December Newsletter

I. Letter from the Interim Director

Dear Hidden Leaf Community,

As we close the year, I'm moved to share wisdom from my spiritual tradition, carried by the Yoruba people during the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica and other regions of the African Diaspora. Places I call home. For centuries, these traditions have survived, and with them a lineage of power, resistance, joy and resilience in the face of the unimaginable.

Our Yoruba tradition is anchored by ashé, a divine life force that flows from God through nature and humanity. We believe in a reverent, symbiotic relationship with the earth. We believe that our ancestors are always present, bringing guidance and grace. We believe in balance. And we understand war, conflict, illness and inequity as manifestations of imbalance. For us, there is an orixá who restores balance in the most profound of ways. Her name is Oya. Represented as a female warrior with a sword and buffalo horn, Oya is the orixá of wind and storms, breath and rebirth. Hurricanes and tornadoes carry her ashé. Oya disrupts systems, structures, governments, cultures, relationships and ways of being that are out of balance. She brings cataclysmic change. Oya is the principle of utter transformation.

I invoke Oya because this is a season of tectonic shift. Oya's signature is in the atmosphere. We can feel it in our baited breath, as we prepare for a new administration where democracy will be pushed to its limits, extremist groups emboldened, civil rights gutted, social justice protests criminalized, the social safety net shredded, and environmental protections eroded. We can feel it in the expansion of our lungs, howling rage and grief. We can feel it in the seismic reversal of gains for racial justice and gender justice. In the widening gulf of economic disparity. In global genocides and escalating wars. And in rising attacks on the bodily autonomy and freedom of women, Black, Indigenous, low-income people of color, LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities. We're dancing at the edge of the liminal. And that is where Oya does her most powerful work. She clears the old to initiate the new. She helps us confront our fears, recalibrate and embrace new beginnings. Whether or not we are ready.

And we are ready, even when change feels terrifying. We are equipped, even when we momentarily forget our tools. All of our work has been preparing us for this time - the transformative movements led by frontline communities building a shared vision for a liberated future and moving courageously towards that north star.

While it's been a challenging year, Hidden Leaf continues to adapt and thrive. The foundation has historically played a small but significant role in social justice philanthropy - from seeding the transformative organizing field in its early days and advancing land rematriation and reparations for Black and Indigenous people - to pivoting to an integrated capital strategy and resourcing Just Transition efforts to build regenerative solidarity economies. Now, in the wake of a crushing election and a political climate veering towards fascism, this work is more vital than ever.

Hidden Leaf's collective somatic commitment to "being a bold and visible experiment in liberatory philanthropy" has helped us center in transition. We know this is a critical moment to lean into our commitment towards bold visibility, amplifying the work of our core grantees and investment partners and in the process, ensuring our integrated capital strategy is on the radar of more funders and communities.

This year, we're proud to commit $2.5M in traditional grants along with $1.5M in community investments advancing racial justice and transformative movement building towards a Just Transition.

Core Grants Strategy: Long-term Partnerships for Transformative Movement-Building

This is the third year of our five-year core grants strategy, which provides multi-year general operating funds to organizations anchoring the work of transformative change. These long-term commitments have freed grantees to do the important work of building power, leading from center, strengthening the sustainability of their organizations, growing healthy movements, and cultivating new ways of envisioning society. The videos below provide a potent glimpse into their work:

  • The Chicago Torture Justice Center addresses the traumas of police violence and institutionalized racism by providing access to healing and wellness services, trauma-informed resources, and community connection anchored in Yoruba ancestral practice. To watch their "Garden Altars" video is to witness the ways that connecting to land, spirit and community can transmute politicized grief into systemic change.
  • Native Movement builds people power, rooted in an Indigenized worldview. Its actions are grounded in ceremony, justice, and love in support of regenerative communities. To witness them "Tending To The Light" is to remember that how movement is done is as important as what movement wins. The video elevates the relationship between prayer, kinship, and indigenous spiritual practice with building movement, political power and (at ~52:00) tangible policy wins disrupting the fossil fuel industry on Native land.

These organizations and other long-term partners will receive a combined $2,025,000 in general operating support grants this year. We'll provide an additional $490,000 in storytelling and transition grants to existing grantees as well as grants to new partners like UPROSE, a nationally recognized organization that promotes climate adaptation and community resilience through organizing, education, cultural expression, Indigenous and youth leadership development.

Community Investments: Leveraging the Full Spectrum of Capital for Greater Impact

In partnership with our visionary advisors at Full Spectrum Labs, Hidden Leaf will allocate $1.5M in community investments supporting land and real estate procurement, community-governed and community wealth-building funds, and a capacity-building initiative to support communities to access capital and achieve greater scale. The portfolio elevates grantees' Just Transition strategies; deepens our commitment to place-based funding in Richmond, CA; and expands grantees' capacity to access more resources, particularly in communities historically denied access to capital.

This third year of our community investment strategy couldn't be more timely. Dependence on private and corporate philanthropy has never been a viable long-term solution for Black and Brown communities and the post-Floyd funding cliff has exposed the fault lines of that strategy, crippling many frontline social justice organizations in the process. In an increasingly hostile political environment, philanthropy is further rationalizing its retrenchment and censoring support for social justice movement building. As we enter 2025, the collision of dwindling resources, the dismantling of democracy and accelerated climate change will leave frontline communities increasingly vulnerable. Building community wealth and economic sovereignty empowers these communities to take control of their economic futures, build regenerative economies, deepen climate resilience and strengthen local democratic governance - ultimately better positioned to withstand future disruptions.

Hidden Leaf's community investments are guided by three goals, listed below with examples of 2024 partners.

  • Reclaim the Land: Support partners to rematriate, repair, reclaim and steward land and real estate as a foundation for transformative movement practice.
    • Financing for Miami Workers Center and Power U to build the Center for People Power, a community resilience hub in Southern Florida that aims to address urgent social issues like displacement and gentrification, and to foster a more equitable and sustainable future for Miami's diverse communities.
  • Generate Revenue: Support partners to generate revenue in ways that advance transformational change and build economic security, independence and resilience.
  • Grow Loving Economies: Support partners building loving economies to access the capital needed to create economic power and resilience for communities.

The flagship of our integrated capital strategy is Hidden Leaf's investment in Richmond, California, an evolving Just Transition site. Key partners like Urban Tilth, Richmond LAND, Rich City Rides, RYSE, and Richmond Our Power are collaborating to build a thriving local economy that provides dignified, productive and ecologically sustainable livelihoods, democratic governance and ecological resilience. Lessons learned in Richmond will inform efforts to replicate Just Transition sites in other locales and attract more funders to this work.

* * *

In the months ahead, Hidden Leaf will continue to stand in unwavering solidarity with our frontline partners.

Guided by the wisdom of Oya - and the prophetic Octavia Butler - we know that the only lasting truth is Change. My prayer is that we are emboldened by Her ashé and strengthened so that each of us may navigate this liminal time with grace, clarity, solidarity, and courage.

We are ready. We are equipped. We have the tools. And we have each other.

Onwards,

Lorelei Williams
Interim Executive Director, Hidden Leaf Foundation

II. Resources for renewal, resurgence and resilience:

Movement generation

III. Grantmaking Learnings

Hidden Leaf's 5-year core grants strategy supports organizations that are openly exploring the connection between individual and collective transformation, and that are building power at the individual, organizational, and sociopolitical levels. In our intensely challenging political moment, this work goes to the heart of what's needed for collective liberation. Some highlights we've witnessed are ways that transformative practice equips movement organizations to:

Strengthen relationships as a resource for building power, resilience and coordination

  • "We know that our relationships with each other are the foundation for the change work we do. To strengthen our bonds, we have to engage trauma healing and resilience building in our physiology and through practice. To live out these bold visions for interdependence, for the abolition of harmful systems, we develop embodied and emotional capacities that reinforce these visions and make them possible." The Embodiment Institute

Mobilize irresistible movements centered in love, belonging, and joy

  • "Our vision nurtures our cultures, souls and spirits through song and ceremony, through practice and play. Our movements must be irresistible and rooted in the wisdom of our ancestries. We aim to create a culture that can hold us through both the best and hardest times - so that as we struggle, we do not need to seek respite via the trappings of consumerisms and the privileges of empire. This is how we heal from the crisis of disconnection. This is what it means to decolonize." Movement Generation

Navigate uncertainty and adapt nimbly.

  • "We stay nimble and adaptive by centering Black & Indigenous & young people of color who are constantly changing, growing, innovating, shifting and reimagining their world and what's possible for our collective liberation." RYSE

Co-create possible futures, where what folks are doing and how they are doing it are both integral.

  • "The antidote to fear is grassroots organizing. Organizing is simply the practice of building power through connection across difference. Organizing is about having intentional conversations with your neighbor or coworker, even if you don't agree with them about everything - because you know that through connection, you can find shared values and begin to work toward a shared vision for the future... This year, our members and other communities living near the Chevron refinery in Richmond won a historic $550 million settlement from Chevron, building on decades of grassroots organizing in the community and becoming a model for refinery communities across the country." APEN

We are honored to be in conversation with our grantees about the profound and skillful ways they do their work and excited to learn alongside them in the coming year about how they are operationalizing their liberatory visions.

climate justice alliance

IV. A Transformative Journey: Toward a Regenerative Economy

Excerpt from "A Transformative Journey: Toward a Regenerative Economy" by Tara Brown, 11/2024

"As part of our pivot toward aligning our endowment (not just our grants) with our values of love, justice, and planetary health, we began solidifying concepts and language around what we actually wanted to do with more of our endowment... At this stage, I'm feeling the grace of deeper alignment between our investments and our values as well as between us as a very-human team. And I'm feeling the broad and deep support of our movement allies. We leapt and we stumbled, but we were never alone."

Link here to see the full article.

Tara Brown is Hidden Leaf's Board Treasurer and former Executive Director. She is an active member of Justice Funder's Just Transition Investment Community

V. Broadening Our Approach to Democracy: Funding beyond the 501(c)(3)

What role can philanthropy play when democracy is at risk? At Hidden Leaf, we stand in solidarity with the communities our grantees serve, and we are committed to moving resources in ways that follow the lead of the people most directly involved in the work for collective liberation. As the country faces unprecedented tests of democratic structures, we hear the call to be bold and imaginative in how we support and protect movement organizations at the front lines. This year, after several direct requests from grantees to step into greater support for their electoral and deep democracy work, Hidden Leaf co-hosted a conversation to amplify mechanisms for foundations to invest in 501(c)(4) infrastructure. The "Broadening Our Approach to Democracy" webinar features Power California, Groundswell Action Fund, and our consultant partners at Ktisis Capital. We learned that more and more grassroots organizations are building multi-entity organizations - using 501(c)(4)s and political action committees - because they understand that these entities are a platform for living into their full potential and power. Yet much of the rest of the progressive funding ecosystem has not kept up with this fast-changing field. In the years ahead, Hidden Leaf intends to explore this question further.

For more information about Hidden Leaf Foundation's work, please visit our website.

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