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After a recommendation from the Racial Equity Task Force, now the Racial Equity Committee of CNJG’s board, the CNJG Board of Trustees approved and adopted the New Jersey Principles for Philanthropy, our equity principles. These Principles are a complete overhaul of CNJG’s Guiding Beliefs & Principles for New Jersey Grantmakers last revised in 2007. No longer a binary option, these Principles use a developmental framework and understand that each organization – and individual in philanthropy - has its own starting point and journey. In 2025, CNJG will gather tools and resources to help members, other philanthropic organizations, and individuals on their own equity journeys. Wherever you see your organization on the spectrum of learning, these New Jersey Principles for Philanthropy offer an opportunity for shared learning and evolving, leadership, and trusting relationships among funders and with your nonprofit partners.
CNJG’s membership is comprised of many varieties of philanthropic organizations, including, but limited to private foundations, public charities, corporate giving programs and foundations, family foundations, government agencies, and more. Each organization will interact with these principles in their own way. Furthermore, staff, board, volunteers, and donors of the organizations will start and journey through the different developmental levels in their own way.
Although we are not requiring CNJG members to “sign onto” these Principles, we do hope that the New Jersey Principles for Philanthropy become a framework and a tool for your organizational development.
CNJG gratefully acknowledges the Minnesota Council on Foundations for laying the groundwork for these New Jersey Principles for Philanthropy.
Mayor Ras Baraka has announced a second round of funding through the city's Creative Catalyst Fund that will provide artists and art groups with flexible grant support during the coronavirus crisis and beyond.
In January 2020, Mayor Baraka announced a broad vision for the city's cultural sector that encourages equitable funding for the arts and the kind of investment that will help sustain the creative community and grassroots arts organizations. The Creative Catalyst Fund launched in April 2020, in the early part of the COVID-19 crisis that took an enormous financial toll on the creative sector.
"Newark has been a center for the arts throughout its history," said Mayor Baraka. "COVID-19 has severely impacted our arts community – creating economic loss for artists and galleries. It has also provided them with a new canvas of experiences to document creatively. It is both a moral and economic imperative for us to support our local arts community by helping them regain their footing and continue to curate and tell the stories of Newark and its people."
A corporate member asked for what other corporations do regarding employee’s goal and objectives. Do they include volunteerism or volunteer activities as part of an employee’s review, or their annual goals?
As artificial intelligence (AI) and technological advances take on an increasingly prominent role in our society, BIPOC and immigrant communities face the threat of biases and outright hostilities being encoded and automated into surveillance, enforcement, and judicial tools. At the same time, creative leaders in the nonprofit sector are leveraging and building new technologies to better deliver culturally responsive services at scale to their communities. In this two-part series on the intersection of AI, technology and immigrant justice, GCIR invites funders to deepen their knowledge in the space as well as gain insights on how philanthropy can deploy investments that build the movement’s capacity to respond to emergent threats and opportunities.
Part 1: The Threat of AI and Technology to Immigrant Justice
As technological innovation accelerates, so too do its potential harms, particularly for immigrant communities. AI and tech tools are increasingly being weaponized in surveillance, enforcement, detention, and court system contexts. Troubling examples of this include DHS’s use of tools to automate decision making on credibility determinations, benefit eligibility, and whether or not individuals should be released from detention. AI and technology tools are also being used to spread mis- and disinformation, not only endangering immigrant communities, but also weakening our ability to function as a society with a shared set of information about the world. In this discussion, funders will learn from immigrant and civil liberties groups at the forefront of the movement to mitigate technologically-driven harms to historically targeted communities.
Speakers:
Tsion Gurmu, Legal Director, Black Alliance for Just Immigration
Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Managing Director, Liberty & National Security, Brennan Center for Justice
Paromita Shah, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Just Futures Law
Cinthya Rodriguez, National Organizer, Mijente
Registration is also open for for the second part of the series, "Tech for Good: Building Innovative Tools to Serve Immigrant Communities," taking place on Thursday, February 13th. Click here to register.
While the media tends to focus on high-interest stories of environmental advocacy and environmental justice in historically under-resourced urban communities, battles are being fought every day by citizens of rural and suburban municipalities to protect their community against environmentally inappropriate development, unsound resource management practices, and pollution of air and water.
Please join the Environmental Grantmakers Affinity Group at scenic Duke Gardens for a conversation with Eastern Environmental Law Center's Chris Miller and ANJEC's Jennifer Coffey on the ways that suburban and rural New Jersey municipalities and grassroots environmental groups are successfully addressing their community's environmental health.
Chris and Jennifer will present the legal and political tools that can be used by residents to advocate for environmental justice in their communities and share examples of recent successes across the state. There will be additional time after the presentation for questions and comments. A light breakfast will be served and attendees are encouraged to continue the conversation on their own over lunch in the Duke Gardens cafeteria and/or while exploring the scenic beauty of Duke Gardens in the Spring.
Cost: Free for CNJG Members and Nonprofits; $75 for Non Member Grantmakers
Chris Miller is the Executive Director of Eastern Environmental Law Center, a non-profit, public-interest environmental law firm which works on behalf of environmental advocacy, conservation and community groups to achieve environmental justice, implement clean-energy solutions and preserve the New Jersey’s open space, wildlife and natural resources for generations to come. Chris is a graduate of Vermont Law School where he earned a J.D. and a Master of Studies in Environmental Law. Prior to joining EELC, Chris was a partner at Maraziti Falcon, LLP, where he litigated environmental and land use cases on behalf of local governments throughout the State.
Jennifer Coffey is the Executive Director of ANJEC (Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions), a non-profit organization that helps New Jersey environmental commissions, individuals, and local and state agencies. They work with partners throughout New Jersey to preserve natural resources and promote healthy communities by engaging in equitable and inclusive practices through leadership, partnerships, education, advocacy for strong public policy and support of environmental commissions, public officials, and communities. In addition to her role at ANJEC, Jennifer serves as a member of the New Jersey State Water Supply Advisory Council and as an advisor to the New Jersey State Clean Water Council. She also serves as a member of the Hamilton Township (Mercer) Planning Board.
CNJG Member survey ranking which issues are most important to them.
The 2020 New Jersey Philanthropy Benefits & Salary Report provides a valuable benchmarking resource. Developed and compiled for CNJG members exclusively, the report presents comprehensive benefits data specific to New Jersey's grantmaking community, alongside data from the Council on Foundations' annual salary survey. Produced every three years, this benchmarking report is a highly valued benefit of your membership in the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers. Thank you to the CNJG members that completed the benefits survey earlier this year that enabled us to produce this report.
The first section, 2020 Benefits Summary Report, includes benefits data for the 2020 calendar year and covers employment, leave benefits, insurance benefits, and more. We are delighted to also present for the first time in this triennial report, demographic data on the boards and staffs of those that responded. The second section, 2020 Grantmaker Salary Tables: New Jersey, Mid-Atlantic and National Data provides data on compensation across a wide range of positions and grantmaking entities. Thank you to the CNJG members that completed the Council on Foundations’ annual survey on salaries that enabled us to produce this section of the report.
Seeking ways to maximize the social and economic returns of their place-based impact investments, foundations, CDFIs, private investors, and others are turning to collaboration. To support these efforts and facilitate lesson sharing, the Urban Institute and Mission Investors Exchange have produced a set of three practitioner briefs designed to focus on elements of place-based impact investing that have surfaced in research and conversations with practitioners as opportunities for knowledge exchange: building strong ecosystems, mapping opportunities and capacities, and deploying capital on the ground together through impact investing collaborations. Each brief presents the concept, highlights practitioner examples, and elevates lessons from the field.
Effecting social change in a rapidly changing political environment and an increasingly interconnected world requires foundations to adopt a learning orientation. Without continuous learning, grantmakers—and thus boards and trustees—are unaware about what is working where, with whom, and why, as well as what changes or refinements are needed in order to achieve the grantmakers’ desired results.
Researched and written in collaboration with GEO, this toolkit provides a fresh set of resources for grantmaker CEOs, evaluation staff, and senior leaders to use to engage their boards and trustees in conversations about the importance of strategic learning in their decision-making and deliberation processes.