Movement Building
Movement Support Pooled Funds
CROSSROADS FUND FIRMLY BELIEVES THAT CHANGE IS POSSIBLE WHEN WE POOL OUR RESOURCES
MOVEMENT SUPPORT POOLED FUNDS
Since our founding, we have worked with a community of donors and foundation partners to create new models for furthering movements for racial, social, and economic justice.
If you are interested in supporting one of the funds below or developing a special funding initiative in partnership with Crossroads Fund, please contact Jane Kimondo at at jane@crossroadsfund.org.
The Clara and James Gibson Foundation
The Clara and James Gibson Foundation was created to honor James’ mother, Ms. Clara Gibson, advance social justice and address the issue of wrongful convictions in America. The Foundation’s goal is to yield transformative and lasting change to the current broken, abusive, and discriminatory systems.
WOMEN’S VOICES FUND
The Women’s Voices Fund, a project of Women & Children First Bookstore and a grantee of the Crossroads Fund, raises money to help sustain and develop an ongoing program series focused on women’s lives, ideas, and work. Women & Children First, a unique resource in the Chicago community and the only venue to offer regular programming with such a focus, has provided the sole financial support for this series for over 25 years.
MONICA COSBY FUND
The Monica Cosby Fund is dedicated to supporting women impacted by the carceral state – those in prisons and jails, those leaving incarceration and those navigating the world after incarceration, with a goal of abolishing these systems. The Fund supports organizations working to radically reduce the power of or eradicate institutions, policies and practices that are harmful to communities. The Fund prioritizes mutual aid – communities taking care of each other when institutions fail them – as a direct refutation to the carceral system that is steeped in anti-Blackness and punitive practices. In the words of Monica, “mutual aid is celebratory – a celebration of our collective resistance.”
JAMES THINDWA GRASSROOTS ORGANIZING FUND
The James Thindwa Grassroots Organizing Fund disburses annual grants to organizations or activists who engage the critically important issues that drove and inspired James. Every fall for the duration of the fund, Crossroads Fund hosts a Thindwa Symposium, which allows recent grantees and the donor community, activists, and intellectuals to delve into the issues and intersections that the grantees’ work embraces.
LISA FITTKO INTERNSHIP
The Lisa Fittko Internship at Crossroads Fund was established by the friends of Lisa Fittko, to honor her legacy as a social justice activist. All her life, on two continents, Lisa advocated and worked for social justice and political rights. From her teenage years until she fled Europe in 1941, Lisa worked to oppose fascism. She and her husband helped to lead people out of Nazi-occupied France into Spain.
The Lisa Fittko Internship is a six month, paid internship for a young activist at Crossroads Fund. Lisa Fittko Interns work for 20 hours a week, participating in fundraising and grantmaking activities as well as an individual project that is unique to the intern.
Investigative Project on Race and Equity
Prominent local and national journalists launched Friends of The Chicago Reporter, recently celebrated 50 years of independent investigative journalism on race and poverty, while calling on the Community Renewal Society to restore its award-winning investigative work. Their new project, The Investigative Project on Race and Equity is a start-up, virtual newsroom created by a group of seasoned journalists and civic leaders who came together to preserve the distinctive brand of investigative journalism pioneered at The Chicago Reporter.
Scholars for Social Justice (SSJ)
Scholars for Social Justice (SSJ) seeks to mobilize the knowledge, skills, and resources of scholars to battle the repressive attacks on marginalized communities, advancing instead an agenda of equity, justice and liberation. Issues impacting immigrants, women of color, people of color, LGBT, Muslims, women, disabled, indigenous and poor and working-class communities and all their intersections are a central priority for the organization.
Chicago Torture Justice Memorials
Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) aims to honor and to seek justice for the survivors of Chicago police torture, their family members and the Black communities affected by the torture.
CTJM led the effort to introduce a reparations ordinance into Chicago’s City Council. On May 6, 2015, after decades of grassroots struggle, the Chicago City Council passed the reparations package for the Burge torture survivors and their family members. Since then, CTJM has turned its attention to making sure the reparations package is properly implemented and its main focus today is on creating a public memorial to honor the torture survivors.
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