Marguerite Casey Foundation

Help us welcome these 4️⃣ visionary movement scholars to the growing MCF #FreedomScholar community! With this 2024 cohort, there are now 38 Freedom Scholars, leaders in academia whose research provides critical insight from and to social justice leaders and whose ideas encourage us to imagine how we can radically improve our democracy, economy, and society. Add your message of welcome and congratulations in the comments!

We are delighted to launch registration for our final #MCFBookClub event in partnership with Marguerite Casey Foundation celebrating “King: A Life” — the first significant account in decades of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This event features Pulitzer-winning biographer Jonathan Eig in conversation with Dr. Carmen Rojas, PhD (she/her), President & CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation, and Dr. Darrick Hamilton, Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at The New School. Register to join us on November 19th in New York City for a conversation on the intricate dynamics of King’s leadership and legacy in today’s political context. https://lnkd.in/dJ-fgDny

I recently published an op-ed with Candid and I’m eager to share my thoughts on a topic that’s close to my heart: the essential role of public investment in enhancing the lives of everyday communities. From the bustling streets of our cities to the tranquil corners of rural America, if our communities have public resources like parks, libraries, clean tap water, and accessible public transportation, we often take for granted the joys they provide. But resources like parks and clean water aren’t just conveniences—they’re vital components of a thriving society that can only be realized when we’ve got a government that truly serves the people. Despite trillions of dollars in federal and state funds, public services remain inadequate for far too many working families, largely due to decades of free-market ideologies undermining collective goods. But, with the recent influx of federal funding from initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve got a unique opportunity to reshape these systems and vastly expand them to better serve the public. To help propel this effort, Marguerite Casey Foundation launched our Public Dollars for Public Good (PDPG), a bold funding initiative that has already channeled more than $8 million to initiatives organizing to build the unfulfilled promise of vibrant multiracial democracy. I’m proud to say that PDPG is funding organizations like WorkMoney, which are redefining how communities access vital resources. WorkMoney’s innovative “Resource Center” has saved working families more than $660 million by simplifying access to underutilized government benefits. Thank you to Candid Insight for the space to share how we are funding work to reclaim public dollars for the public good and build a more equitable future for all. Read my full op-ed and let me know what you think.

It’s Banned Books Week, and here’s your reminder that during the 2023-2024 school year alone there have been more than 10,000 instances of individual books being banned, nearly triple the previous academic year, according to PEN America. So, I want to take this opportunity to shine a light on one of my all-time favorite authors, Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, and someone who has faced repeated attempts to ban and suppress her writing, especially her groundbreaking novel “The Bluest Eye”. As a young person, I devoured Toni’s novels. The worlds she wove together opened my eyes to new understandings and possibilities, laying the foundation for my appreciation of the power of solidarity. In her first novel, The Bluest Eye, Toni wrote, “This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late.” Her words are a potent invitation to dig into questions like: What flowers are we watering? What seeds are we committing to nurture and grow? As we honor her work during #BannedBooksWeek (and every week), let’s celebrate the power of art to spark our collective imaginations about what’s possible for the kind of future we want and the solidarity we must build to bridge to better times.

So much wisdom dropped in this video! Watch and share this if you're looking for a deeper understanding of the power and history of student-led Disclose and Divest movements and their ongoing impact from the struggle against war to the push for greater transparency in university endowments. Huge shout out and gratitude to our speakers MCF Freedom Scholars Dr. Davarian Baldwin and Robin D. G. Kelley, MCF board chair Ian S. Fuller, and organizer Aditi Rao. 🤩

Sign up now and mark your calendars to join us next week!

"We should be regulating corporate capture; instead, our government has enabled it. Tenants are confronting this capture by organizing toward a world in which housing is guaranteed as a public good." - MCF #PublicDollarsForPublicGood advisor Tara Raghuveer in Nonprofit Quarterly "It is in exposing the corporate capture of higher education that we find… the staging ground for ... creating new pathways for social transformation." - Dr. Davarian Baldwin, director of MCF #PublicDollarsForPublicGood grant recipient organization Smart Cities Research Lab Discover insights and lessons about how organizers are fighting #CorporateCapture by directing #PublicDollarsForPublicGood in this three-part article in Nonprofit Quarterly.

8️⃣ day countdown to the 2024 #FreedomScholar awards announcement! This year our Freedom Scholar award celebrates 💥 $9.5M 💥 over 5 years 💥 to a total of 38 movement scholars. Sign up to be among the first to meet this visionary 2024 cohort: CaseyGrants.org/SignUp.

🚀 The news is out! Under Carmen Rojas' leadership, Marguerite Casey Foundation has transformed our endowment from less than 20% to 97% in values-aligned investments—all while outperforming traditional benchmarks. Check out this breaking interview with Carmen in Inside Philanthropy for key insights into how MCF’s board and staff worked together to ensure that the full weight of our philanthropic capital serves the public good. From lowering the asset threshold to increasing the number of diverse investment managers to leveraging our shareholder influence. MCF is proud to model how funders can focus on sustainable, ethical growth that doesn’t exploit people or the planet. Read more and join the movement to set a new standard for philanthropy!  #ValuesAlignedInvesting #Philanthropy #SustainableFinance

As the political landscape continues to evolve, one thing remains clear: challenging fascism in the United States will require building durable multiracial working people’s coalitions.   Join me for our next live MCF Summer School webinar, Building a Multiracial Working People’s Coalition, with Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants; Faiz Shakir, executive director of More Perfect Union; and MCF Freedom Scholar Dr. keeanga-yamahtta taylor, professor in the Department of African-American Studies at Princeton University. Together we will explore the obstacles movements face in building multiracial coalitions and the roles community organizers, progressive journalists, and academics can play in overcoming those challenges and weaving together intersectional coalitions. Our expert panelists will illustrate the actions each of us can take right now to build coalitions capable of organizing to win the needs and dreams of working people.   #MCFSummerSchool sessions are live events, and full recordings will not be available after the session. Summer School is also open to reporters who can help spread the important ideas shared by panelists far and wide. I hope to see you there: https://lnkd.in/gbdVg7Th.