U.S. residents who are both Black and transgender live at the dangerous intersection of generational racism and two modern streams of right-wing attacks: new, hateful laws targeting transgender adults and children alike, and recent efforts to suppress the Black vote. Add these trends to record-high violence against transgender people, and the resulting toxic cultural mix might make it tempting for funders who are removed from Black trans communities to see them as victims to be saved.
Groundswell’s Black Trans Fund isn’t having any of that. The fund, and Program Officer Bré Rivera, are instead all about joy, resilience and liberation. The fund’s existence, and its approach, are a case study in the progress that’s possible when funders allow people who are directly impacted by oppression to create their own solutions.
Launched in 2020, BTF recently closed its latest round of grant applications for the $725,000 it plans to start moving this year. That’s a big jump from the $209,000 Groundswell’s BTF web page says was awarded to 10 Black trans-led groups in its inaugural year. Rivera told IP that the fund received 50 applications for the current round, which closed on September 15.
Ambitious goals and unique projects
In an environment where trans-led and trans-serving organizations overall still receive only 4 cents for every $100 moved by funders, Groundswell’s Black Trans Fund has planted a stake in some pretty high ground, with a five-year plan ending in 2025 that aims to move $5 million to Black trans-led groups. More than that, its goals include moving 15 major donors and other philanthropic institutions to pledge long-term investments in Black trans communities and to create BTF as a spinoff fund with diversified funding and a hefty reserve.
Current grantees signal the kind of work that the Black Trans Fund was created for. Projects and organizations include mutual aid programs and a project that created a prayer book for Black trans people. One organization, Birmingham, Alabama’s Transgender Advocates Knowledgeable and Empowering (TAKE) Resource Center, has received $75,000 from BTF for its efforts including housing justice, justice for transgender people, and the rights of sex workers and other working trans people.
As a 501(c)(3) funder, BTF doesn’t support electoral work (though Groundswell does help connect Black trans-led groups to other sources of funding for work that would qualify as 501(c)(4) activity). Instead, Rivera said, the primary goal of the Black Trans Fund is to provide communities with “wholesome, loving things that can hold them and support them as we continue this fight” for equity, because “organizing against the state has produced very little wins and change for Black trans communities.”
Regardless of whether or not the state changes its ways, Rivera said, “We are very clear that the infrastructure that we are trying to build now is meant to set ourselves up so we can have all the things that we need, we have the joy, and we’re actually in community with each other,” including in the face of ongoing attacks. “I actually want to create systems outside of the state, because we are tired of fighting against the state.”
Deep relationships, deep support, and a dream realized
Rivera, who before joining Groundswell was herself the founding executive director of a Detroit grassroots organization for trans women of color, said that she has a deep relationship with most of the people running BTF’s grantee organizations.
“We’ve been to conferences together. We’ve slept on couches together, we’ve slept in the same hotels, and so being close on the ground allows me to see the joy work in movement; it actually allows me to be able to see what they’re doing.”
That level of relationship also leads to a personal level of accountability that the fund has toward grantees, something many nonprofit leaders probably wish they could have with their own funders.
“I can’t just walk in community and make decisions and not hear from people,” Rivera told IP. “People text and call me all the time, and they’re like, ‘Hey, why are you moving like this? Hey, you said joy and liberation, so why I got to do X, Y and Z?’” That level of accountability, Rivera said, has led Groundswell to shift application and reporting requirements to meet the needs of its grantees.
The fund also pays all applicable fiscal sponsorship fees for its grantees that have fiscal sponsors. “When we give out $20,000 grants, we give out $20,000 grants,” Rivera said.
BTF grantees aren’t alone in receiving deep support from Groundswell, which is currently paying all of the fund’s overhead costs so the money raised for Black trans-led groups is moved to those groups. Launched in 2015, the Oakland, California-based Groundswell Fund is a re-granting, or “channel” organization whose reported funders include the Open Society, JPB, and Flora Family foundations. Led by a team of women of color, transgender, and gender-expansive people of color, Groundswell supports women’s, girls’ and LGBTQI causes and organizations. The funder reported ending 2020 with more than $34 million in net assets — nearly $14 million more than it had at the beginning of the year.
And according to Rivera, Groundswell as an organization supports her by taking care of many of the day-to-day details involved in running the fund, allowing her to “hold our folks with care.”
“The amount of support I get with BTF is 10 times as much as I’ve gotten when running a smaller, scrappier organization,” she said. “It feels very surreal.”
This situation — the work she’s able to do, and the support she has in doing it — is also the answer to a dream Rivera said she has had for a long time. Years ago, she said, “I was like, my final goal will be, I just want to walk around with a checkbook and just meet with Black trans-led organizations, see their work, meet with the people, and then just write them a check and go on to the next one. And that is what I’m doing now.”
