Frontline Funds (FLF) has had a productive 2024! It’s time to share highlights and marvel at our grantees’ accomplishments.
FLF awarded 36 grants totaling $194k to grantees in North Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. These funds supported working-class leaders, grassroots efforts, and emergent organizations. The driving purpose of FLF is to respond to urgent community needs in the US South and help groups scale up efforts, identify best practices, and support organizations with less access to traditional funding.
FLF’s grants direct resources by:
- Re-granting funds to group-centered projects designed by directly impacted communities
- Focusing on grantmaking to organizations who prioritize social justice, political education, voter mobilization, & community events and convenings
- Keeping a strong commitment to building community and worker power
Community Building Initiative (CBI) received an FLF grant this year. CBI advances access, inclusion, and equity in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area of NC. They were first founded as a task force in 1997 to help Charlotte respond to a community crisis, since then CBI has evolved from a crisis-inspired response into a permanent, trusted community resource in the long-term work of achieving inclusion and equity.
With their grant, CBI funded the Charlotte Equity Impact Fellowship. This Fellowship nurtures and cultivates community organizing infrastructure in the most fragile corridors in Charlotte, led by emergent Black, Immigrant, and Latino leaders. Each fellow builds their relational capacity using a racial equity lens and understanding systemic oppression across racial, economic, and educational disparity.
Another FLF grant recipient this year was C.A.U.S.E., a grassroots, worker-led movement defending workers’ rights and organizing to battle the corruption and exploitation by Amazon. They seek to form a union to represent all Amazon’s workers, starting in North Carolina. With the help of their grant, CAUSE members attended the Labor Notes Conference 2024, the largest gathering of grassroots union activists, union reformers, workers, and labor movement advocates.
The Green Haven Project also received an FLF grant in 2024. Green Haven is a non-profit organization that creates community farms and resource centers in urban areas such as Overtown and Brownsville in the Miami metropolitan area of South Florida. They educate youth and community members on how to grow food. All they grow in their garden they offer to the community for free. With their grant, they were able to purchase essential farm equipment to expand their growing production and offer more educational workshops.
Mä hñäkihu Language Preservation, based in the Emma community of Buncombe County, NC was an FLF grant recipient this year. They are an Indigenous and immigrant-led organization. Their mission is to preserve and revitalize the hñähñu language and culture with Indigenous immigrants from the Mezquital Valley of Hidalgo State, Mexico.
With the assistance of their grant, Mä hñäkihu was able to perform at the annual Celebrating our Culture Indigenous Festival, a regional festival with over 400 attendees. In their words, “the visibility of Indigenous culture and peoples is key to base-building, establishing our own powerful narratives and changing dominant culture narratives and assumptions about us.”
FLF is so honored to work with such amazing organizations.
It’s truly been a year of hope and connection.
It’s also been a year of dedication, with small steps taken every day.
We look forward to another year of growing strong together in 2025.
There’s always more to do and enough heart to do it with.
This post includes excerpts from the written work of CBI, CAUSE, Green Haven Project and Mä hñäkihu.
