Carmen Graciela Díaz's Blog

For the month of September, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by NDN Collective.

NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power.

A new report from Exponent Philanthropy and PEAK Grantmaking addresses changes in funding since the coronavirus pandemic.

"It’s time to have a real discussion about board and staff engagement when it comes to equity change so that the whole organization can collaborate to seed and root transformative change," Kelly Bates wrote recently in Interaction Institute of Social Change.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced recently the award of 15 emergency grants totaling $1.5 million for providers of higher education in prison.

"Imagine what could be accomplished if the city of Boston and any of the 26 Massachusetts Gateway Cities reinvested the millions of dollars now spent policing schools—often with questionable results—in arts instruction!" write Barbara Wallace Grossman and Jonathan C. Rappaport, in a recent post.

The Howard Gilman Foundation Board of Trustees recently approved an increase from a 5% to a 7.5% payout for the Foundation’s 2020 grants budget, bringing the total of that budget to $34.5M, according to the press release.

The National Endowment for the Arts and Education Commission of the States released a group of resources as part of an initiative to help stakeholders in the arts extract, analyze, and report on data about arts education.

Black August, born out of Black liberation, resistance, and justice movements, is a month dedicated to critical learning and analysis, reflection and study of our roles in oppressive or liberatory systems, and an opportunity to grow, connect, and prepare for the challenging work ahead.

In a blog entry from Bhumi B. Patel, a member of the Dancing Around Race cohort in the San Francisco Bay Area, she makes the case for intentional rest to refocus the work that needs to be done in this moment in which there's an "opportunity to change the trajectory of a system built and fostered by structures of white supremacy."

"What risks are we in philanthropy and impact investing willing to take to make lasting change? Are we willing to continue to sacrifice the lives, livelihoods, and well-being of entire communities for the comfort of our well-polished theories of change?"