NEO Philanthropy

MPower Change

NEO Philanthropy is a funder intermediary with 30 years of experience helping nonprofit organizations build movements for justice, equity and dignity. MPower Change (MPower), housed at NEO Philanthropy, is the country’s largest membership-based, Muslim-led social and racial justice organization in the United States. Launched five years ago as a digital platform to reach Muslim-Americans across the country, MPower runs digital campaigns to educate and mobilize Muslim-Americans on a range of issues, including racial justice, voting rights, immigration reform and government oversurveillance of communities of color. It also conducts trainings to increase the capacity of Muslim-American civic leaders, primarily youth 18 to 24 years old, to advocate for the rights of their communities, and it runs programming to bring attention and mobilize resources to redress unjust policies and incidents that harm Muslim communities. This project grant provides flexible support to MPower to amplify the voices of Muslim-Americans on a range of issues, build civic leadership in Muslim communities, and connect Muslim-Americans to credible and trusted resources and information to increase their civic and political participation.

NEO Philanthropy is a public charity that leads large-scale collaborative grantmaking funds on the critical social issues facing the United States and develops capacity-building initiatives to benefit both grantee organizations and the fields in which they work. Four Freedoms Fund, a project of NEO Philanthropy, works to strengthen the capacity of the immigrant justice movement to ensure all immigrants, regardless of immigration status, have dignity, power to shape change, and agency to determine the quality of their life, community, and future. The Four Freedoms Fund has created the new Indigenous Migrant Initiative (IMI), designed to support the growing field of Indigenous-led immigrant, refugee, and asylum seeker organizations to effectively engage in their work at the local and national level, including community organizing, advocacy, leadership development. The intended outcomes of this project are a strengthened ecosystem of Indigenous-led migrant organizations in the United States.

National Guestworkers Alliance

Resilience Force, a fiscally sponsored project of NEO Philanthropy, aims to transform America’s response to environmental, public health, and other types of disasters by directly employing and engaging immigrants and citizens who live in marginalized communities. Seeing the critical need presented by COVID-19, Resilience Force and the City of New Orleans partnered to design and launch the New Orleans Resilience Corps (NORC), a culturally competent and accessible health care and jobs program designed to support immediate and long-term recovery for communities most impacted by the pandemic. This award provides flexible support to Resilience Force to expand its programs, inform and shape similar efforts across the country, and engage with policymakers at all levels of government.

Law For Black Lives

Law for Black Lives (L4BL) is the Black woman-led legal arm of the Black Liberation movement. Formed in the wake of the protests following police shootings of African Americans in Ferguson, Baltimore, Staten Island, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit, Law for Black Lives is a national community of public interest lawyers and legal workers committed to transforming the law and building the power of organizing to defend, protect, and advance Black Liberation across the globe. L4BL coordinates and provides legal support, training, mentorship, research, political education, policy, and popular education tools; it builds a legal infrastructure that is responsive, action oriented, and collaborative. Since its inception, the organization has grown to a network of more than 6,000 lawyers, law students, and legal workers. There are members in all 50 states and a small but strong staff. It also has more than 30 fellows who work across the country to advance organizational priorities.

Atlas Center for Nonprofits

NEO Philanthropy brings together those who share a vision of a society that ensures justice, dignity, and opportunity for all people through large-scale collaborative grantmaking funds on a range of social issues. NEO Philanthropy is the fiscal sponsor of Atlas Center for Nonprofits, founded in 2018, to increase the sustainability of grassroots and social justice organizations by supporting capacity building in fundraising, data systems, professional development, and equity work. This grant provides Atlas Center for Nonprofits with support for its capacity building activities.

State Infrastructure Fund

The State Infrastructure Fund (SIF), established in 2010, is a project of NEO Philanthropy, and works to increase civic participation and advance voting rights among people of color and other historically underrepresented groups. SIF advances its mission by supporting state-based, non-partisan organizations that engage their communities through advocacy, organizing, and litigation. To date, $95 Million from 31 foundations and other philanthropies has been raised to support its mission through NEO. SIF is a member of the Partnership for Safe Voting 2020 (PSV). PSV is a collaboration of pooled funds intended to scale needed community resources and reduce inefficiencies and duplication across existing democracy funds and strategies.

Youth Engagement Fund

Established in 2008, the Youth Engagement Fund (YEF) is a project of NEO Philanthropy created to increase the civic participation and electoral power of young people in the US. YEF supports state-based, youth-focused, social justice organizations, of which 75% are led by and/or focused on engaging BIPOC youth and their communities. Most are in the South and Southwest, where obstacles to voting among low-resource BIPOC communities are the highest. Aided by YEF, these state-based members engage youth of color and marginalized young people in non-partisan voter engagement, issue and electoral campaigns. YEF is staffed by women of color under the age of 35, all of whom have worked as community organizers.

AAPI Civic Engagement Fund

The AAPI Civic Engagement Fund (the Fund), housed at NEO Philanthropy, was established in 2012 by a group of private foundations to foster civic engagement within the diverse and growing Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across the country. The Fund provides support to a nascent but emerging network of local and state-based nonprofits working to connect AAPI community members to social services and to build their civic and political power. This project grant renews support for the Fund’s storytelling initiative to build the capacity of its network members to gather and share news, information, and compelling stories from their communities, with the goal of creating more accurate, authentic, and nuanced narratives about the diversity of AAPI communities and their contributions to American society.

MPower Change

MPower Change, housed at NEO Philanthropy – a funder intermediary with 30 years of experience helping nonprofit organizations build movements for justice, equity and dignity – is the country’s largest membership-based Muslim-led social and racial justice organization in the United States, with a quarter million members. Launched three years ago as a digital platform to reach Muslim-Americans across the country, MPower runs digital campaigns to educate and mobilize Muslim-Americans on a range of issues, including racial justice, immigration reform, government surveillance and combating Islamophobia. It trains Muslim-American civic leaders how to protect and advocate for the rights of their community members, and it runs programming to bring attention – and resources – to unjust incidents and policies that harm Muslim communities in the United States. This project grant provides support to MPower Change to grow its network, amplify the voices of Muslim-Americans across the country on a range of topics, and connect Muslim-American communities to resources and information to increase their civic and political power.

AAPI Civic Engagement Fund

The AAPI Civic Engagement Fund (the Fund), housed at NEO Philanthropy, was established in 2012 by a group of private foundations to foster civic engagement within the diverse and growing Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across the country. The Fund provides support to a nascent but emerging network of nonprofits working to connect AAPI community members to social services and building civic and political power within AAPI communities. This project grant supports the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund to develop and pilot a new storytelling initiative that will engage its network members in efforts to amplify the voices of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, connect them to important policy debates, and in doing so counter negative and inaccurate perceptions of AAPI communities.

The Markup

NEO Philanthropy, a philanthropic intermediary that operates donor collaboratives and fiscal sponsorships, is helping to launch The Markup, a new investigative journalism organization that seeks to report on the negative and unintended consequences of new technologies. The Markup pursues data-centered reporting on the societal harms of new technologies and provides information and analysis for experts and non-experts to understand the consequences for individuals, groups, and systems. The explanatory and investigative journalism is intended to inform and influence policymaking and individual behavior, and hold the technology sector to account.

NEO Philanthropy (launched in 1983 as Public Interest Projects) supports several large-scale collaborative grantmaking funds designed to combine philanthropic investments for greater joint impact. In June 2013, the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in its Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision. Section 5 had previously required certain jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination to pre-clear voting process changes with the U.S. Department of Justice. Without Section 5, the responsibility for identifying and challenging voting changes that are discriminatory resides in activists, local lawyers without experience in election law, and citizens. The Shelby Response Fund was developed shortly after the decision by a collaborative operated by NEO Philanthropy, the State Infrastructure Fund, to support legal, organizing, and public education work focused on protecting voting rights in states formerly covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The MacArthur funds will support this regranting to organizations working to protect the voting rights of eligible citizens at the state level.

NEO Philanthropy is the fiscal sponsor for the Funders Committee for Civic Participation (the Committee), an affinity group established in 1983 and composed of about 70 foundation staff and trustees, as well as non-profit executives, who fund and support projects intended to strengthen American democracy. The Committee’s primary interests include election administration, campaign finance reform, voter engagement, and redistricting; and its activities aim to improve the knowledge and practices of foundations and grantees through events, research, publishing, and peer support. The Committee has been a source of information for the Foundation’s American Democracy initiative, and, in partnership with the Foundation Center, has worked to document the activities of the philanthropic sector that are related to American democracy.

NEO Philanthropy manages large-scale, collaborative grantmaking funds and provides fiscal sponsorship and project management to initiatives that address social issues. It will use this grant to support the final year of a five-year public policy campaign to bring about significant juvenile justice systems reform in states across the country. Public Interest Projects administers and manages the funding collaborative that supports the national campaign.

The Shelby Response Fund is a donor collaborative fund that seeks to support national, state and local organizations working to protect the voting rights of Americans. The Shelby Response Fund was created in late 2013, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which eliminated the strongest provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The Fund will support nonprofit organizations working at the national, state, and local levels on four interlocking strategies: legal defense; policy development, research, and advocacy; state and local mobilization, communications and media strategies.

Public Interest Projects manages large-scale, collaborative grantmaking funds and provides fiscal sponsorship and project management to initiatives that address social issues. This grant supports the fourth year of a five-year public policy campaign to bring about significant juvenile justice systems reform in states nationwide. National campaign operations and activities include: a central office that identifies target states for policy reform, and oversees state-based campaigns; investments in as many as 24 state policy reform efforts; and national communications and outreach to increase the momentum and visibility of reform and elevate a national dialogue in support of such reform across the country.

The project aims to advance knowledge and action to prevent and respond to dangerous speech that has the potential to catalyze violence through policy-driven research, technical assistance, and advocacy while protecting freedom of expression. Activities supported by the grant include assisting technology companies in developing systems for identifying and responding to inflammatory content online in a way that respects international human rights law and applying dangerous speech monitoring in new contexts.

Public Interest Projects manages large-scale collaborative grant-making funds and provides fiscal sponsorship and project management to initiatives that address social issues. The grant supports the third year of a five-year public policy campaign funded and administered by Public Interest Projects to bring about significant juvenile justice systems reform in states across the country.

Public Interest Projects manages large-scale, collaborative grant-making funds and provides fiscal sponsorship and project management to initiatives that address social issues. This grant will support the second year of a five-year public policy campaign to bring about significant juvenile justice systems reform in states across the country. National campaign activities include: identifying target states for policy reform, and overseeing state-based campaigns; investing in up to 16 state policy reform efforts; and national communications and outreach to promote reform and advance a national dialogue to support it nationwide.

To support the operations of a multi-state campaign to promote juvenile justice systems reform nationally (over 13 months).

In support of the International Human Rights Funders Group project (over three years).

In support of the Chicago component of the "Fulfilling the Dream Fund" (over three years).