In the years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, ASCEND: BLO has doubled down on our commitment to the wellbeing of Black communities in the Bay Area. We’re excited to share more about our journey here.
During the early years of the pandemic, Black communities experienced a disproportionate impact of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death rates. At the same time, the murder of George Floyd prompted uprisings calling for social, political, and economic change. Philanthropy responded with an urgent and flexible infusion of resources into Black communities. However, several years later, these commitments have decreased or disappeared even as the needs in our communities have grown.
These truths prompted the ASCEND: BLO team to more explicitly center wellbeing in our approach to capacity building. We envision a world where all Black people are free to live, learn, love, succeed, fail, and experience joy in the fullness and complexity of all that it means to be human. A commitment to wellness is central to this vision.
Liberation Begins with Wellness
The leaders of many BLOs in our network experience burnout while providing the essential services that support liberation and wellbeing in the Black community. This leads to high turnover and organizational inefficiencies, resulting in a vicious cycle of unsustainable workloads, ongoing burnout, organizational emergencies, and stagnation. The onset of the pandemic only heightened this capacity crisis. For BLOs to achieve long-term sustainability and continue their essential work in the community, more significant investment is needed to scaffold wellness into the infrastructure of BLOs.
Turning Intention into Action
In December 2023, ASCEND: BLO launched the Pilot Wellness Grants, offering six-month, unrestricted grants of $20K for each of ten grantees to build out or implement wellness programs, initiatives, and practices without burdensome reporting requirements. In line with our commitment to trust-based philanthropy, we encouraged participating organizations to take the time to determine how the wellness funds would best support and benefit their organizations. This could include using funds internally for staff or externally for the community members they serve, such as expanding health services or providing wellness clinics in their communities.
EBCF recently convened the ASCEND: BLO Wellness pilot grantee partner organizations, gaining invaluable insights into how wellness funding has shaped their organizational cultures and daily practices. We have summarized some of the key insights in this report. As we reflect on these findings, we are also excited to share that a new round of wellness grants will be announced later this year.
A Transformative Investment in Wellness
Grantee partners overwhelmingly expressed gratitude for being invited to participate in this wellness pilot, emphasizing that EBCF’s proactive approach made them feel seen, heard, and valued. With these additional resources, organizations were able to interrupt the grind culture of work by offering healing and respite activities for staff, clients, and community members, along with financial stipends to fund wellness activities for staff.
How Organizations Used Their Wellness Funds
Grantee partners leveraged their grants in diverse and meaningful ways to support their teams, including:
- Group wellness activities such as retreats, staff outings, and community-building events
- Dedicated wellness spaces for staff to take restorative breaks.
- Exercise and wellness classes, including yoga, dance, and mindfulness sessions.
- Self-care stipends e.g., $1,000 per year for staff to use as needed.
- Health and wellness fairs to promote holistic well-being.
- Arts and cultural experiences, including community drumming and creative expression.
- Bereavement support for those navigating loss and grief.
- Contracting Black wellness practitioners to provide culturally affirming care and healing spaces.
A Commitment to Community-Centered Wellness
The ASCEND: BLO team remains committed to fostering intentional relationships with grantee partners, co-creating responsive funding opportunities, and removing barriers to access. As we enter this next phase, we will continue to engage deeply with community organizations to ensure that wellness funding remains an integral part of sustaining movement leadership.
Stay tuned for more details about the next round of wellness grants and how we are expanding this work to support even more leaders in their journey toward collective well-being.
Thank You to Our Grantee Partners!
We are grateful to the following wellness grantee partner organizations for sharing their stories with us and helping us as we continue to iterate on the future of this important work. We hope others will consider supporting them and other Black-led organizations doing critical work in these challenging times.
- 3rd Street Youth Center & Clinic serves young people (ages 12-27) living in Bayview Hunters Point in San Francisco. 3rd Street honors the experiences of young people and develops their services and programs by being responsive to their backgrounds and unique perspectives, while building on their inherent strengths and skills.
- African American Community Services Agency (AACSA) works to preserve the dignity and culture of a diverse African American community across Santa Clara, through providing services that promote quality educational, cultural, social and recreational programs, as well as activities that strengthen community.
- Community Works West seeks to transform justice through humanity and healing and honors the lived experience of survivors, incarcerated people, and their communities as expertise through programs that are culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and rooted in restorative justice and the arts.
- Essie Justice Group harnesses the collective power of women with incarcerated loved ones to end mass incarceration’s harm to women and communities. Through their Healing to Advocacy model, they bring women together to heal, build collective power, and drive social change.
- FIERCE Advocates amplifies the voices of Black, Latinx, and other parents and caregivers of color. Through healing-centered care, leadership development, and parent-led advocacy, they partner with parents and caregivers of color to advance equitable access to quality education for all youth and achieve emotional and physical well-being for all families.
- Healthy Black Families, Inc. provides individuals and families with knowledge, skills, and strategies to organize and make social systems and policies more equitable for Black people and communities.
- Healthy Hearts Institute helps to eradicate food deserts through the creation of a community garden and empowers individual and community transformation through education, health and wellness.
- People’s Programs is dedicated to empowering the community of Oakland and building autonomy through grassroots community programs. Instead of relying on top-down solutions, they champion bottom-up approaches to address the core issues affecting the Black community.
- Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) interrupts cycles of violence and incarceration by promoting restorative justice practices and policies in schools, communities, and the juvenile justice system. They offer training, workshops and technical assistance to communities, schools, and justice groups in California and throughout the nation.
- Miss Major & Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center challenges and works to end the human rights abuses committed against Black and Black/Brown Trans people inside and outside of California prisons, jails, detention centers, and beyond. They work to create a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom through direct services, policy advocacy, and leadership development.