For trailblazing nonprofits piloting new economic models in our communities, #GivingTuesday is an important fundraising milestone to garner year-end donations of all sizes from folks who want to intentionally spend with impact. On the flip side, #GivingTuesday is a singular time-bound day following the seasonal frenzy of buying spurred on by Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. 

As we know, long-term community power building needs more than just one day of giving.

Shifting from a giving mindset to an investing one means actively moving resources that enable the power of self-determination for recipients: with speed, with trust, without restrictions, and through a variety of wealth-building capital such as multi-year grants and recoverable loans. 

Below are two ways to support our diverse community of changemakers: through donations or by opening a Donor Advised Fund at Possibility Labs for sustained catalytic investing.  

Advance Climate and Social Justice Solutions 

• Taproot Earth: a new organization building power and cultivating solutions among frontline communities advancing climate justice and democracy. Your support helps advance climate justice from the Gulf South to the Global South through movement-building, law & policy strategies, global climate reparations, and equitable disaster recovery.
• Just Economy Institute: a community of financial activists who are shifting the flow of capital and power to help solve social and environmental problems. Your gift to JEI creates opportunities for fellows from all backgrounds to build a just economy. 

Empower Family and Youth Wellbeing 

• New Beginnings Support Services: an organization that provides access to resources, information, and support to empower and educate parents, engage communities, and uplift children impacting a positive future for Las Vegas families. Your contribution provides individualized case management support by promoting safety, good health practices, and a sense of well-being for children and parents.
• evolutionforward: an education fund dedicated to protecting and advancing the health and wellbeing of children due to systemic exclusion based on race, class, culture, geography, education, language, and other demographics. Your donation supports their three intergenerational areas of focus: babies & birth, children & education systems, and the promotion of non-violence in the U.S.
• Wild Awake: a social enterprise curating immersive, intergenerational outdoor learning experiences on Ohlone land that are rooted in connecting with ourselves and the more-than-human world. Your donation will expand their programs to more BIPOC low-income youth, including program and transportation costs for BIPOC youth and training BIPOC facilitators to lead programming.  

Center Community Care, Solidarity Programs, and Thriving Spaces 

• Indigenous Healing Center: a project located on unceded Coast Miwok traditional territories creating spaces for the practice, revitalization, and visibility of Indigenous cultures, languages, and life ways, with a focus on Indigenous medicine and healing. Your contribution aids in providing health services to Indigenous families in Marin County by creating spaces for the practice, revitalization, and visibility of Indigenous cultures, languages, and life ways.
• Vital Little Plans: an artist collective and giving circle that supports equitable, creative, and vital plans that are arts-driven and community-led for neighborhoods and places. Your donation helps them host a learning network for peers and provide technical assistance to projects.
• Cut Fruit Collective: a grassroots group for AAPI community care driven by art, community, and shared love of food. Your donations help them support AAPI artists, amplify AAPI activists, invest in vulnerable AAPI communities, and build coalitions across AAPI communities and beyond.
• Discover Community Café: a space to love, heal, dream, and belong that leverages the power of food to create transformational jobs for women, champion local entrepreneurs, and ignite connection for an inclusive local economy. Your donation will go towards an apprenticeship program, start-up costs, labor, food costs, rent, and licenses.
• LUNAR: a community building and investment vehicle for Asian-Americans to support the movement for Black and Indigenous-led liberation. Your investment supports their operations and seeds the LUNAR Fund where a portion of these funds will serve as matching funds for giving circles.
• BOYFRIEND CO-OP: a coffee and cocktail cooperative based in Ridgewood, Queens where queer and trans women and gender non-conforming people can feel safe, cultivate community, and practice cooperation. Your donation will cover crucial startup costs, such as business registration fees, attorney fees, and a liquor license with plans to open their doors in the summer of 2023.
• Radical Family Farms: a mixed-Asian regenerative, no spray farm that grows culturally relevant crops for the Asian diaspora and offers produce boxes, flower CSA programs, and solidarity shares. Your contribution supports food access and community supported agriculture (CSA) assistance, climate smart farming, and mentoring and training for AAPI, BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folks on the farm.
• Just Love Collaborative: a bridge-building organization that supports cis and trans women and girls of color by providing holistic resources to fortify self-love and sustain a greater quality of life. Your donation helps with their identified programming: housing insecurities and barriers for Black and Brown women, health and wellness prioritizing fitness and nutrition, and small business development.
  

Champion the Visibility and Education of BIPOC Leaders  

• Leadership Learning Community: a national nonprofit organization transforming the way leadership development work is understood, practiced and promoted, primarily within the nonprofit sector. All contributions will be used in the effort to grow their on-site base of blogs, events, and resources for systems change, expand outreach, to make Network Weaver more accessible, and fund the emerging Network Weaver BIPOC initiatives.
• REĀL: an association to increase visibility, advancement, and equity for Latinx professionals in commercial real estate at all professional levels and across industry sectors. Your donation supports their operations and initiatives, including mentorship and networking events. 

Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) began to grow in popularity in the 1990’s because they enabled donors to have the infrastructure of their own grant making foundation without all the upkeep. Through a Donor Advised Fund, donors can make charitable gifts to a sponsoring organization (like Possibility Labs) and then recommend how to redistribute those funds to organizations and movements. 

By opening a DAF with Possibility Labs, donors can become co-creative partners investing in social justice and change in every aspect:  

• We are the only DAF platform where all senior leadership is comprised of BIPOC individuals; 
• We diversify the capital stack by deploying multi-year grants, recoverable grants, recoverable loans, and guarantees in ways that center community needs; and 
• We require a 10% payout, incentivize 40% deployment, and invest 60-90% of remaining assets in BIPOC-led community wealth building activities such as cash deposits and municipal bonds.  
• We can help move funds within 3-4 business days to local community groups or funds so donors can urgently respond to climate or humanitarian crises when needed.

By the end of 2022, our initial cohort of DAF partners are on track to deploy 60% compared to Fidelity’s own payout rate of only 22% and 27% over the past five years.

To learn more about our new kind of Donor Advised Fund, click here or contact Vanessa Huang, VP of Partnerships, at [email protected].  

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If you are interested in supporting Possibility Labs’ efforts in building community infrastructure for those co-creating a just economy, you can donate here or contact Melissa Peña, Philanthropy Manager, at [email protected].