Arizona Racial Justice Initiative Submission Manager

Who we are:

With a strong commitment to racial justice, the Arizona Racial Justice Initiative is driven by the guiding principle that "those closest to the problem are closest to the solution."

Through engagement with leaders of color who are at the forefront of the fight for justice in Arizona, a recurring concern was expressed: Black and Native communities in the state face significant resource disparities. This reality serves as our charge.

The Arizona Racial Justice Initiative is a 5-year philanthropic initiative co-created with and for Black and Native leaders and communities. In order to join the fight against all forms of racial injustice–especially anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity–this initiative launched in 2023 with the goal of strengthening racial justice efforts in Arizona led by and for Black and Native communities.

We achieve this by offering flexible funding, establishing and expanding capacity building supports, offering connection and relationship-building opportunities, and activating additional funding and funder collaboration. Our aim is to:

Strengthen Black and Native-led organizations.
Cultivate Black and Native leaders through personal and professional development, and physical, mental, and spiritual well-being support.
Facilitate collaborations aimed at advancing the priorities of Black and Native communities.

By taking on this work, we disrupt business as usual. We embrace a participatory approach where community leaders have decision-making power on where funding goes. We embrace experimentation, exploration, and adaptation in order to determine the most effective ways to contribute to this work.

2025 Grant Application

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Welcome to the Arizona Racial Justice Initiative grant funding application!

Things we’d like you to know:

We are a grantmaking initiative focused on Black and Native communities in Arizona.
We launched in 2023 as a 5-year philanthropic initiative (2023-2027) to inject new funding into Black and Native-led work in Arizona.
We are a spendout grantmaking initiative. This means we will spend all our resources and will not operate beyond our final year in 2027.
We’ve completed two grant funding cycles in 2023 and 2024 and our 2025 grant application will be our final application. All of our funding and programming through 2027 will be focused on supporting the work of our next cohort of grantee partners, which will be selected from this year’s application pool.
We are disrupting status quo philanthropy in order to be more responsive and equitable in how we distribute funding. We are using a community-led “participatory grantmaking" approach to make our funding decisions. We have partnered with six community leaders who review applications and make final funding decisions based on the goals and criteria for our funding initiative. We call this group our Funding Council (more below).
In implementing this funding initiative, we are guided by our Funding Council as well as the values and best practices of racial justice philanthropy. Specifically, we are striving to implement trust-based philanthropy practices. For additional guidance and inspiration, we reference the Just Transition for Philanthropy Framework by Justice Funders. We are a small team and acknowledge that wrinkles will emerge during our process. We ask for your grace and patience and to please provide us direct feedback on how we can improve.
Please note that completing an application submission does not mean you will be getting funding. Whether your application gets awarded funding depends on the outcome of our established criteria and participatory grantmaking process.
We will be accepting applications until July 22, 2025 at 5pm Arizona time. If you would like to preview the application questions, click here.
Since we are a spend out initiative, funding awards will be one-time awards. There will be no renewals or possibility for additional funding.

What do we fund?

Our goal is to provide flexible, general operating support funding for a variety of needs and activities that will contribute to the strengthening of Black and Native communities in Arizona who are fighting for justice and self-determination. Here are the funding categories we are hoping to support:

Strengthen organizations. Funding that will help strengthen and grow the organization’s ability to achieve its strategic priorities. For example: general operating support; organizational capacity-building; research; community organizing; mission-driven projects; etc.
Cultivate leaders. Funding to organizations that will support the personal or professional development of Black and Native leaders and/or help them navigate challenges related to their well-being. For example: 1-on-1 coaching for an org leader; paying the fees and travel costs for a staff or community leader to attend a conference; paying fees and travel costs to attend a healing retreat, etc.
Facilitate collaborations. Funding that will help create and maintain healthy, coordinated, and effective collaborations that advance priorities of Black and Native communities in Arizona fighting for justice and self-determination. For example: funding to support coalitions or campaigns; joint strategic planning; joint research projects; convenings; etc.

In the application, you will be asked to pick the category that aligns most with your particular funding request. If your specific funding need doesn’t fall neatly into any of these examples, that’s okay. Please feel free to describe in your application how you think your request falls into one of the categories.

Click here if you would like to see examples.

Funding Awards

In our final grant application cycle this year, we will be awarding $3.1 million in grant funding.

Our hope is to address a variety of needs in the field. In order to support this goal:

Awarded applications will receive 2-year grants.
Each eligible organization can submit one application and can request funds up to $100,000 per year. This means the possibility of up to $200,000 over 2 years (up to $100,000 in year 1 and up to $100,000 in year 2).
If your application is selected for an award, that does not mean you will receive your full funding request. The final award amounts for selected applications will be determined by our final application review and deliberation process with our Funding Council.

As mentioned above, we are a spendout initiative. These 2-year grant awards will be one-time awards. There will be no renewals or possibility for additional funding.

Also, please note that awardee names and descriptions may be used in public materials to promote transparency of our work and elevate the work of our grantee partners.

If you want to preview the application questions, click here.

Who is eligible to apply?

The goal of this fund is to strengthen Black and Native communities by funding a variety of organization types and needs:

Black and Native-led: Black and Native-led organizations based in Arizona serving Black and Native people and communities in Arizona (see below for definitions on Black-led and Native-led).
Nonprofits: Organizations with a 501(c)(3) designation or those that are fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) organization.
Tribal: Tribal governments and organizations.
Informal organizations: “Informal” organizations that are not 501(c)(3) public charities and are not fiscally sponsored. Funding awards for these applications require additional steps and funds will be taxable.

If your organization does not meet any of these eligibility criteria, unfortunately we cannot accept your application at this time.

Lastly, while we accepted and awarded applications for individuals and 501(c)(4) organizations during our 2023 application cycle, individuals and 501(c)(4) orgs are not eligible to apply during this cycle.

Our Process

Invitation for applications. We are accepting applications until July 22, 2025 at 5pm Arizona time from Black and Native-led organizations that meet our eligibility criteria.
Applications are prepared for review. AZRJI staff will check applications for basic eligibility and alignment with our criteria. Staff will prepare and assign batches of applications to each Funding Council reviewer.
Funding Council members review. Funding Council members will review and score assigned applications based on the criteria and scoring rubric.
Funding Council members vote on awards. Application review results are compiled and prepared for deliberation. During a two-day in-person decision-making retreat, AZRJI staff will support Funding Council members in reviewing and discussing applications to make final award decisions. Our goal is to announce award decisions by October 2025.
Due diligence process and funding awarded. AZRJI staff will reach out to the selected applicants and support them in completing the steps required by our fiscal sponsor in order to receive funding.
Join the Arizona Racial Justice Initiative community. Awardees are welcomed into our grantee cohort and will have opportunities to network and build relationships with each other at in-person gatherings and other events. Awardees will also have the opportunity to access and inform our capacity building supports.
Impact and Reporting. Grantees will need to provide interim and final narrative and financial reports. AZRJI staff is creating a process to reduce the time and burden needed to meet these reporting requirements. This may look like annual online meetings with AZRJI staff for a learning and impact interview. AZRJI staff will use info collected during interviews to produce interim and final reports for each grantee. There may also be requests from AZRJI staff for site visits or other meetings with the goal of elevating the work of AZRJI’s grantees and telling AZRJI’s impact story.

How to Apply

Review guidelines. Review and familiarize yourself with these guidelines.
Review questions. If you want to review application questions before creating a Submittable account and deciding to apply, click here for a Google doc version of the application questions.
Video responses. For some of the questions we are accepting video responses if you prefer. Videos will be limited to 2-5 minutes depending on the question. You will be asked to upload your video in one of these acceptable file types: .3gp, .avi, .flv, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .mpg, .webm, .wmv. If you would rather include a website link to stream the video (e.g. Youtube), please include that link in the written response field. You will get further guidance when you are in the application.
Application assistance. If you need assistance in completing the application, please send your request to: info@azracialjustice.org. We will respond as promptly as possible.
Submit application. If you think you are eligible and want to request funding, please complete and submit an application through this Submittable platform.

How do you define Black-led and Native-led?

An organization is Black-led if 75 percent or greater of the organization's leadership identifies as Black and/or African-American.

An organization is Native-led if 75 percent or greater of the organization's leadership identifies as Native/or Native-American. For the purposes of this funding initiative, we are defining “Native” and “Native-American” as the original inhabitants and caretakers of the land that is now referred to as the United States (Source: IllumiNative). Specifically, this initiative is focused on Native/Native-American communities based in Arizona.

“Leadership” is defined as people in roles that are responsible for setting the direction of the organization and overseeing the daily implementation of the organization’s mission and priorities. Typically, these roles are a board, an advisory council, and the executive-level staff, like an executive director and other executive level staff.

For example, group ABC has 5 board members and 3 executive level staff (2 co-executive directors and 1 organizing director). This means that ABC group has 8 people who are considered “leadership.” To be eligible for funding under this initiative, that means 6 out of those 8 folks (75%) would have to identify as Black and/or Native in order to meet the definition of “75 percent or greater” of leadership.

How do we define racial justice?

We use a broad definition of racial justice to guide our work. We’ve been using the following definition to describe what racial justice means to us:

Racial justice work understands that there is a long history of racism in America and that this history is the root cause of current racial inequality and racial violence.

Racial justice efforts work to advance shared, affirmative visions of an inclusive and fair society where racism does not exist. Racial justice work focuses on building community, cultural, and political power to secure transformative solutions that address multiple, interconnected harms (e.g., environmental racism, economic inequality, police brutality, mass incarceration, food injustice, education inequity, etc.)

This definition is adapted from “Grantmaking with a Racial Justice Lens: A Practical Guide,” which was produced by The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity.

What are the selection criteria?

To ensure we are funding work aligned with our initiative goals, we will be using the following criteria to review and evaluate applications:

Black and Native led (75% or greater of org leadership identifies as Black and/or Native)
Commitment to racial justice
Commitment to community
Strengthen organizations
Cultivate leaders
Facilitate collaborations

For more info on criteria, click here.

How will we decide who gets funding?

We are collaborating with a group of six Black and Native leaders in Arizona to make funding decisions. This group, known as the Funding Council, will review and score applications using our scoring rubric.

Once reviews and scoring are completed, this information will be used during a two-day funding decision retreat where the Funding Council will participate in a deliberation process to select awardees.