About the Pilot Fund

The Racial Healing + Justice Fund pilot aligned local and national philanthropy, community-set priorities, and community-led grantmaking that puts Racial Equity, healing and justice at the center, creating a future St. Louis where all residents have the opportunity to thrive. During the 2020-23 pilot of the fund, $1.6 million was committed over a three-year period by approximately 20 philanthropic partners, with the largest investment from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This pilot paved the way for one of the Ferguson Commission’s calls to action–the creation of a “generational” managed or endowed fund that intentionally supports Black and brown changemakers in the St. Louis region. 

Granting Philosophy

The Racial Healing + Justice Fund leverages a holistically healthy, racially equitable, and justice-based grant-making approach that distributes charitable funding across the St. Louis region in support of Black, Indigenous and people of color-led (BIPOC) community members, organizations and project ideas. The fund uses a participatory grantmaking approach to scale and sustain Racial Equity work through trust-based philanthropy, community-centric fundraising and capacity building. Under this model, the founding organizations and contributing foundations do not have decision-making power over the allocation of funds—these decisions are made by the Community Governance Board made up of Black and brown residents that were chosen by the St. Louis region via a community participatory process. The fund seeks to foster regenerative and authentic partnership between philanthropy and community that explicitly dismantles the traditional power dynamics between the grantmakers and grantees. 

Why Healing + Justice? 

The Healing focus of the Fund invested in:

• Creating space to share truth narratives, communal grieving, and communal connection on race and systemic racism;
• Enabling restoration, reverence, respect, and trust, at all levels of a community; 
• Building and exercising individual power and resilience;
• Providing support for the spiritual and emotional health of community organizers and advocates. 

The Justice focus of the Fund invested in:

• Changing the conditions of racial inequities by continuously supporting current and future leaders of color;
• Centering, growing, and activating grassroots knowledge;
• Broadening resident engagement to operationalize policy maker accountability structures and practices;
• Uplifting communal mobilization for systems change. 

Who led the RH + JF pilot?

The Community Governance Board (CGB) was a voting body of nine to fifteen BIPOC community members from St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and St. Clair County who are directly impacted by structural racism at the intersections of their assigned identities. The CGB guided the granting and community engagement processes, reviewed applications, and had full decision-making power over how funding was distributed to St. Louis Black and brown communities’ healing efforts, programs, and initiatives. Deaconess Foundation and the Missouri Foundation for Health served as the core funder partners of the pilot of this fund. Deaconess Foundation was the pooled fund fiscal host, and FTF was the project manager and lead facilitator of the community engagements related to the pilot fund. 

Institutional Mandate 

The Racial Healing + Justice Fund seeks to:

• Uplift reciprocal accountability within philanthropy to achieve racial equity, healing, and justice. 
• Demonstrate the power of healthy, transformative collaboration between community members impacted by racial oppression and organizations that hold financial power and resources.
• Build and strengthen philanthropy by embracing a community-centric model vs traditional white-dominant philanthropic practices.
• Foster a culture that empowers the spirit of exploration and questions traditional philanthropic practices and frameworks.
• Embracing mistakes by learning and growing from them and accepting multiple forms of success that may not be traditionally identified or uplifted.
• Learning and growth to improve the positive impact on Black and brown community

Timeline of the RH + JF pilot:

• In summer and spring 2020, FTF led a robust community participatory process to set funding priorities and structures of the fund. In fall 2020, a Selection Committee of healers and community organizers chose the first Community Governance Board (CGB) of 9 members to guide granting processes and decision-making for the Fund.
• In 2022, the Community Governance Board expanded to 14 members. 
• Starting in 2022, Forward Through Ferguson began forming fiscal sponsor accessibility partnerships for grantees who did not have or were working towards 501(c)3 status or an EIN number. This enabled approximately 1/3 of grantees to receive funding that they would not have received without 501(c)3 status. 
• Over the course of the three year (2020-2023) pilot, 81 awards were granted over three grant cycles and one crisis response grant. Over $1.43M of the Fund’s $1.69 million was granted to Black and people of color-led initiatives that directly address community wellness, access to quality mental support capacity-building, public safety, social innovation and more. The Fund also compensated FTF as the Fund’s administrator as well as CGB members for serving as decision-makers for the Fund.