Grant
Center for American Progress
Gun Violence Prevention & Justice ReformGun Violence Prevention
In the nearly seven years since the Center for American Progress (CAP) created a dedicated policy team focused on gun violence prevention—with generous support from the Joyce Foundation—we have become a strategic center of gravity for the national gun violence prevention movement. With a dual focus on policy development and advocacy, we put policy into action, working at the federal, state, and local levels, advocating for legislative and executive action, and thinking creatively about how to continue to build a sustainable, successful movement poised to make real progress to reduce gun violence in the United States. Our team makes the best use of CAP’s core competencies—strategy, coordination among progressive groups, policy depth, and rapid response and communications—and remains well-positioned to be a powerful and effective leader in the gun safety movement. CAP’s model for gun violence prevention work has always been to combine innovative policy development and research with smart, focused advocacy, often done in partnership with other organizations. This model proved even more appropriate following the 2016 election, as it became imperative to connect all of our policy efforts with effective advocacy to help ensure that policies garnered attention in a chaotic political environment. In addition, as one of the only multi-issue organizations working on this issue, CAP is uniquely positioned to dig into the intersections of gun violence and other issues, such as criminal justice reform, racial justice and equity, policing, education policy, women’s issues, national security, and democracy reform. Going forward in 2020, this approach will be crucial for ensuring that gun violence prevention continues to be one of the primary progressive priorities on the federal policymaking agenda during the second year of the 116th Congress, as well as shaping the national conversation throughout the 2020 election season.
Grant
Clean Wisconsin Inc.
EnvironmentClimate Solutions
Clean Wisconsin works to ensure a clean, safe, sustainable and equitable environment and energy future. For 50 years, we have worked to introduce, establish and protect laws, programs and policies that encourage clean energy and ensure that our state invests in energy efficiency. Today, we play a leading role in communicating with Governor Evers’ administration regarding executive and policy actions that can impact climate change and promote clean energy and energy efficiency. We are a trusted voice in shaping the Governor’s energy policies. We are fortunate to have new leadership in Wisconsin that wants to make Wisconsin a Midwest leader on climate change efforts. Governor Evers sees the opportunity to act on climate change now, and the need to position Wisconsin in a much different way than his predecessor. The Lieutenant Governor has emerged as a climate change leader not only for the state, but nationally and even internationally. In August, Governor Evers signed an Executive Order creating an Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy and setting a goal of 100% carbon-free energy for Wisconsin by 2050. The Office will ensure the carbon reduction goals of the 2015 Paris Accord are met and will develop a plan to lead us to the goal. The Office will focus on workforce training, innovation, research and developing energy efficiency, sustainability and renewable energy standards for all new and existing state buildings. We were the leading advocate for the creation of this Office and will be a key advocate on formulation of these carbon reduction plans. The Office is charged with coordinating with stakeholders and we plan to participate in these discussions and advocate for strong actions. The opportunities to influence Wisconsin’s energy future are immense. The change in political leadership intersects with a drop in renewable pricing that has made clean energy a focus both socially and economically. All Wisconsin utilities now have carbon reduction goals, and renewable energy projects in the planning stages have created a new discussion about our energy future. We must be able to take advantage of these opportunities to excite the public and move decision-makers toward action. But we are keenly aware that we are already one year into the Governor’s four-year term, and we cannot afford to wait any longer to capitalize on the opportunities that exist right now. Clean Wisconsin continues to participate as a full party in contested cases at the Public Service Commission (PSC) to oppose new fossil generation, support renewable projects, and advance clean energy policies. We play an important role advancing clean energy campaigns across the Midwest as active participants in the RE-AMP Network, Wisconsin State Climate Table, Mid-Continent Power Sector Collaborative, and Midwest Energy Research Consortium. Building on our accomplishments and experience, we use our strong and established voice to explore opportunities to advocate for effective carbon reduction in the energy and transportation sectors to support EV charging infrastructure development, , the transition to renewable energy to proactively fill an advocacy void in Wisconsin for energy storage, and energy efficiency, and to seek opportunities for Wisconsin’s Focus on Energy program to increase energy efficiency programming in the state.
Grant
Elastic Arts Foundation
CultureCreativity and Cultural Production
We respectfully request $12,000 to continue our Dark Matter Residency for Artists of Color. Elastic Arts is an organization that exists to give space for exploration, for development, for community, for discovery. The organization is committed to addressing the problem of a lack of diversity in performances, programs, and exhibitions that persists in major arts institutions in Chicago. With Joyce’s support, last year we instituted a new artist residency at Elastic with the purpose of more fully engaging people of color, both as artists and as audiences. The program provides artists of color with a flexible, functional space for development and presentation, the platform of our organization and its presence in the Chicago arts landscape, and a robust network to develop their work and careers. The program creates a cohort of emerging artists that will lend each other support and feedback, and hopefully to promote each other’s work. Problematic “Lack of racial diversity persists among artists in exhibitions, programs, and performances presented by major arts institutions.” Exclusion of people of color follows familiar yet intractable pathways of discourse and institutional structures that channel the white in, and the dark away. Elastic Arts is an organization that exists to create space for all artists to create, but especially ones who are not welcome elsewhere because the content of their work is experimental, unorthodox, non-traditional, out of bounds, or reflective of racial, ethnic, sexual or political identities that are unwelcome in (or threatening to) dominant cultural institutions. However, even Elastic is not immune to the structural economic, political, and cultural conditions that create racial inequities, and as a result, while more diverse than a great number of major arts institutions, a deficit exists in the racial diversity of our programming. In broad strokes, the demographics of Chicago are something like 1/3rd white, 1/3rd Black, and 1/3rd Latinx, with significant East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian communities as well. Though closer than many significant arts organizations in Chicago, Elastic’s programming is not representative of these proportions. On a national scale, a rampant resurgence of white supremacist discourse and chauvinism poses an imminent threat to racial minorities and immigrant communities, while many institutions and structures that previous generations had put in place to protect vulnerable and economically marginalized communities are being eviscerated. It is therefore all the more important that we hear from people in these groups, that we support them as they represent their experiences, as they envision positive action and responses to present challenges, and as they come together in creative thought as leaders in their communities with the unique power of artists to turn understanding into visceral emotions and tangible responses. Theory of Change By giving space to artists working to overturn racial hierarchies, we hope to enable them to represent the realities that undermine racial diversity in cultural institutions, to bring their many aspects to light, and to challenge their foundations. At the same time, by designing an artist residency precisely to address issues of racial inequities in the arts, we will bring those conversations and that energy into our space. Ultimately, a cohort (and later a community) of artists in multiple media working to representationally and performatively challenge these hierarchies may collectively arrive at some vision of action to overturn them on either a large or small scale. But in any case, they will have this space where they are not only tolerated when they challenge racial inequities, but paid to do so as radically as they can. And furthermore, Elastic’s resources, our network, and our partnerships will be fully at their disposal, so that their messages, images, and perspectives will reach new audiences on multiple platforms.
Grant
National Indian Education Association
Education & Economic MobilityPathways to College and Careers
In June 2018, after two years of wide-ranging research, a study entitled ‘Reclaiming Native Truth’ (RNT) was published that examined opinions and perceptions of Native Americans here in the United States. The analysis was extensive and illuminating but, for most Indian people, the overall findings were not surprising. The report confirmed not only the invisibility of Native people but also the persistence of negative stereotypes about American Indians among non-Natives. This report, which provided empirical evidence that validated what many Native people have always felt, has since been used by other organizations to further their own existing work. For instance, with a focus on ‘The State of Native Education,’ the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), in partnership with the National Congress of American Indians, the National Education Association and Illuminative produced a white paper entitled “Become Visible: A Landscape Analysis of State Efforts to Provide Native American Education for All.” The purpose of our analysis was to examine the landscape of current state efforts to bring high-quality educational content about Native peoples into all K-12 classrooms across the United States with the following aims: • To determine the extent to which states require and/or provide support for Native American K-12 curricula to ALL public school students; and • To review the policies, laws, and practices that states currently use to authorize, provide, or improve the delivery of Native American K-12 curriculum. There were, however, areas that weren’t covered in this initial landscape analysis. These included: • Dialogues with tribal leaders and education directors to gain their input and perspective on state education policies; • Review of state and local funding opportunities to support students’ matriculation to higher education, and; • Review of educational institutions’ policies to help ensure that students have equal and equitable access to take full advantage of their education from secondary to post-secondary. It is for those unexplored areas that we are seeking funding from the Joyce Foundation so that we may continue the next phase of this important work. Of course, once a landscape analysis is complete, the next natural steps are to disseminate the information to as broad an audience as possible and create actionable strategies that can be implemented at the state and local levels to affect lasting positive change. It is this three-part process: analysis, information dissemination, and action that are truly the key ingredients for strong, effective advocacy work. We are confident that a NIEA-Joyce Foundation partnership will enhance the capacity of state and local education policy makers and other higher education organizations and non-profits. To ensure the efficacy of this work, NIEA will collaborate with agencies and organizations with experience in social and political change: The Minnesota Education Equity Partnership uses a race equity lens to transform educational institutions, organizations, and leaders to ensure that students of color and American Indian students achieve full academic and leadership success. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community who, during NIEA’s 50th Anniversary Convention and Trade Show in October, introduced their Understand Native Minnesota initiative, a multifaceted campaign focused on changing both the narrative and the information in Minnesota’s K-12 education system about Native Americans. Wisconsin Indian Education Association is a proactive advocacy group focused on improving the PreK – Post-secondary education systems for Native students in Wisconsin. Issue areas include strengthening Wisconsin Act 31, a law that requires the incorporation of WI Indian history, treaties, and tribal sovereignty into curriculum and providing input and training to the University of Wisconsin System’s Design for Diversity and Planning.
Grant
Chicago State University Foundation
Education & Economic MobilityPathways to College and Careers
While other universities that serve similarly high percentages of African American students have significant alumni giving and Major Gifts programs, and substantial endowments to help with scholarships and special programs (such as Georgia State University and Wayne State University whose endowments exceed $170M and 390M respectively), Chicago State Universiy does not. Serving as CSU's chief fundraising partner, Chicago State Foundation, with a current endowment of just over $6M, is well-positioned to cultivate and secure the financial resources necessary for the successful launch and sustainable implementation of CSU's transformational Student Success Initiative. Via the “Developing Capacity to Support CSU’s Student Success Initiative” project, Chicago State Foundation seeks to grow its staffing model to include a Director of Individual and Major Gifts as part of an intentional effort to grow and sustain exponential fundraising capacity. Under the leadership of CSF’s Executive Director, the Director of Individual and Major Gifts Program will have lead accountability for cultivating, solicitating and high-touch stewarding of financial gifts from individual and alumni donors with a focus on major gifts from high net-worth donors both locally and nationally. He, she or they will be charged with tapping into CSU’s database of 40,000+ alumni, designing and implementing strategies to re-engage them. The Director of Individual and Major Gifts will place special focus on engaging prominent black leaders in the city who are CSU alumni or first-gen college students, encouraging those leaders not only to make donations to CSU in support of the Student Success Initiative, but to convince others of the importance of doing the same. The uncomfortable reality is that the number of African-American students enrolled at public colleges and universities in Illinois has fallen nearly 26 percent in recent years. 1 As an institution that serves a mostly African American (70%) student population, Chicago State University, under its new leadership, is well-positioned to reverse this trend for Illinois and Chicago. With dedicated and sustained financial support from Chicago State Foundation, CSU will be able to fully implement and its Student Success Initiative designed to increase student scholar enrollment, retention and graduation rates. CSU began partial implementation of the Student Success Initiative during the 2018-19 school year and has seen early success, including a 2% growth in graduation rates among student population segments. Through the Student Success Initiative, CSU is committed to providing a high-quality education that includes a suite of cognitive and non-cognitive supports, all designed to prepare students for college completion and empower them to graduate within six years. CSU is proud to offer a viable and valuable pathway to college degrees for underserved low-income and minority scholars – a critical driver to closing Illinois’ and Chicago’s achievement gap. CSU's Student Success Initiative program offerings include summer enrichment programs for high school students taking place at CSU and various affiliated CSU college scholarships (valuable recruitment vehicles); cohort-based orientation, tutoring, special workshops and events, and first-generation housing scholarships and learning co-horts (designed to improve retention); and a revamped advisory program and Finish Strong scholarship program for students with small tuition shortfalls (all efforts to increase college graduation rates). _________________________ 1 https://jg-tc.com/news/state-and-regional/black-college-enrollment-down-sharply-in-illinois/article_d75d9706-c56b-5ca8-b745-552f52355e77.html
Grant
Latino Policy Forum
Education & Economic MobilityEducator Quality
Through this letter of inquiry, the Forum aims to further its efforts towards building the capacity of school districts for implementing recent policy changes (e.g. school funding and ESSA accountability) and incentivizing scholarships to improve the pipeline of bilingual educators. This grant will also fund the Forum’s collaboration with the University of Chicago Consortium of School Research to conduct a second study on the learning trajectories of English Learners in the early grades within Chicago Public Schools. Ultimately this research will work to inform the creation of a dashboard of equity metrics for reporting on the progress of Latinos and English Learners over time. The Organization The Forum is dedicated towards ensuring equity in education from preschool-12th grade. Latino academic achievement is critical given the continued demographic growth and the challenges present at this point in history. The future of our state is dependent on the success of all students, and particularly Latino and EL students. Vision: Increase college readiness for Latinos (most of whom were at one-point ELs) to improve four-year college completion rates in Illinois.
