We launched #1Billion4BlackGirls to uplift and honor their names, to combat the erasure of Black girls in our larger quest for justice, and to make a firm commitment towards a world that protects, nurtures, and celebrates all Black girls and gender-expansive youth.
About
The #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign is a 10-year philanthropic initiative to mobilize a $1 billion investment in Black girls and gender-expansive youth by 2030. Launched on September 15, 2020 by eight Black women and femme leaders in activism, academia, the arts, and philanthropy, this campaign calls for a collective public and private investment of $1 Billion in organizations, institutions, and initiatives that center and support Black girls and gender-expansive youth.
Women and girls of Color account for only 0.5% of $66.9 billion given by foundations in 2017, totaling just $5.48 per woman and girl of Color in the United States. The #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign invites us to imagine what a future could look like if we meaningfully and intentionally invested $1 billion in Black girls and gender-expansive youth.
Co-Founders
LaTosha Brown
Tarana Burke
Dr. Monique Couvson
Fatima Goss Graves
Joanne N. Smith
Salamishah Tillet
Scheherazade Tillet
Teresa C. Younger
About the Black Girl Freedom Fund
The Black Girl Freedom Fund is one of three funding intermediaries that comprise the leadership of the #1Billion4BlackGirls Campaign, alongside the Ms. Foundation and the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium.
The Black Girl Freedom Fund (BGFF) is the largest initiative at G4GC. The Black Girl Freedom Fund raises resources to regrant to organizations that center, serve, and are led-by Black girls and gender-expansive youth. Black girls and gender-expansive youth who participate in the BGFF youth grantmaking council are final decision-makers on many of the grants that are awarded. Beyond regranting, BGFF also engages in advocacy to support Black girls and gender-expansive youth work through research, organizational development, convenings, donor organizing, narrative work, and more. You can learn more about the Black Girl Freedom Fund here.
Black girls, young women, and gender-expansive youth have been on the frontlines of fighting for racial and gender equity, but their stories, lives, and contributions are often overlooked or erased. Investing in them is necessary, urgent, and just — for our collective freedom and to ensure that all Black lives are viewed as valuable today and tomorrow.
Black Girl Freedom Week
Black Girl Freedom Week (BGFW) is an annual week-long celebration in February, started on 2021, of Black girls and gender-expansive youth, and is hosted by the #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign and the Black Girl Freedom Fund. BGFW shows what is possible when we invest abundantly in the dreams, power, and leadership of Black girls and gender-expansive youth — and when we work together to co-create a future where they are safe, free, and thriving.
We chose this week during Black History Month in honor of Toni Morrison’s and Audre Lorde’s birthdays.
Black Girl Freedom Fund is an initiative of Grantmakers for Girls of Color (G4GC). Fiscally-sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, G4GC works to cultivate and mobilize resources to support transformative organizing work led by girls and gender-expansive youth of Color to dismantle systems of oppression in the U.S. and territories.
A note on our founding date
September 15, 2020 was chosen as the launch date of #1Billion4BlackGirls intentionally because on that day, 57 years earlier, four Black girls — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley — were murdered by a Ku Klux Klan member who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Their tragic deaths further galvanized the Civil Rights Movement, ultimately leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And like Sarah Collins, the fifth little girl who survived, millions of other Black girls are simply forgotten.
We launched #1Billion4BlackGirls on this day to uplift and honor their names, to combat the erasure of Black girls in our larger quest for justice, and to make a firm commitment towards a world that protects, nurtures, and celebrates all Black girls and gender-expansive youth.
