2020 Pilot Cohort
The following are data points about the first-ever Securing the Roots* cohort. This particular group of individuals represent a skilled and diverse grouping of leaders in the Philadelphia region who work in a number of nonprofit, change-making organizations.
12 individuals represented different organizations
83% are BIPOC, 83% are gender oppressed
99% overall attendance at six, four-hour monthly meetings, and as high assignment completion rate
100% developed organizational budgets and resource mobilization plans
100% completed a resource ask as a direct result of the fellowship
2020 Alumni
Nikki Grant, Amistad Law Project
I am a co-founder of Amistad Law Project, which combines law, organizing, and advocacy to defend the rights of incarcerated people and to move towards the abolition of the prison industrial complex. I am proud to be a movement lawyer that organizes with a multiracial and intergenerational working-class community.
Charles Barrett Adams,
Lion’s Story
Race has shaped my life in both beautiful and troubling ways. Born into a short-lived interracial marriage and working in education for more than two decades plus, I wrestle with and consider how race impacts and shortchanges so many. Right now, my focus is on racial literacy, dialogue and healing.
Erika Guadalupe Núñez, Juntos
Erika Guadalupe Núñez (she/her/hers/ella) is a queer immigrant, artist, and cultural organizer. After emigrating from Mexico at a young age with her mother, Erika Guadalupe grew up sin papeles and eventually sin miedo and began working as a community organizer for various local and national campaigns for immigrant rights in 2011 and now serves as the Executive Director of Juntos. Juntos is a community-led, Latinx immigrant organization in South Philadelphia fighting for our human rights as workers, parents, youth, and immigrants.
Candace McKinley, Philadelphia Community Bail Fund
I am the Lead Organizer for the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, a group formed in May 2017 with the mission of ending cash bail and pretrial detention in Philadelphia. Until that day comes, we raise money to bail out as many of our neighbors as we can. Since our founding, we've spent $1.4 million to free 372 people from pretrial detention.
Jamila Medley, Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance
I am executive director of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to growing the cooperative economy to build racial justice, wealth equity, and community control.
Nancy Nguyen, VietLead
I am the Executive Director and a co-founder of VietLead, a grassroots, community-based organization working with Vietnamese communities in Philadelphia and South Jersey. We are a worker-led, self-directed non-profit, hoping to one day incubate a cooperative as part of our fundraising plan. I'm also a mother of two, and generally exhausted due to COVID-19, quarantine, and the whole state of the world.
Rachel Merriman-Goldring,
Philly Thrive
Philly Thrive has been organizing to win the Right to Breathe since 2015. This year, we won a huge victory, shutting down the PES oil refinery after more than 150 years of environmental injustice, through our people power! I am honored to get to walk alongside brilliant and loving organizers, as we demand environmental justice. I have been serving as Philly Thrive's part-time Funds Coordinator, supporting with resourcing our movement, facilitating our collective budgeting and grassroots fundraising, and developing the leadership of Thrive members for the last 2 years.
Alexia Clarke, Chester Community Coalition
I have spent over 17 years providing and developing behavioral health programming focused on community health and prevention. I currently work to provide trauma-informed behavioral support to survivors of intentional violence (i.e. murder, assault) through transformational leadership, community empowerment and building community capacity.
Friederich Pinguel, Philadelphia Student Union
I am a first-generation immigrant working in Philadelphia as the Executive Director of a youth organization called the Philadelphia Student Union. My personal history as an asylum and immigrant fostered my commitment to collective political work. I believe in the power of marginalized communities to transform the world for the better. I apply these values every day with my staff and our student members to create a world that respects and applies the wisdom of young people.
Desi Burnette, MILPA
MILPA is a grassroots network of families fighting for the rights of every Pennsylvanian, regardless of immigration status. The network facilitates the education, organizing and participation of leaders for social, economic and political changes for the human right and dignity of every person. MILPA is a leader of the Driving PA Forward Coalition, the statewide effort to change the law to allow all Pennsylvanians access to a driver's license, regardless of immigration status.
pep marie,
Our City Our Schools
I am a Black Queer Phillybaybee obsessed with collective visioning. Weekdays, I coordinate the Our City Our Schools coalition. We fight for fairly funded schools that transform the lives of Black, Brown & working class young people, their families, educators, school communities & neighborhoods by supporting their needs and desires.
Ali Roseberry-Polier, Training for Change
I am an activist and storyteller currently working at Training for Change, an organization that cultivates and shares training and facilitation skills to support social justice movements. My work fundraising at TFC stems from my background as an organizer and my skills as a writer - I believe that effective fundraising organizes people to act on their beliefs by sharing powerful stories about how we get free.
In their own words
“As a new ED, fiscal and fundraising responsibilities often feel like an additive to the rest of work leading my organization. That made the very important work of managing and expanding our finances a chore. Securing the Roots helped me situate this "chore" with my other roles and see resource mobilizing as integral to my task of leading an organization that builds the collective power of our communities.”
“STR created community and space for leaders to learn from and share with each other about our organizing. It was the first experience I have had where I was able to be with directors and coordinators with similar roles as mine in our organizations and realized how isolated I had been before this experience, how much on my own I was to figure out the basics of organization building. I am grateful for this experience and would love to see others in my organization take part in the future to really have teams of people in ORGANIZATION who are resource building.”
“Securing the Roots provided me space to affirm what I know while deeply engaging in my curiosity and need to learn about fundraising from a people-centric framing. It challenged old assumptions and helped me move through fears that were holding me back from making asks. I also appreciate the grounding and education in how the nonprofit sector and philanthropy emerged. The context matters. Frameworks - like just transition - were helpful to centering a values proposition for fundraising that connects deeply with me. I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from such incredible peers too! Just WOW! The power and the wisdom in the room.”
“Securing the Roots has helped me think through my organization's finances and given me the confidence to ask individuals and funders to support us in the way we need. The fellowship was incredibly timely and I am so grateful to have been a part of this powerful cohort.”
“Securing the Roots helped me address and challenge internal and external anxieties that I had as a new Executive Director, helping me grow into my role as the steer and main fundraiser for my organization. There's a dissonance between managing day to day tasks of ensuring the doors of the organization and also dreaming of the future while also doing social justice work, but this fellowship was grounded in all of those realities and I never felt alone. How to thrive and not just survive - that was my main takeaway!”
“I've learned so much about my personal relationship to money through Securing the Roots. I've always seen my energy as infinite and money as finite. Our conversations and this moment of mutual aide have really flipped that understanding for me to one of abundance and an eye towards burn out.”
“Securing the Roots provided a generative, humble, passionate group of Philly movement leaders a space to work and (un-) & (re-)learn my relationship to fundraising, money, and capital resourcing! Thank you for creating such a beautiful container!”
“STR arrived at an opportune time for our young organization. The shift in language and approach to mobilizing resources as opposed to asking others to "give" us financial support was a key intellectual and emotional move for me, and therefore for our organization. It was a liberating professional experience that will stick with me as we grow our programmatic impact and financial stability.”
“Securing the Roots was very helpful for me as a seasoned nonprofit professional but a new nonprofit leader. It helped me to incorporate our values and mission into our fundraising plan. It also helped me to get a handle on understanding some of the structures my organization needs to work through in order to own our fundraising plan. Allison and Brittany are thoughtful and skilled facilitators and teachers. My cohort was during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. They made many huge adjustments to ensure that we could participate fully and build community despite the pandemic.”
“This was such a necessary learning opportunity for me. It provided exposure to an area I had very limited knowledge about-- fund development/resource mobilization. During these times of uprising for liberation it was wonderful to convene with such a brilliant, dynamic, and powerful set of leaders! Thank you, Allison and Brittany for creating this space, it has helped me gain new focus on ways to advance the mission of our organization and the work of moving our communities to greater health and wellness.”