “In many ways, it’s philanthropy at its best when people come together and they organize. We’re much stronger when we think beyond our individual institutions, when we think about what we can collectively be doing to make change in the world.”
Correction (8/19/25): A previous version of this story stated that the California Black Freedom Fund launched in 2021. It launched in 2020 and began making grants in 2021.
