As we commemorate Juneteenth and celebrate Black liberation, resilience, and joy, we also want to affirm our commitment to Black communities.

This historic day compels us not only to reflect, but also to act.

At Brooklyn Community Foundation, we believe that addressing systemic racism and injustice—specifically anti-Blackness—is a crucial step in our mission of building a more fair and just Brooklyn. Furthermore, as a philanthropic institution rooted in the public good, we as a community foundation have a unique responsibility to ensure that our grantmaking represents and serves our community.

We are pleased to join the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy’s call to action among community foundations to commit to funding Black communities, at a minimum, equal to their representation in our overall population. 

This means we will work to ensure that at least 30 percent of our total grantmaking—both in our discretionary grantmaking and across our Donor Advised Funds—will explicitly benefit Black communities. 

We acknowledge that the harm done to Black communities is overwhelmingly disproportionate because of centuries of anti-Blackness and systemic racism, and therefore demands a far greater allocation of resources than merely equal to the percentage of the overall population.

With this in mind, we will continue to prioritize and encourage giving to Black-led organizations and groups engaged in organizing, advocacy, and movement-building for structural change. And in alignment with our institution-wide Racial Justice Lens, we will continue to center race as we analyze problems, look for solutions, and define success across our grantmaking, fundraising, governance, and advocacy.

True to the community foundation tradition, we know we can’t accomplish this work alone. We invite our community, our donors, fellow foundations, civic leaders, and the broader public to join us in making this vision a reality.

For transparency and accountability, we will share our currently available 2020 discretionary grantmaking data with the public by participating in Candid's ereporting process by September 1, 2021. We will also put in place updated procedures to track the demographics of donor-directed grantmaking by the end of the year.

Pictured above: Spark Prize 2020 winner Children of Promise