Black migrants—asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigrants—are often neglected in funding conversations about immigrant justice. The Black Migrant Power Fund (BMPF) is a new community-led fund that aims to change this by connecting Black, migrant-led nonprofits with long-overdue resources.

Ola Osaze, lead advisor to the BMPF and Deputy Director of the Four Freedoms Fund at Neo Philanthropy—the funder intermediary that houses the fund—says that BMPF started to come together in October 2021 at a funder briefing on Centering Collective Black Power for Migrant and Racial Justice.

That meeting was organized and held one month after the circulation of photos of US Customs and Border Patrol agents’ violent removal of Haitian asylum-seekers at the border near Del Rio, Texas. The images recalled 18th century slave patrols that were formed to catch escapees and quash Black revolt.

Discussions of the violence at Del Rio and the need to invest in Black migrant organizations and leadership led these groups to issue a call to action to funders: Raise $10 million to benefit Black-led migrant justice organizations in 2022. These organizations serve diverse communities of Black migrants and have partnered with each other to transform their organizations, the immigrant justice movement, and the philanthropic landscape.

Now, Osaze is working with these and other Black migrant organizational leaders to develop a community-led grantmaking process as part of the Black Power Migrant Fund. Thirteen Black, migrant, grassroots organizations operating at local, state, and national scales have joined this collective effort, namely: the African Bureau for Immigration and Social Affairs (ABISA), African Communities Together (ACT), Afroresistance, Black Alliance for Justice Immigration (BAJI), Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP), Black Immigrant Collective, FANM, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants, PANA, UndocuBlack Network, and Women Watch Afrika (WWA).

In partnering with one another, these migrant justice groups prioritize the leadership of LGBTQIA+, undocumented, youth, women, and formerly incarcerated Black migrants to lead transformative change with their communities. Like many of BMPF’s community partners, Osaze, a former co-director of the BLMP, also brings lived experience of these intersectional identities to their organizing work.

Read the full article about the Black Migrant Fund by Kitana Ananda at Nonprofit Quarterly.