RISE Together Fund (RTF) is proud to have the support of the Libra Foundation. maisha quint, senior program officer at the Libra Foundation, shared her thoughts on the longstanding partnership and how RTF’s work aligns with the foundation’s mission and goals.

What first drew the Libra Foundation to RISE Together Fund’s work and ultimately led to the foundation supporting it?

Libra Foundation has supported RTF since 2019. We aim to be an intersectional funder focused on building grassroots power, and RTF was a naturally aligned intermediary fund that helped us to shrink the funding gap to BAMEMSA communities. Their dedication to supporting frontline organizations to build power through capacity building, responsive funding, and infrastructure support, allow us to provide resources through a bigger tent than Libra could build on its own.

We are especially proud to be in partnership with RTF in a political climate where more communities are facing the intense surveillance and criminalization that BAMEMSA communities have withstood for decades. Since its inception, RTF is consistently clear-eyed that supporting these communities leads to more creative, experienced, intersectional solutions that all of us benefit from.

Why is RTF’s focus on supporting Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (BAMEMSA) communities in organizing and building power so important?

Even with limited resources and in the face of hyper criminalization and manufactured misinformation, BAMEMSA communities continue the critical work of building power across multiple issue areas in service of all our communities. At Libra, we understand that BAMEMSA communities are targeted with some of the most sophisticated surveillance technologies and carceral infrastructure that then expands out to other marginalized populations, making it critical to center BAMEMSA experiences and leadership. Our interventions for social change must center those who experience multiple systemic oppressions.

What do you as a funder find most valuable about RTF’s partnership?

RTF is the standard for true partnership with its grantee partners, an example that all of us in philanthropy would do well to learn from. Their deeply relational approach simultaneously builds trust with funders like Libra and with the frontline groups they serve. At Libra, we have found great value in the learning opportunities RTF provides, via webinars, articles, and in-person convenings, to deepen our own understanding of the multi-issue lives people within BAMEMSA communities face daily. If funders are serious about redistributing resources, sharing power, and creating opportunities for frontline organizations that have been historically shut out from philanthropy, then funding RTF is critical.

How has supporting RTF’s work and the work of its grantees helped to advance Libra Foundation’s mission and goals?

Libra is committed to funding values-aligned organizations like RTF that employ trust-based approaches with peer funders and grantee partners alike, to better resource those closest to our society’s most pressing issues. We are a proud funder of RTF because their responsive, holistic grantmaking enables us to think more expansively, more critically, about our own work and the ways in which we are accountable to the beautifully diverse, dynamic communities of color across our country, to both protect and build alongside them.