In December 2023, the Black Solidarity Economy Fund working group redistributed $280,000 to 48 Black-led solidarity economy projects!
BSEF funds not distributed this year will be used as seed funds for next years’ round of re-granting, and support the BSEF working group’s strategic planning retreat to create a long term strategy for the fund. In the future, we would love to be able to ensure every applicant is able to receive some funds, regardless of the strength of their application. However, that will require larger investments from those in philanthropy to ensure there are actually enough funds to be distributed to every organization that needs funding. This year’s granting process revealed there are an abundance of Black-led cooperatives and Black-led organizations who are working on building the solidarity economy.
BFEN Farm To School Work Group | Buffalo Food Equity Network
Food for the Spirit (hereafter F4tS) is a steward of the Buffalo Food Equity Network (hereafter BFEN). The BFEN is a network of people of color working to support a movement for Western New York’s (hereafter WNY) new food economy一initiatives that fight the conventional food system currently under-serving communities of color. There are approximately 170 members in the BFEN. A subset of BFEN members – made up primarily of Black women, parents, and youth development professionals – have identified the need for community involvement and interventions in the meal program of the Buffalo Public Schools. Through the development of a farm-to-school work group within the network, the BFEN positions itself to employ methods of self-determination as the basis of its operations.
Black Liberation Cooperative Academy | Cooperation New Orleans Loan Fund
The Black Liberation Cooperative Academy (BLCA) is our flagship program for engaging and centering the needs of working class Black New Orleanians in the development of our local cooperative ecosystem. Simultaneously a political education program, ecosystem building project, and cooperative business incubator, BLCA seeks to 1) engage Black native New Orleanians in the project of organizing our local solidarity economy, 2) center the leadership and innovations of African Americans and Black communities across the diaspora in the realm of cooperative economics, and 3) engage in culturally informed popular education that invites all members of the community, especially those of indigenous and African descent, to connect to our own cultural histories of cooperative economics.
Black Solidarity CLTs and Cooperatives for Housing Justice | Struggle for Miami’s Affordable and Sustainable Housing, Inc. (SMASH)
SMASH is a Black-led Community Land Trust nonprofit organization focused on developing strong community leaders, advocating for racial, gender, housing and climate justice, creating strong alliances with community members and organizations by fostering solidarity amongst the Black population and empowering our Black community members, most of them being women and youth affected by racism, discrimination, slumlords abuse, gentrification, displacement and even homelessness.
Black Solidarity Cooperative Conference & Exchange | Repaired Nations
Repaired Nations partners with Abibikwantuo to bring you this cultural exchange trip which is designed to create pathways for Afrikans in the diaspora to reinvest in Ghana re-generatively, without perpetuating the inequities of today’s capitalism. Here, we would be traveling as well as networking with a group of people with an interest in cooperation, growing businesses and networks across the diaspora.
Black Sustainability Institute | Black Sustainability, Inc.
To increase accessibility to culturally relevant education and resources on how to (re)build the communities we want to live in, we are creating a virtual education platform. This project is in direct response to the requests from our current members (already using our private social site) to go further and support community development/design through courses, modeling and aligned/skilled peer feedback. This way members can get connected to aligned coop development programming, reparative agroecological practices, water resources, in-person eco-housing workshops and all of our industry house programming in a virtual way so they can cooperatively design a virtual model other members can critique and help refine swiftly – decreasing the margin of error for sustainable community development. The final design can be saved and replicated in fellow members’ locale if they want a working model.
breadfruit
breadfruit is a worker-owned cooperative focused on woodworking and other Indigenous maker practices (earth centered architecture, furniture making, sculpting, textiles and clay art). We co-create and share refurbished furniture, home goods, and skill shares with working-class Black, Indigenous and People of Color in NYC. We believe that by returning to and uplifting Indigenous making practices we honor the self-determination of our ancestors and speak/build their legacy into the future.
Building New Models within the Social and Solidarity Economy | Womxnist Liberation Cooperative
Womxnist Liberation Cooperative (WLC) is a Black-owned nationwide, multi-stakeholder co-op providing a multitude of services while building a sustainable infrastructure for our members that encourages autonomy, agency and access to the resources needed to support themselves and their families.
CMB Cooperatives | Community Movement Builders
Community Movement Builders (CMB) is a member-based collective of black people creating sustainable, self-determining communities through cooperative economic advancement and collective community organizing. We create cooperative enterprises as an alternative resource generator for people and communities. Our cooperatives are in a development stage, where worker-owners are being brought on to share in revenue and decision making. These co-ops develop alternative models of economic enterprises, which focus on collective decision making, healthy products/services, and a fair distribution of resources earned. This creates meaningful paid labor opportunities for people in the community.
Cooperation Racine
Cooperation Racine is an alternative, cooperatively owned and operated art center in West Englewood, founded by Black and Latine artists and makers. Our building features studios, workshop classrooms, live/work apartments, a retail storefront, a rotating gallery, and a community wellness space. Our specialty retail store offers a diverse range of products including art supplies, contemporary streetwear apparel, books, vinyl records, and home goods. We make creative endeavors more accessible by providing affordable live/work spaces and tiered memberships for facility use, in addition to four to eight-week workshops in woodworking, photography, writing, and visual art. Our worker-owners also provide custom fabrication services, creative consulting, private space rentals, and event hosting, particularly emphasizing individuals and organizations serving Greater Englewood.
Cooperation Richmond
Cooperation Richmond is a nonprofit cooperative incubator on a mission to empower Richmond’s communities of color and historically marginalized peoples by nurturing cooperative businesses. This project is a multifaceted initiative that acts as a one-stop shop for the incubation, education, training, mentorship, and capital support necessary to create, transform, and sustain successful co-op businesses. The primary aim of Cooperation Richmond is to build community-controlled wealth and address economic disparities by redirecting wealth back into the hands of those from whom it has been historically extracted.
Cooperative Business and Social Enterprise Incubator | Co-Op Dayton
Co-Op Dayton is a social enterprise incubator and community empowerment hub focused on building cooperative models for Black, blue collar, and other disenfranchised communities in Dayton, OH – with the intention of creating scalable models that can be replicated across the Midwest and around the country. Leveraging community organizing and popular education, innovative cross sector partnerships, and an evidence-based community ownership model, we are rebuilding the historically racialized and redlined community of West Dayton through creative solutions that are reflective of and accessible to everyone in our community. To date, our collaborative has driven more than $9M in investments to our neighborhoods, established a first of its kind community-owned grocery store in a neighborhood formerly impacted by food apartheid, and supported more than 20 enterprise teams in bringing their cooperatives to life.
Creating a Solidarity Economy for Houston’s Third Ward | We Are The Ones
We are working to establish a cooperative solidarity network as a neighborhood, municipal, and regional strategy for generating community wealth and establishing fully participatory democratic practices. Building a general framework for a scalable cooperative network that provides structured, centralized, and comprehensive programming for community members. With a goal to support the local economy, preserve the history and culture of the community, as well as maintain community stability and cohesion.
Creating Lasting Change: Strategies for Community Revival | Stellar Roots
Stellar Roots is a Black and queer-led intentional community, based in the rural Appalachian Region of Central Virginia, that crafts opportunities for the rejuvenation, replenishment, and harmonious connection of Black and Black queer women with the natural world.
Creating Self-Sustaining Afroecological Economies in the Mid-Atlantic | Black Dirt Farm Collective
The Black Dirt Farm Collective (BDFC) is a collaborative of Black farmers, educators, scientists, agrarians, seed keepers, organizers, and researchers guiding a political education movement grounded in the Just Transition framework. Through our cultivation of sacred, ancestral relationship with food and Mother Earth, BDFC works to activate Black agrarian communities’ personal, cultural, and technical capacities to be used as transformative organizing tools to preserve a just and livable planet for future generations.
Crenshaw Cooperative Bakery | Cooperation Crenshaw
Cooperation Crenshaw is coordinating an effort to develop worker cooperative businesses within South Central that will be locally and democratically owned and operated. The grant will go toward our first development project, a worker cooperative bakery as a community facing business to educate and serve, plus a business services hub for a future network of worker cooperatives. One key next step is to develop a foundational “demonstration cooperative”, a Black-Centered worker-owned business that will build wealth for worker-owners, serve an important community need, and build resources around cooperative financing, development and education.
DC Mutual Aid Apothecary
The DC Mutual Aid Apothecary (DCMA) is a volunteer-led, mutual aid organization in DC that was founded in 2020 as a response to COVID-19. Over the past three years, DCMA has grown from a rapid response project to an intentional network of herbalists, community health practitioners, farmers and organizers who work together to provide accessible herbal products, education, consultations, and resources to an intergenerational community in DC. Rooted in practices of community care and ancestral wisdom, DCMA is working to create a more just healthcare system in DC by strengthening and growing an alternative vision for what health looks like for our community.
Endstate ATL Mutual Aid Programs | Endstate ATL
Endstate ATL’s mutual aid programs are used to make an intervention into the organized abandonment experienced by Black Atlantans, while using this as an opportunity to contextualized our struggles through political education. Our Black Power Fund and Pack Provides programs were both started in response to needs we saw in the community — particularly with predatory utilities charges and lack of support for caregivers and families.
Equipped with Culture | Symbodied
Symbodied’s mission involves providing socio-economically rooted, historically contextualized, and culturally relevant consulting and project assistance to organizations. Our approach emphasizes inclusive decision-making processes and equitable resource distribution, aligning with principles that encourage collective participation. Inspired by the ideas of leaders who championed social justice and empowerment, Symbodied embraces a vision that prioritizes community welfare and equitable development. By integrating these principles, we strive to create a space where ethical, mutually beneficial relationships can thrive, contributing to positive social change.
Expansion After Pasteurization Study | Pecan Milk Worker Cooperative, Inc.
Our co-op was founded in November 2014 in Atlanta, GA. We have a mission of creating dignified work for historically marginalized communities throughout the South. Our project is to get Pecan Milk to more people following just recently being able to access thermal pasteurization for the nut milk.
‘We Own This’ Community-Owned Grocery Store | Fertile Ground Food Cooperative
Prompted by a drive to build community and provide resources, Fertile Ground Food Cooperative (FGFC) began its journey 12 years ago in December 2011. Residents and community organizers met to explore creating a cooperatively owned coffeehouse and meeting space. After two grocery stores closed in Southeast Raleigh in 2012-2013, the group developed a framework for a cooperatively-owned grocery store that would meet the community’s need for healthy food access and a safe communal gathering space.
Food Justice Expansion | Workers Revolutionary Collective
Workers Revolutionary Collective (WRC) is a general circle of civil rights, social action, and advocacy collectives uplifting the needs of – and organizing working class people. Grounded in the community, we are standing in solidarity and coordinating with working class people to abolish our shared struggles – ending our collective exploitation. To effectively do this we are engaging in non-violent struggles through empowering working class organizers, producing creative narratives, offering holistic educational workshops and training, and obtaining and securing community wellness needs. By centering working class needs and understandings, we are building community-based forms of support free from domination and oppression.
Forever Flourishing | Loving Black Single Mothers
Forever Flourishing is an intimate year-long ecosystem that holds, deeply nourishes, and materially supports a cohort of Black single mothers. We hold at the core that Black single-mother-led families deserve to thrive and flourish. We believe that Black single mothers and their children are more than worthy of being nourished, seen, supported, and financially sovereign. We trust Black single mothers and deeply value their contributions, their wisdom, and their presence in our communities…always, all ways.
Free Store | Black Mamas Village
We are planning to launch a free store in our new physical location. In order to accommodate the inventory for the free store, this project will require storage solutions and operations funding.
Free Store Fridays | Sol Underground
Free Store Fridays is a weekly gathering for community members looking to trade and redistribute everyday goods outside of the exploitative capitalist economy that burdens so many of us. Since starting Free Store Fridays gatherings almost 2 year ago, we have grown faster than we can keep up with. We went from hosting the Free Store twice a month to hosting it 3 times a month with pop up’s in nearby cities and launched a weekly grocery delivery program thanks to our previous BSEF grant. As we continue to build capacity and momentum, we are working towards expanding and fully establishing a Free Store Network with more permanent and sustainable roots.
From Farm to Food Hub | Brooklyn Packers
Brooklyn Packers is the only Black-led worker-owned food sourcing, packing and distribution cooperative in New York City. Since 2016, we have served as a conduit between local farms and city marketplaces to build food sovereignty in Brooklyn, NY. We are helping to recreate our local food ecosystem by directly bringing high-quality food from mostly BIPOC/queer/women-owned farmers and food producers in the northeast region to retail markets and local underserved communities in the city. Through our online market, Brooklyn Supported Agriculture (BSA), we bring our food directly to local neighborhoods. We sell a curated selection of fresh vegetables, seasonal fruit, and other food staples on a CSA sliding scale price model to ensure quality food is affordable and accessible to all. Our produce is cultivated sustainably, and as much as possible, has been grown or made locally in the tri-state area.
Gangstas To Growers feat. Sweet Sol & Kwanz-opp Co-ops | The Come Up Project
Gangstas to Growers (G2G) is an agribusiness training program for our formerly incarcerated. We are located in the city of Atlanta and powered by The Come Up Project, a multi-faceted social enterprise that builds worker-owned cooperatives. Rooted in political education, economic empowerment and transformative healing, our vision is to develop self-sustaining institutions that create real-world impact and sustainable systems change.
General Operating Support | Fresh Future Farm
Gentrification Resistance Project-Commitment to Preserving and Building Detroit’s Culture and Economy | Freedom Dreams
Freedom Dreams (we have taken our name from the 20th century book title by Robin DG Kelley, Freedom Dreams) has deep personal and family roots in our east side neighborhood and more than five decades of political activism, involving members and evolving relationships with the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center. We are both preparing for the future and resisting the harmful effects of gentrification currently taking place in Detroit. We are a concrete emerging strategy committed to transforming ourselves, preserving our culture and creating more accessible opportunities for our neighbors, our young people, and ourselves to provide for our material and emotional needs.
Global Black Solidarity Economy Newsletter | Collective Diaspora
The Collective Diaspora newsletter is a quarterly electronic newsletter covering the latest activities of all elements of the Black solidarity economy across the African diaspora. We aim to add 3 Black Solidarity Economy Media Fellows affiliated with Black cooperative movements in three different regions of the Americas to our team who would be able to collect and report on events in their region.
Homestead Incubation Program | iLOGIC
iLOGIC currently operates on a 5 acre homestead which offers training in the above mentioned areas. We are able to offer this training as a result of actually living the life and inviting our cohorts to participate in the practical application of the knowledge and skills that we share. Our fundamental belief is that if we share the knowledge that we have with one another, that knowledge will lead to greater access to resources which can then be shared for the building and benefit of all of us. This is demonstrated by the effectiveness of our work-trade groups. barter and trade practices, skill share experiences and the growth and development of our programs thus far.
Jeffrey Mathis Community Free Library Project/The Ke’nekt Book Club | The Ke’nekt Cooperative
The Ke’nekt Cooperative is a Black Liberated Third Space where the community gathers to exchange ideas. The Ke’nekt Cooperative is a community resilience hub that provides grassroots economic reparative intervention strategies rooted in fostering mutual aid strategies. Our innovation is rooted in the community relationships/trust that we have nurtured for 10+ years where we live and work.
LandCorps | Parable of the Sower Intentional Community Cooperative
We are a transformational feminist economy through Tu Mpito. We provide holistic services through community organizing, housing, and health services.
New Era Dayton | UP the Collaborative
Perinatal Safety Net Fund | Black Mamas Community Collective
We are a group of everyday women dedicated to an extraordinary movement to save the lives of Black mothers. Black Mamas ATX’s goal is to reduce and ultimately eliminate the alarming maternal mortality and morbidity rates among Black women. Through programs, increased awareness, training, outreach, and research, Black Mamas ATX is leading the charge in Central Texas to help Black mothers get the education and access to resources needed to have healthy pregnancies and birthing experiences.
Political Education in Action: Atlanta to Acholiland
The Political Education in Action: ATL to Acholiland (PEiAAAA) aims to establish the essential conditions required for the liberation of Acholi peoples from the U.S South to the Global South.This is achieved through political education, addressing immediate needs, and rooting land/infrastructure building projects to pro people, anti-capitalist histories. By remaining accountable to our authentic histories as we take action, PEiAAA envisions a world where all colonized peoples, from the U.S South to the Global South, can genuinely attain liberation. We do this in three main steps: Network Cultivation, Political Education, and Action.
Resourcing Mosaic | Mosaic
Mosaic is a Black trans-led cooperative that organizes relationships and resources toward the leadership, safety, and autonomy of Black trans men and trans masculine folks.
Rebuild Tullahassee | Congressional Black Caucus for New Urbanism
The Congressional Black Caucus for New Urbanism presents the ReBuild Tullahassee, a dedicated effort to revitalize the oldest Historic Black Town in Oklahoma. This town predates the very establishment of the state of Oklahoma and was granted to freedmen by the US federal government, courtesy of the Native Americans displaced during the Trail of Tears. Over the years, Tullahassee has faced challenges such as redlining, disinvestment, and the aftermath of the nearby Black Wall Street Massacre, located just a 40-minute drive away.
Sankofa Village Arkansas
Sankofa Village Arkansas’ mission is to transform multigenerational community wellness through land stewardship & education. We center Black healing, liberation & regeneration in our work toward housing affordability, wealth-building, and climate resiliency. We are a forming intentional community, and future community land trust and cooperative incubation site.
Seeding Solidarity Youth Council | Solidarity STL Inc
Seeding Solidarity (Youth Council) is a program dedicated to mentoring youth, primarily black and brown, by educating them on the solidarity economy movement and empowering them with ways to implement solidarity practices’ into their lives. This particular project focuses on the healing and land justice through teaching the youth herbalism, ethical foraging and hoodoo traditions while also giving them free access to black therapists, social workers, spiritual life coaches, sound therapists and farmers.
Solidarity ROOTS Permaculture Design Certification Training | Solidarity Yaad International
Solidarity ROOTS Permaculture Design Certification Training is an in-person experiential training on our farm in St. Ann parish, Jamaica. We will engage 30+ gender-expansive BIPOC and LBTQI+ women land stewards and activists from across Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, USA, UK, and other locations on our farm.
Soufside Healing and Safety Initiative | Herb and Temple
The Soufide Healing and Safety Initiative is a collaborative project located in Southeast, Washington D.C. that organizes healing practitioners, violence interrupters, community organizers, aligned organizations, and directly violence impacted elders, children, and adults to develop a Black led-community healing cooperative in the immediate; and a comprehensive community-determined safety program in the long-term. This is an abolitionist project that centers political education, healing justice, restorative justice, and spiritual development to mediate the violent impact of poverty, racism and state-sanctioned violence that our communities experience.
SSR Environmental Justice Data Toolkit | Southern Sector Rising
The SSR Environmental Justice Data Toolkit Project seeks to support frontline communities in Southern Dallas who are disproportionately harmed by racist zoning regulations, policies, and practices. We aim to accomplish this by improving our organizational capacity to collect, analyze, and interpret qualitative and quantitative data that reflect the complex needs of the affected residents.
Teach22’s Earth School | OurSpace World, Inc.
Teach22’s Earth School addresses the interrelated family-identified challenges of traditional school by offering a family-focused nature immersion program that centers Black children. By collaborating with families, the program will cultivate the next generation of Earth healers, stewards, and warriors by offering an interdisciplinary, Afrocentric, nature-based curriculum. Learners will engage in hands-on and minds-on activities and make real-world connections with each other, themselves, and the community around them.
The MHEC GAP Fund | Maternal Health Equity Collaborative
The Maternal Health Equity Collaborative (MHEC) comprises four birth support and two parent support organizations that collectively serve Central Texas. Our guiding pillars are birth worker sustainability, thriving communities, power building and organizing, and holistic care. We take a two pronged approach to fulfilling these pillars by supporting each organization in caring for their staff and through our collective Childcare Program.
the New Afrikan Anti-Imperialist Bookstore | Worcester Youth Cooperatives
Presented by Worcester Youth Cooperatives, the New Afrikan Anti-Imperialist Bookstore (NAAIB) is an initiative to steward a critical piece of movement infrastructure in Worcester. The plan for NAAIB emerged out of the sessions of WYC’s 2023 “Dare to Co-op Academy,” and it covers the scope for operating a worker-owned bookstore and community space dedicated to New Afrikan and anti-imperialist books. NAAIB also serves as a safer space for knowledge production and sharing, solidarity, and growth among Black/New Afrikan people and people who uphold anti-imperialist principles and politics. As an emerging cooperative enterprise, NAAIB has four New Afrikan/Black members with an average age of 23.
The Sustainability Project | Camp 1 Rootz
The Sustainability Project is a sustainable living environment and community in Port Gibson, MS and the immediate surrounding communities. The project is an ongoing development of a community network of local residents, businesses, and organizations that harness the natural resources and innate abilities and talents of the people to promote and establish greater control over the basic processes of meeting the needs of the people in a sustainable and collective manner. This project includes access to land that is in need of development for agricultural use, development of community housing, power supply, and water supply.
Together We Thrive: Parenting for a Liberated Future | Cards by Dé
Together We Thrive: Parenting for a Liberated Future, is a crafting and learning space for folks who identify as parents, who are looking to build community with other parents, share tips and tricks for difficult conversations, continue their activist/movement work with a new addition(s) and receive much-needed affirmations, love, and joy through their journey. Parenting is political and a deep form of resistance and we want to pour into that resistance.
Union Community Fenceline Cooperative Space Project | Louisiana Just Recovery Network
LJRN team and advisory council members are deeply connected to the historic realities of land grabs of ancestral black land in Cancer Alley. There is also still much oral history, intact, where land is still in the same family. Myself and members of our team and our advisory council have family ties to land that goes back to before their ancestors were freed from enslavement. This valuable knowledge and connection cannot be overstated. This land belongs back in their hands and their community’s hands. There is interest amongst our community in learning about cooperative land models, resurfacing models for cooperative ownership that already exist, and reinjecting this knowing into our community.
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