Collaboration: Alliance Building Across Movements

PIP's collaborative funds serve an increasingly wide range of partners who focus on social justice issues. As PIP grows, so do opportunities to tap into the synergies between these like-minded funders, grantees and experts. PIP is uniquely positioned to identify and incubate strategic cross-fund and cross-movement opportunities, to explore solutions that connect over programmatic constraints, create capacity, share knowledge and expertise, and support the broader social justice movement.

Through its own strategic planning, and in conversations with its collaborative funds' donors and grantees, PIP is exploring ways to leverage the great potential of strategic cross-fund, cross-movement alliance building. Current efforts include:

• On March 9th and 10th, PIP convened a "Breaking the Silos" strategy session to explore opportunities for alliance building across movements in the social justice sector. Participants included donors across PIP's collaborative funds, other social justice funders, and representatives from grassroots as well as national organizations. As a result of this meeting, PIP will form an advisory committee, develop a concept paper, create a knowledge bank, and lead efforts to increase alliance building support for the field in the form of trainings, research, and other activities. Read the full meeting summary report here. A conversation on alliance building with Rami Nashashibi, Executive Director of IMAN, and Patricia Watkins, Founding Director of TARGET Area Development Corporation:
  

• Videos of all three panels can also be viewed here

• Cross-movement, alliance-building research and analysis-such as the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity's work to assess current efforts to build alliances between African Americans and immigrants, and to investigate the real and perceived points of tension between them. Likewise, PIP's report Alliance Building in Action: Profiles from the Field provides case studies of diverse communities joining forces to address issues of common concern, including racial and economic justice, civic engagement, immigrant rights, education reform, community development, and beyond. Read the full report here.

• An "Overcoming Wedge Issues and Building a Culture of Civic Engagement" panel, co-hosted by the Funders' Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP) and the Four Freedoms Fund (FFF), explored successful alliance-building between widely disparate groups working in different states, uncovering new connections and knowledge-for use by funders and the field alike-to create effective change through civic engagement and alliances between communities.

• Joint-funding initiatives include grantmaking at the intersection of PIP's collaborative funds' interests, including the CPER/FFF initiative for improving educational opportunities for immigrant children, and the FFF/USHRF initiative to use a human rights framework for supporting immigrant rights projects.