We believe in resilience in financing featuring Marcia Smith
Transcript
[A Black woman with short hair sits for an interview.]
MARCIA SMITH: Ford is really onto something in offering general support, infrastructure support, capacity-building support, and multiyear support. It’s critical.
To have BUILD come in and say, essentially, “We believe in Firelight, we believe in your vision, we want to support you as an organization,” it’s a huge gift. It allows us to actually think about who we want to be as an organization in the future. It allows us to build different types of partnerships with different organizations. It allows us to think about, how do we build a development department that’s going to sustain us in the future. How do we think about fundraising that includes board development, that includes building a reserve fund—down the line, an endowment. So BUILD really allows us to think about all those things, to plan for those things.
[on-screen text: We believe in financing.
We believe in building resilience.
We believe in reimagining philanthropy.
fordfoundation.org/build]
[on-screen graphic: Ford Foundation logo: a globe made up of a series of small, varied circles.]
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Social justice organizations thrive with longer, larger, and more flexible grants.
In 2015, the Ford Foundation launched its Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative, now a $2 billion dollar commitment aimed at reimagining philanthropy and centered on trusting grantees.
Firelight, a production company that makes documentary films by and about communities of color, was one of BUILD’s first grantees. Marcia Smith, president and co-founder, shares how BUILD allowed Firelight to create a strategic plan for their long-term financing.
“Ford is really onto something in offering general support, infrastructure support, capacity building support, and multi-year support,” she says. “To have BUILD come in and say essentially we believe in Fireflight, we believe in your vision, we want to support you—it’s a huge gift.”
We’re reimagining philanthropy—BUILD provides 5-year general operating support grants and dedicated funding for institutional strengthening to grantee partners to build more durable, resilient, and impactful organizations and networks to combat inequality.
Other videos in this series
We believe in resilience in People featuring Heather McGhee
Heather McGhee, trustee emeritus and former president of Demos, shares how BUILD allowed Demos to create a diversity, equity, and inclusion program, as well as build staff leadership skills.
We believe in resilience in strategy featuring Nancy Northup
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, shares how BUILD allowed the Center to engage their staff to shape a global organizational strategy created from the bottom up.
We believe in resilience in systems featuring Purity Kagwiria
Akili Dada, a leadership incubator for girls and young women across East Africa, was one of BUILD’s first grantees. Purity Kagwiria, former Executive Director, shares how BUILD allowed Akili Dada to create a security policy for field work, strengthening its impact.
We believe in Building Resilience in Social Justice Organizations
The Ford Foundation’s BUILD grantees share their views on how receiving longer, larger, more flexible grants has strengthened their organization and their work, and made them reimagine philanthropy.
Building institutions and networks to fight inequality
Organizations that are working to reduce inequality need support for their long-term goals, while they focus on day-to-day operations and immediate challenges. The Ford Foundation’s BUILD program is specially designed to do this, by providing flexible funding and fostering connections to other organizations working with ideas that are changing the world.