In Inside Philanthropy, Mandy Van Deven interviewed Kataly’s CEO Nwamaka Agbo about the Foundation’s methodology, values, and guiding principles. Read a few excerpts from their conversation :
“We are really clear about who we want to resource and how we want to resource them, which is Black-led, Indigenous-led, and community-of-color-led projects that serve those communities and do so with a clear power-building analysis. One of the things we are trying to figure out is our flexibility around white-led organizations that want to be in deeper alignment and support racial justice. This is a place where we don’t want to say…
In Nonprofit Quarterly, Kataly Foundation CEO Nwamaka Agbo reflects on the events at the capital last week — focusing on disingenuous calls for harmony and the need for real accountability that confronts the harm that has been done to Black and Brown communities:
“Calling for harmony without accountability for harmful acts — reparations to restore and make whole those who were impacted, or reconciliation that points to systemic changes as policies to ensure these ills won’t happen again — is insincere. …
By Miya Yoshitani, Executive Director at Asian Pacific Environmental Network
Gloria Walton, President and CEO of The Solutions Project
Colette Pichon Battle, Esq., Executive Director at Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy
We have seen our relatives dying in hurricanes and floodwaters. We’ve seen communities gasping for clean air amidst raging wildfires and surrounded by looming refineries that have exposed them to toxic emissions for years. We have seen Black, Brown, poor and Native children anxiously reaching for their inhalers on the schoolyard to fend off an oncoming asthma attack. …
By Donna Bransford and Larry Yang, Senior Advisors to the Mindfulness and Healing Justice Program
This year has taken an incalculable toll on so many in our communities. Over 280,000 Americans alone have died from COVID-19, and the structural inequities resulting from the legacy of settler colonialism, slavery and racial capitalism means that Black, Indigenous and Latinx people have been the hardest hit by this pandemic, dying at three times the rate of white Americans.
Against this backdrop, Black people continued to be brutalized and killed by police and white supremacists, while those in political leadership refused to condemn the…
In November 2018, National Geographic reported that Indigenous People make up 5% of the world’s population and protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity on just 22% of the world’s land mass. One month prior to the release of this article, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that the world only has 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe and mitigate irreversible global warming devastation to the planet, animal life and humanity.
Indigenous communities around the world continue to bear the burden of addressing climate change and saving humanity and the planet, while still having to…
By Jocelyn Wong, Director of Capacity Building and Analyst with the Restorative Economies Fund
Each year, chapters of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) around the world celebrate National Philanthropy Day. This year, AFP Golden Gate recognized Regan Pritzker, co-founder and trustee of Kataly, with the Outstanding Philanthropist Award. Regan delivered an acceptance speech during last Friday’s celebration in which she stated feeling both moved by the honor, but also struck by the complicated nature of receiving such an award, given the historical origins of philanthropy and its longstanding role in perpetuating economic inequalities behind the veneer of generosity.
As…
By Nwamaka Agbo, CEO
While the headlines over the past year, and particularly in this election cycle, are on one hand unbelievable, they are at the same time unfortunately far too familiar for many grassroots communities. The 2020 election season provided a reflection of America that we have never wanted to look at — a series of deep wounds that have never fully healed in the most disinvested and underrepresented Black, Indigenous and communities of color.
This election placed a spotlight on the insidious relationship between money and power and how they are exploited in tandem to undermine our democracy…
The Kataly Foundation held a webinar last week to discuss solidarity philanthropy, its role in social movements and how philanthropy can lean into new relationships with communities built on trust and shared power.
As a foundation we work to ensure that Black and brown people have the resources they need to execute on their own visions of justice. We see wealth as something that is not meant to be accumulated but something that is meant to be shared across generations.
We were overjoyed to be joined by 200 guests who share this collective vision for the future, and are happy…
By Nwamaka Agbo, CEO
Every journey has a beginning, and when we’re lucky, our stories are filled with new starts that point us ever closer to our purpose.
Like so many people I’ve worked with and met over the years, when I started as a young community organizer I played defense. In that critical work pushing back against systems and policies that harmed Black and brown communities, I learned about the history of the philanthropic institutions that I called partners and their role in perpetuating economic inequalities I signed up to change. …
