State of the Spend Out 2025
On February 27, the Kataly Foundation hosted State of the Spend Out, a webinar sharing an overview of our grantmaking in 2024, how our work is evolving, and the questions and goals guiding us in 2025.
Infographic sharing some of the ways Kataly supported our grantee partners since our founding in 2018.
During the webinar, the Kataly team shared:
- How Kataly is meeting this political moment
- A closer look at our grantmaking in 2024, including a breakdown of the type of support we provided to grantees
- An overview of each of our program areas
- Our approach to capacity building
- The challenges of spending out in this political reality
The webinar ended with a Q&A session.
Watch the recording of the webinar and read on for some key insights:
Timestamps:
- 2:27: Introduction by Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation and Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund
- 9:20: Overview of Kataly grantmaking and investments in 2024 by Danielle Royston, Grants Officer
- 15:11: Mindfulness and Healing Justice by Iris Garcia, Program Officer
- 18:57: Restorative Economies Fund by Lina Shalabi, Program Officer
- 25:16: Environmental Justice and Collective Resources by Michelle Mascarenhas, Sr. Program Officer
- 30:26: Capacity Building by Jocelyn Wong, Director of Capacity Building
- 37:21: What’s Next for the Spend Out by Kemi Role, People and Culture Manager
- 46:21: Challenges of Spending Out in this Political Reality by Nwamaka Agbo
- 59:18 Q&A
Key Questions and Reflections:
How will Kataly support grassroots organizations under the new administration, given the potential targeting of our communities?
“Everyone at Kataly feels the urgency in having a clear answer to this question. And to echo what Nwamaka said, philanthropy has a responsibility to be grounded in our response and that not from a place of reactivity or from a place of thinking that we know best.
We are grateful to many of you who have reached out to us to share what you need in this immediate moment and suggestions on what we should consider in how we support grassroots organizations. We know many of you are concerned about your land-based projects, your 501 c3 status, being directly targeted, and losing funding. We want you to know we see you and we stand in solidarity with you.
“For our existing grantees, our Capacity Building team sent out an email last week providing public-facing resources ranging from Digital Security to Navigating Organizational structures to provide some initial guidance on how our grantees can start assess the increased threat environment. Our grantees can also access these resources on the Capacity Building website, and our team will continue to update the website monthly with resources. This is a first step.
“We are working through what resources we can make available specifically for Safety and Security work and we want to take an expansive approach to safety and security which includes organizational safety and resiliency, legal defense, and protection for vulnerable communities, amongst others. We are balancing the need and urgency of this moment with the reality that this type of work requires funding beyond a rapid response. It is really important that this work is informed by our community, so please reach out to your Engagement Officer or any member of Kataly staff if you have feedback and/or specific requests.
“Finally, I want to make some commitments. We are committed to our mission and our values. We are committed to our resourcing power-building in Black, Indigenous, and all communities of color. We are committed to adjusting and responding where we can as you all are adjusting and responding. We will not be deterred in our work. We see our work at Kataly as connected a lineage of movement building and resistance and joy, and now is our time to take what we have learned from our elders and ancestors and build towards the future we were already envisioning.” –Lynne Hoey, Chief Investment Officer
How will Kataly Foundation seed and cement its impact beyond the sunset date?
“Kataly will continue to uphold our values of abundance, experimentation, and community. As Nwamaka has previously mentioned, we must be in the continual practice of decentering ourselves as philanthropy while also being clear and centered in where and how we leverage our power, opportunities, and relationships in service of our mission. Those practices and lessons are in partnership with grantees, investees, and partners; documenting and sharing those lessons learned within our philanthropic advocacy will have an important impact. Being founded as a spend-out also means that we are being deeply intentional about moving towards closure including how we hold the experiences of our team and creating spaciousness for all of the things that may come- fear, grief, excitement. Kataly Foundation is just one formation, and we know our impact will extend and be woven into the work of the incredible grantees, investees, and partners we’ve been honored to learn alongside in this journey.” — Kemi Role, People and Culture Manager
How does Kataly define success when working with with a grantee partners?
“I think we would define our success with grantees based on the extent to which we are living into our values and to the extent to which we are showing up well in our relational approach. Are we creating the conditions for mutual trust and transparency? Are we being responsive to requests for support from our grantees, especially when it involves action beyond grantmaking? Are we moving in ways that are additive and restorative rather than inadvertently replicating harmful or burdensome philanthropic practices? And we rely on various indicators to know if we are achieving success. For example, grantees feel comfortable sharing challenges or mistakes with us and asking for help; we are only asking for information and feedback that we intend to use in service of grantees; or we’ve connected a grantee to a new funder. “ –Jocelyn Wong, Director of Capacity Building
When it comes to funding Mindfulness and Healing Justice, what are you looking for? What metrics matter to you?
“The MHJ program looks to support mindfulness and healing justice efforts, led by Black, Indigenous and People of Color, which are focused on collective healing and transformation, are accountable to communities, and are in service of racial and economic justice. MHJ specifically provides grants to strengthen the infrastructure of BIPOC mindfulness and healing justice organizations and networks; build the pipeline of movement-aligned practitioners; and support land and spaces for collective healing and transformation, including Indigenous rematriation.
“We are specifically interested in organizations and practitioners who have a clear racial justice analysis and a political analysis that acknowledges the systemic & root causes of the intergenerational trauma from which our communities are seeking to heal.
“We have also been reading and thinking about a wonderful piece of research, done by Tatiana Frasier, called the Art of Scaling Deep. Frasier talks about the push from philanthropy for orgs to scale up (influence policy) or scale out (spreading new models), as markers of success, but we need to ask ourselves, is bigger always better? Is a capitalist model of constant growth what we want to base success on for our movements? They instead discuss the concept of Scaling Deep, which they define as “the deep personal and broad cultural transformational work that is required to create durable systems change” and includes a “continual process of reflection, renewal, and interconnected change that requires slowing down and getting better at what one does instead of growing exponentially.” We’d like to offer this as a different way of thinking about metrics and evaluation.” –Donna Bransford, Sr. Program Officer, Mindfulness and Healing Justice
