News

We ended last year with an important vote. Our board voted unanimously to approve a five-year strategic plan. The plan is the culmination of a highly engaged process guided by our values, field data, and our community. We studied social, political, and economic data, and we listened to the diverse perspectives of more than fifty partners, peers, and other issue experts. What we learned set us on a path to support systemic solutions that advance racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ). 

To this end, we made the following strategic decisions: 

We decided to make REEJ our sole focus. Through our strategic-planning process, we realized we were spreading our resources too thin to achieve transformative change. That realization, combined with a root-cause analysis of the issues at the core of our mission, drove our decision to bring all our work into alignment with REEJ. This decision covers not only our domestic work but also our work in the Israel-Palestine region.

We decided to converge all our assets for a “totality” approach to impact. We are reorganizing the ways we work so we can combine all the organization’s assets —people, relationships, knowledge, voice, and money — to support REEJ. As part of that, we will work in close coordination with Bivium Capital and Westfuller, our Outsourced Chief Investment Officer, to expand our impact-investing activities. In addition to doubling down on our shareholder activism and commitment to 100 percent mission-aligned investing, we will be introducing program-related investments (PRIs) into our portfolio. 

We decided to invest more resources in the U.S. South. We know that groundbreaking work to advance REEJ is emerging from BIPOC communities in the South, even though the region has received comparatively little philanthropic support. While we will continue supporting national work, we are carving out a portion of our resources exclusively for designated place(s) in the South. We are undergoing a stakeholder-driven and data-informed process to select the “where” and “how much,” and we will share this information with you when we have it. 

We decided to deepen our ethos of learning and improvement. Continuous improvement requires a commitment to learning from and listening to our partners and frontline communities. It also rests on the pursuit of data and information and the internalized belief that we do not possess all the answers. We will be developing measurement mechanisms across the foundation to hold ourselves accountable to the impact we seek, while staying true to trust-based values.

We decided to prioritize strengthening our internal culture. We know REEJ is an internal commitment as much as an external one. As one step toward that commitment, we are deepening staff and board understanding and skill on multiple issues related to racial equity and inclusion. The board is also dedicated to strengthening governance and solidifying the foundation’s leadership. Thus, it has re-elected Jaimie Mayer as Board Chair and given me the authority to lead the organization as President and CEO on an ongoing basis.  

Our staff is already working to determine how to best put the board’s strategic decisions into action, and we will share more developments over the coming year. We appreciate the wisdom this community holds, and we look forward to continuing to engage you in our pursuit of REEJ.   

Onwards! 

Rey Ramsey
President and CEO

For inquiries please contact: Communications@nathancummings.org