If traditional funders want to disrupt racism, close opportunity gaps, or advance social justice, they need to support missions that build community power through advocacy for systemic change.

I’ll never forget walking into the library of an immigrant-serving early childhood and adult literacy education program in Boston’s MetroWest suburbs for a board meeting on a cloudy day in May. The building was eerily quiet. Gone was the usual bustle of cafeteria conversations, art therapy sessions, and preschool book readings.

Only one family, recently arrived from Russia, had come to school that day. The rest had stayed home after a video circulated through local Latinx family group chats that morning showing ICE agents in masks and plainclothes violently smashing a Latino man’s car window and dragging him out in handcuffs a mere 500 feet down the street.

Earlier in the year, the program was forced to rapidly redesign its signature annual event to safeguard local families’ safety, privacy, and dignity. If there was any doubt left in my mind about the need to operationalize a new paradigm for running nonprofits within today’s uniquely treacherous political climate for historically marginalized communities in the United States, that day in May extinguished it, underscoring the need to fund advocacy for systemic change.

In an era when federal policies are tearing families apart; undermining the health and safety of immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, and communities of color; and leaving veterans and the working class with the remaining shreds of what was once a stabilizing social safety net, the social sector faces a stark choice: Do we stick with what’s safe and familiar, or do we rise to meet the moment with bold, community-led action and an unapologetic focus on fixing broken systems?

What the world and our sector need now is a radical realignment of grassroots power and advocacy for systemic change: Systemic transformations that situate the perspectives, needs, and agency of the communities we serve at the center of everything we do.

Read the full article about funding advocacy for systemic change by Noel Martin Rubio at Blue Avocado.