Our Goal

The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation prioritizes the needs of women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals of color in all of our work. The creation of this funding area is meant to complement our existing intersectional programming and  fund organizations explicitly involved in activist work to address the impact of racist and patriarchal structures facing women of color and gender-expansive individuals of color. By developing this category, the Foundation has opened up the opportunity for us to fund activist organizations working in this area that do not fit into our other grant categories.

We are committed to our ongoing mission to support the leadership of women and gender-expansive individuals of color and amplify their voices. The Foundation seeks to fund activism that explicitly contributes to anti-racist education that addresses racist policies and oppression of women of color and gender-expansive individuals of color.

“Women of color are suffering, fighting, and organizing on the frontlines. They deserve our continued support. Every day, these women struggle to speak their truth and hold their vision for a future. A future where we are all free to dream, aspire, and thrive. A future where we can just simply walk down the street without the fear of being killed.” – Teresa Younger, President and CEO of the Ms. Foundation, June 2020

We want to eradicate the gag orders on “racial justice, critical race theory, and the teaching of racial injustice in American history.” – African American Policy Forum

“What I know is that many of the people that I’ve worked with have been women. And that has to do with how women and gender nonconforming people have been disenfranchised. What’s happening in low income communities, often what we find is black women, women of color, immigrant women who are concentrated in poverty. Who are impacted by environmental racism and housing discrimination? It’s black women. In our communities, black women are overwhelmingly the breadwinners, and yet our neighborhoods lack the support to help black women, who are heading families, to strive.” – Alicia Garza, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter, November 2017

“Although Black women are routinely killed, raped, and beaten by the police, their experiences are rarely foregrounded in popular understandings of police brutality. Yet, inclusion of Black women’s experiences in social movements, media narratives, and policy demands around policing and police brutality is critical to effectively combating racialized state violence for Black communities and other communities of color.” – Kimberlé Crenshaw, Professor of Law at UCLA and Columbia Law School and leading authority on Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, and racism and the law, May 2015

“…we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.” – Combahee River Collective, April 1977

“AAPI women have always had to protect ourselves from the racism and misogyny that we experience every single day. What we need is cultural and structural change that dismantles stereotypes and guarantees AAPI women the ability to exist without fear in public spaces.” – The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum

“It would be a lie to say that I am not grieving at this moment. Our rights and citizenship in this country remain precarious. That we live in a country that never truly saw people of color, queer and trans communities as free has come into sharp focus. And we know this reality is nothing new. Negotiating instability within a state that denies our humanity has long been a critical coping mechanism. How else do we survive?” – Saida Agostini-Bostic, President, Funders for LGBTQ Issues

What We Look For

The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation would like to fund activist programs, organizations, and initiatives that incorporate the following components through existing guidelines:

  • Program has direct and explicit goal of addressing the social and economic disparities that women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals of color experience due to structural violence and racism.
  • Program engages with, and amplifies the voices of, women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals of color in the community.
  • We look for organizations where women and gender-expansive individuals of color are the primary decision-makers.
  • We look for organizations that address the unique threats to the livelihoods of women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals who reside in both urban and rural areas.
  • Program access is not limited based on financial ability; programming is offered at little or no cost to participants.
  • There is a preference for applicant organizations that integrate gender equity into their personnel policies, such as robust parental leave, child care, flexible work schedules, and relationship abuse workplace policies.

Please note: The Peggy and Jack Baskin Foundation is not afraid of the word feminism! We encourage you to openly discuss your feminist programming, goals, or approach.

To Apply

APPLY FOR A GRANT

Unsolicited proposals will not be accepted.