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.

Since 2016, we’ve moved more than $4.5 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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