In April 2024, the Boston Foundation invited six ambitious, engaged nonprofit leaders to participate in a three-year Movement Leaders program developed by TBF’s Shifting Power and Advancing Justice team. Investing more than $4 million in these leaders and their organizations through multiyear funding and other resources, the initiative helps them advance their collective work to transform communities, drive systemic change, and foster innovation. As the final year of this collaboration begins, we checked in to see how the work is unfolding.

So far, the group has met collectively eight times, held nearly 70 one-on-one meetings, and exchanged countless emails and calls. Each organization has received $125,000 annually for general operating support, and the leaders have taken advantage of the option to request additional grants of up to $90,000 per year for wellness, technical assistance, or capacity building, and $10,000 grants for emergencies.

Meeting the Needs of the Moment

These funds have provided some immediate relief and unleashed tremendous potential. Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE), for example, headed by Dwaign Tyndal, recently used a $16,443 technical assistance grant to enlist the fundraising consultancy Progressive Multiplier. “This grant highlights the back-end support many nonprofits need because of philanthropy’s historical lack of investment in infrastructure, as well as the needs of this current moment where many nonprofits are having to pivot or reevaluate their finances and fundraising strategies,” says TBF Program Manager Juliana Brandão.

Indeed, ACE was part of a group that lost a grant for $60 million over three years that it had been awarded by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Tyndal says. A partnership of ACE, Health Resources in Action, and New England Grassroots Environment Fund had received the award through the Thriving Communities Grantmaking program, for distributing across EPA Region 1 (New England) to strengthen local environmental justice action. ACE itself was due to receive around $2.6 million over three years.

“But the director of the EPA did an illegal claw-back of our resources,” Tyndal says. “Sixty million, gone. We put in 15 months of work on the grant.” While angry, he is not disheartened, and says, “On the positive side, our organization is stronger for all the effort. We also made real, powerful contacts across Region 1. And if nothing else, we are persistent. We expect that in 2028, we will get that money back and implement the plan.”

“This grant highlights the back-end support many nonprofits need because of philanthropy’s historical lack of investment in infrastructure, as well as the needs of this current moment where many nonprofits are having to pivot or reevaluate their finances and fundraising strategies.”

- Juliana Brandão, TBF Program Manager

“Convenings are where we put our policy stake in the ground. That neighborhoods and communities should be at the table in the planning process, through implementation, and in the watchdog phase of enforcement.”

Meanwhile, ACE has a full schedule in its Roxbury neighborhood and beyond, including event planning. Last year ACE hosted three major convenings: one at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, one co-hosted with the NAACP, and another in partnership with two other Movement Leaders that gathered grassroots peers from across the state. “Convenings are where we put our policy stake in the ground,” says Tyndal. “That neighborhoods and communities should be at the table in the planning process, through implementation, and in the watchdog phase of enforcement.” Next up: a summit with technology and energy companies—renewable and traditional—to address the neighborhood-centered agenda in the age of data centers, AI, and an aging power grid.

Tyndal says the fellowship of the other Movement Leaders and TBF staff has been invaluable. “It gives us opportunities to create new way of thinking about our work through the eyes of partners,” he says. That includes funders as well as fellow community organizations. He adds, “Being in this community of powerful leaders that crosses disciplines and service areas and geography gives you a center to hear different perspectives from. And since we are all in frontlines work and usually balancing multiple issues, it gives us space to think a little clearer, a little bigger, and use the imagination.” He notes that the cross-collaboration leads to innovation and reminds supporters as well as philanthropists that they are thinking about the future, “not just, ‘This is what we have been doing for the past 10 years.’”