The country was in a “movement moment” in which public attention was on issues central to the Foundation’s mission. Issues central to structural racism—discriminatory policing, mass incarceration, punitive school discipline, immigrant detention and deportation, privatization of education and other public systems—were brought into the national consciousness.
Across the country, young people of color, their families, and communities rose up to challenge racist, homophobic, and xenophobic sentiment. For Hazen’s grantees, the rhetoric and actions in this moment were not new. Youth of color had shown great leadership through formations such as Black Lives Matter, Dreamers, #NeverAgain, and the LGBTQ movement, and their understanding of the intersectional as well as structural contours of oppression were entering the national dialogue.
Their courage and determination led the Foundation to consider how we would rise to meet them in the struggle. Hazen believed that our fundamental support of organizing for racial justice was needed immediately, perhaps more than ever. We understood that this moment presented tremendous challenges, but also unique opportunities.
As a result, the board of directors decided to go all in and spend out the full endowment of the Foundation over five years, from 2019-2024. In that time the Foundation prioritized the following:
Further, we sought to interrogate our own practices during this period in order to better align them with our values and goals. Just as we were looking to the field to question what it meant to do work that was truly transformational, at Hazen, we sought to learn about and attempt to operationalize anti-oppressive practices through our systems and interactions with the field.
With any remaining resources, Hazen made funds available for grantees to build new muscles, test out strategies and tactics, pursue campaigns that had the potential to be transformational, and consider questions of infrastructure. We also continued to make small grants for projects for which a quick infusion of resources could have a catalytic impact.
For the 2015 through 2019 period, Hazen reaffirmed its commitment to the mission and focus on support for grassroots organizations that develop the capacity of adults and young people. Specifically, we focused on organizations that generated sophisticated analyses of their experiences living in a society shaped by structural oppression and to identify issues central to that oppression, build power, and strive to change them. Looking to incorporate what we learned over the past four years and to respond to the evolving work in the field, the Foundation established the following goals for 2015 through 2019:
Knowing that social change requires a powerful constituency committed to advocating for justice, Hazen continued to focus grant resources predominantly on grassroots organizations and activities that directly support their efforts. The Foundation made one-, two-, and three-year grants to organizations that are engaged in organizing for education justice and youth organizing, specifically those with a structural approach to dismantling racialized policies and advocating for just solutions to inequity. The grantees were selected from among the Foundation’s current group of core grantees, but not exclusively so, nor did all current grantees continue to receive support. While there was great benefit to the previous strategy of sustained funding over four years, the decision limited greatly the number of organizations receiving grants and provided no point of entry for new work. By staggering the grant periods, the Foundation hoped to provide funds to a broader range of organizations over the five years.
Finally, Hazen long embraced its role as an advocate for the work of our grantees but also the larger fields of organizing for education justice, youth organizing, and racial justice. The review of the past four years also made clear that the Foundation’s efforts contributed to the development of these fields, increasing support from the philanthropic sector and policy makers, and expansion of activity on the ground, but there was room for growth of Hazen’s communications capacities in service of the mission. Therefore, as resources are available, the Foundation sought opportunities to bring forward its experience as a funder of organizing for racial justice and that of the grantee community.
In 2009, the Edward W. Hazen Foundation adopted a new mission statement making structural racism the central framework and focus of our work and identified the following goals to guide the Foundation through 2014:
Hazen’s grant programs during this period supported community organizations engaged in organizing for education justice and youth organizing on a range of issues, including education, immigration, juvenile justice, and LGBTQ rights. In addition to direct financial support, Hazen created a capacity building initiative to increase the effectiveness of grantees’ racial justice analysis, internal training, and organizing campaigns. The Foundation also actively and intentionally engaged with peer foundations and the broader philanthropic sector to increase support for the fields of education and youth organizing and for grantmaking that explicitly addressed race.
The Foundation assisted grantees and the fields of youth organizing and organizing for educational justice in increasing their ability to analyze conditions and policies and develop campaigns and strategies that address root causes of structural racism and, as appropriate, account for the distinct impacts of gender and gender identity, disability, immigration status, economic class, and other factors.
During 2014, Foundation staff and consultants completed a review of the progress towards Hazen’s strategic goals. Their key findings included:
