Jean Hardisty Initiative

Supporting Black-Led Movements

Since 2015, the Jean Hardisty Initiative has been moving resources to Black-led movements that are channeling protest energy into power, with a long-term goal of eradicating structural inequality and eliminating the racialization of systems that uphold it. Movement-building work—and Black-led organizing work—has been dramatically underfunded by traditional philanthropy. As white nationalism is on the rise—supporting Black-led movements is a powerful lever to create permanent change.

The Hardisty Initiative prioritizes funding for work that:

  • Responds to needs identified by the field
  • Is founded in solid research and analysis
  • Centers the voices and experiences of people in impacted communities
  • Leverages opportunities that are timely and catalytic

The Jean Hardisty Initiative has built a funding portfolio that reflects clear values: radical feminism, transformational organizing, and a commitment to confronting anti-Black racism.

Seed funder of the Electoral Justice Project, led by Jessica Byrd, empowering Black organizers to win on the issues that affect their lives.

A group of people holding the sign Fund Black Futures

Since 2016, we’ve moved more than $5 million to organizations in the newest chapter of the Black freedom movement.

“Funding from WDN has given me the space to dream.” – Alicia Garza, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter and director of the Black Futures Lab, which received early support from the Hardisty Initiative.

Early funder of Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, supporting a voter engagement bus tour through the South in 2018 that made headlines across the nation.

*Dedicated to social movement building and grassroots organizing, the Jean Hardisty Initiative is named after and guided by the values of the late Jean Hardisty, a longtime WDN member and feminist scholar.

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