Statewide Listening Tour
2023 - 2024 Summary Report
At the Black Future Co-op Fund, we often talk about family. We see family throughout Washington. Whether chosen or by birth, we understand family is important, offering kindred connection and unconditional love. In 2023 and 2024, we conducted a listening tour to gather with our extended family — listening to and learning from Black folks who are actively dismantling systems and serving communities in ways that center Blackness and Black people.
We offer this summary of what we heard as a tool and a guide to support ongoing conversation and action to further Black liberation and prosperity; to hold ourselves accountable to community aspirations and needs; and to propel increased investment in Black-led solutions.
Listening Tour Locations
Read The Full Report
Key Insights
Community Strengths
“It’s important for us to know each other, what work we are doing, and how we are doing it. What I am doing might help someone in their work, and I might be helped by someone else’s work.”
- Ms. Harriet Bryant, Bremerton
Powerful Black-led work is happening across Washington state to promote Black well-being.
In every place we visited, communities are:
Connecting across intersecting issues to respond to immediate needs.
Addressing the systemic root causes of challenges our communities face.
Embracing Black-led solutions to enhance civic engagement, education, economic mobility, public safety, and health for Black people.
Barriers & Challenges
“Philanthropy should focus on addressing the root causes of inequality, such as racism, economic segregation, and lack of access to tables of power, rather than only funding surface-level solutions.”
- Mya Douglas, Kent
Black Washingtonians experience systemic barriers to their well-being.
Centuries of racism and racist practices continue to impede opportunity:
Philanthropic redlining persists.
Post-2020 backlash to DEI efforts has cut off some potential funding sources.
Donors are seeing racially specific programming as risky due to landmark losses like in the Freedom Fund case.
In regions with fewer Black people, safety concerns were raised about harassment and not having secure places to gather together
Black-led and -serving organizations want resources, capacity building, and networking support to further their work.
Organizational leaders and listening tour participants called for:
Increasing multiyear, unrestricted funding to be able to respond to community priorities.
Supporting capacity building with grant writing, fundraising, financial management, communications, policy advocacy, human resources, and more.
Investing in Black leadership and mentorship across issue areas.
Expanding avenues and resources for partnership and collaboration locally and statewide, including creating a community directory.
Providing community gathering spaces where people feel safe to meet.
Investment Opportunities
“Transformation is what is needed. Angela Davis recently said, ‘Belonging means to be treasured,’ and that is what needs to happen. Our children need to feel that.”
- Sidney Morgan, Vancouver
How philanthropy and funders engage with communities matters.
Participants shared feedback to guide community engagement, foster inclusion, and support connection:
It is important to focus on relationships first and foremost.
Collective power building needs to be intergenerational, enabling trusted elders to interject their wisdom.
More youth and young adults need to be part of conversations.
As funders, we must pay attention to societal and organizational hierarchies, and ensure everyone feels welcome.
The Black Future Co-op Fund and other funders can invest in Black well-being statewide.
Participants consistently spoke on these themes:
Recognize that healing is essential to the work of racial and social justice.
Increase multiyear, unrestricted funding for organizations to use as they see fit to advance their missions.
Support capacity building to help organizations raise money, as well as offer assistance and tools to support grant writing, financial management, communications, policy advocacy, human resources, and more.
Invest in Black leadership. Black people want to see other Black people in their workplaces as peers, collaborators, mentors, and role models.
To create the change we want to see, we must fund policy advocacy to change the systems and structures that perpetuate racial disparities.
Next Steps
The visions, challenges, ideas, and opportunities we heard will factor into how we carry out the four primary areas of impact of our strategic plan:
Connecting communities for Black collective power. We understand there’s a strong desire for connecting across issues and geographies, and are excited to do much more in this space to serve as a hub and facilitate networking. Within this area is also healing.
Investing in Black generational prosperity. Much of the feedback on this listening tour centered around opportunities to invest in Black prosperity, liberation, and well-being. Since we launched, we have strived to find and fund the Black leaders, nonprofit organizations, businesses, groups, and associations that are forging pathways to Black self-determination.
Promoting truthful Black narratives. We learned how many communities and organizations are uplifting true narratives. And, we want to be supportive by amplifying their voices, as well as funding artists and capacity in communications and storytelling.
Shifting the philanthropic paradigm. This fourth area is in everything we do. We are doing the work internally in order to become a blueprint externally. We are building relationships with other funders and partners so we collectively increase unrestricted funding flowing into Black-led organizations, businesses, and communities.
We recognize the listening tour was only a sampling of Black Washingtonians. It was not perfect, though the feedback we heard mirrors what each person at the Fund knows to be true from our lived experiences. We see this work as ongoing and requiring broad engagement. If you weren’t able to participate or if you have had additional questions or ideas since the listening gatherings, we hope you will reach out to us at info@blackfuturewa.org.
We are looking forward to 2025 and future travel across the state so we can continue meeting Black Washingtonians and allies. We are inspired to act together in creating the Washington and world we want.