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UPDATED: Oct. 21, 2020 at 4:10 p.m.

The Central New York Community Foundation introduced the Black Equity & Excellence Fund in June in light of the current social climate.

“How we decided to do this was to really look at the climate of the society,” said Dashiell Elliott, program officer at the foundation. “And so after the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, we knew we needed to do something and really take a stand on lifting the voices of people that typically aren’t heard.”

To achieve this goal, the foundation has awarded several Black-led initiatives grants through a streamlined application process. All initiatives had to focus on bettering the lives of the Black community in Onondaga and Madison counties. Some of the organizations chosen include Sankofa North East Sector Transformation and Focusing Our Resources for Community Enlightenment.

The Black Equity & Excellence Fund has several funding categories, including the Black LGBTQ community and Black mental wellness. The foundation is also open to new categories of community development proposed by nonprofits, Elliott said.

The Community Foundation of Central New York is working to award Black-led initiatives grants for categories such as the Black LGBTQ community. Courtesy of FORCE

The nonprofit organization Focusing Our Resources on Community Enlightenment requested the grant for its community preparedness and organizational capacity work. Brenda Muhammad, the executive director of FORCE, said the project focuses on CPR training and disaster response, which is important during a pandemic.

Muhammad said the process through which FORCE acquired the grants from the Community Foundation has also reinforced the foundation’s work toward making grants more accessible. This is different from some other philanthropic organizations, which require financial audits over several years as prerequisites for funding nonprofits, which can be a challenge for smaller organizations.

“On a small grant like this, where they’ve made it accessible, we don’t have to have all these years of financial status,” Muhammad said. “These are the things in some things that just make it so hard for small organizations like us who just basically want to do good for the community.”

Nuriyah Boné-Owens, founder of Sankofa N.E.S.T., said the organization’s mission is to “energize urbanites, so that they survive and thrive in urban core neighborhoods.”

The organization has gained about $11,000 for its Griot Guide Project, according to Boné-Owens. The project focuses on giving young people a specific “cultural learning experience” by teaching global and local history and skills such as public speaking, Boné-Owens said.

“(It’s) then going through the creative process of what it takes to develop those histories and heritage experiences, to develop them into stories that a man can turn around and perform and deliver,” Boné-Owens said.

The funds from the Community Foundation have played a significant role in Boné-Owens’ initiative by supporting the programmatic initiatives, including the setup of events.

The Griot Guide Project has also been raising awareness of racial inequity in society by emphasizing the need to look back at many historical and cultural moments, Boné-Owens said.

“We really need to rise to meet this moment,” Boné-Owens said. “We’re thankful that the Community Foundation looked around and said, ‘You know, we need to do something more.’ And they created the Black Equity & Excellence fund.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, Nuriyah Boné-Owens was misquoted. The mission of Sankofa N.E.S.T. is to energize urbanites to survive and thrive in urban core neighborhoods.

Published on October 14, 2020 at 11:58 pm