Who Are We & Who Are Our People

Grants for Change is a Fund for the people, led by the people. This fund returns resources to Black, Brown, Indigenous, Communities of Color in Maine, unceded land of the Wabanaki, to support community flourishing and the work of dismantling institutional, structural, and systemic forms of white supremacy and settler colonialism.

Values

Four foundational values to guide our strategy and underwrite our impact:

• Returning of Resources – Returning resources and decision-making about resources to communities that have been historically and currently targeted, extracted from, displaced, stolen from, enslaved, murdered, underrepresented, appropriated, and attacked. 
• Equity – We are committed to removing barriers for community members accessing grants in the G4C program.
• Centering Community – People in the community are experts on what the community needs and this is why G4C is continuously evolving to be community-led. The focus for the 2023 G4C process is to further shift the funding support and increase the decision-making by those most impacted by institutional, structural, and systemic white supremacy and settler colonialism: Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). In addition, we want to go beyond trauma-based work and fund BIPOC doing work centered on thriving, joy, peace, community building, resource building, mutual support, art, culture, and sustainability.
• Collective Empowerment and Healing – As communities are still dealing with the dual pandemics of COVID and white supremacy, our attention this year will be on deepening our existing relationships and minimizing the burden of the grantmaking process on Community Leaders.

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Priorities

• We prioritize Black, Brown, Indigenous, Communities of Color in both our decision-making and our funding.
• We prioritize work done on institutional, structural, and systemic expressions of racial injustice and inequity.
• We prioritize work to strengthen community-building, community organizing, grassroots advocacy, and policy change as central strategies for advancing racial justice and equity.