“A group of foundations have banded together to provide millions in pandemic-related financial aid to Philadelphia BIPOC arts and culture groups,” writes Peter Dobrin in Wednesday’s (12/1) Philadelphia Inquirer. “At least $10 million will go to organizations over the next five years to support a ‘racially, economically, and socially just COVID-19 recovery,’ the William Penn Foundation and other philanthropies announced Wednesday. The initiative is the local answer to a national effort by the Ford Foundation to support groups serving and/or led by Black and Indigenous people and people of color, which often operate with fewer financial and philanthropic resources than their white counterparts. For the Philadelphia effort, Ford provided $5 million and William Penn $3.5 million, with the rest coming from the Barra Foundation, Neubauer Family Foundation, Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, and Wyncote Foundation…. Focusing support on BIPOC groups is important, said Judilee Reed, William Penn’s program director of creative communities, because such nonprofits were already receiving lower levels of support, ‘which makes these moments of extreme stress such as what we experiencing from the pandemic almost catastrophic to some of these organizations and some of these communities.’… The new program is expected to stretch through 2026.”
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