Full Spectrum Labs
Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2020
Founders/leadership: Taj James, co-founder & curator; Sihle Dinani, co-founder & advisor; Rachel Burrows, co-founder & operational anchor
Full Spectrum Capital Labs (FSL) is an incubator-accelerator that brings people, ideas, and capital together to grow regenerative economies powered by impactful solutions. Vibrant solutions need capacity building and partnerships to thrive. Gaps in the capital ecosystem mean opportunities for impact are missed every day. FSL fills the gaps between communities and capital by listening to communities and offering capital strategies to achieve their vision. FSL believes the more nature and community we have, the less money we need. The challenge we face is not scarcity and its deepening relationship and flow — it’s creating the beloved community that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned. In relationship and flow, there is fundamental abundance. Through this lens, FSL connects investors to solutions with powerful impact.
Full Spectrum Labs listens to the ideas and interests of community and capital stewards all across the capital ecosystem, helping them develop an investment vision that aligns with community values. Community Stewards include; Birth Center Equity — Black and Indigenous midwives who imagine a birth center in every community; Return to the Heart Foundation which supports Indigenous women by investing in undercapitalized women-led initiatives on reservations and cities; Justice Capital — formerly incarcerated community leaders proving that divesting from prison systems and investing in worker and community-owned enterprises transform communities. As Black organizers in Memphis know: when communities own land and buildings, they cannot be displaced. Through relationships and collaborations between community and capital, stewards can navigate and strategize with the full potential of every capital tool and achieve the highest impact.
Healing Clinic Collective
Location: Bay Area, CA
Region: National
Founding: 2017
Founders/leadership: Carla Perez, founder
Healing Clinic Collective (HCC) encourages re-engagement to a sacred way of relating to ourselves as whole people. With a network of over 130 healers and wellness practitioners, HCC’s goal is to connect people in need of holistic healing to natural and traditional healers and wellness practitioners for ongoing care. HCC aims to restore reverence and relationship to ancestral forms of healing and wellness that come from world views rooted in cultural understandings and expressions of love, interconnectedness, and a regenerative relationship to both people and the earth.
Traditional prayer ceremonies are a foundational part of how HCC seeks and implements guidance for their ongoing work and is part of their organizing process for community-based healing clinics. HCC considers prayer an important part of their work: prayers are conducted in accordance to old world instructions of how to exchange loving energy with the power of the elements, ancestors and other spirit helpers. Prayers may be up to several hours long and can be for anything from the most dire global needs to specific desires for our work on the ground in the Bay Area.
Healing Clinic Collective offers consultations to individuals, organizations, and community-based groups who want to organize a healing clinic for their community with a focus on loving, traditional healing sessions to people from especially traumatized populations in the Bay Area. The organization works to raise awareness, including in working class communities, about the broad world of natural and ancestral healing modalities that are holistic and multi-layered. This may be for a school community, church community, neighborhood residents, or for organizations.
HEAL Food Alliance
Location: Oakland, CA
Region: National
Founding: 2014
Founders/leadership: Nevinna Khann, co-founder/executive director
The Health, Environment, Agriculture and Labor Food Alliance (HEAL) is a national multi-sector, multi-racial coalition of 55 organizations led by members who represent over two million rural and urban farmers, ranchers, fishers, farm and food chain workers, Indigenous groups, scientists, public health advocates, policy experts, community organizers, and activists. HEAL’S mission is to build collective power to create food and farm systems that are healthy for families, accessible and affordable to all communities, and fair to the working people who grow, distribute, prepare, and serve our food — while protecting the air, water, and land we all depend on.
In 2016, HEAL launched the Plate of the Union in partnership with Food Policy Action, the Food Policy Action Education Fund, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, to uplift the voices of Americans who care about food and farm issues. The #ProtectFoodWorkers campaign delivered over 100,000 petition signatures calling on the next President to take bold action for a food system that rewards farmers and farming practices that protect our environment, that provides dignity and fair wages to workers, and ensures that everyone living in the United States has access to healthy food that they can afford.
Anchored by the Food Chain Workers Alliance, the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, Real Food Generation, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, HEAL co-drafted the 10-plank Platform for Real Food, and, in 2017, they publicly launched the platform as their strategic compass. Together, these groups are building a movement to transform our food and farm systems from the current extractive economic model towards community control, care for the land, local economies, meaningful labor, and healthful communities nationwide — while supporting the sovereignty of all living beings.
Just Community Energy Transition (Past Project)
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Region: United States
Founding: 2016
Founders/leadership: Anthony Giancatarino, project director
The Just Community Energy Transition Project (JCET) catalyzes, convenes, and facilitates community-driven strategies and practices to build transformative alignment towards an anti-racist and regenerative economy, primarily through the lens of the energy economy and its transition.
Anthony Giancatarino has led JCET for the last three years, working with community partners to strive for antiracist practices and community-driven processes in policy development, strategy, and collective governance that advances energy democracy and a regenerative economy.
Knowledge is power. JCET’s website offers a collection of resources to usher us into a Just Transition to build collective power. In partnership with insite collaborative communities, community-based organizations, academic institutions, and others, these resources can provide an understanding of where power comes from, how the electrical grid works, which can make a change, and how community visioning could create a more equitable and just energy system. Based in Philadelphia, PA, JCET works with community-based organizations, coalitions, and alliances to support policy strategies that advance energy democracy and climate justice. Regionally, JCET partners to build relationships across Pennsylvania and the Gulf of Mexico to challenge the terrible trifecta: an extractive energy economy, racism, and the urban-rural divide. Nationally, JCET collaborates with frontline national networks, alliances, and coalitions on various energy democracy and leadership projects.
Justice Funders (Past Project)
Location: Oakland, CA
Region: United States
Founding: 2009
Founders/leadership: Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, co-director; Dana Kawaoka-Chen, co-director
Justice Funders first emerged in 2009 as the Bay Area Justice Funders Network, as local funders sought spaces to unite the philanthropic community and front-line leaders following the murder of Oscar Grant by BART Police.
A partner and guide for reimagining philanthropic practices that advance a thriving and just world, Justice Funders fosters leadership development by supporting professional grantmakers and consulting with philanthropic institutions to reimagine how their organizations can operate as a justice funder.
Justice Funders believes philanthropy must take an active role in building a world that redistributes wealth, democratizes power, and shifts economic control to communities. The organization is guided by the principles of Just Transition which support a shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.
Kilomba Collective
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Region: National, plus Canada
Founding: November 2019
Founders/leadership: Leonora Souza Paula, project director; Mel Adún; Flavia Barbosa; Fernanda Dias; Marry Ferreira; Juliana Maia; Luana Reis; Priscila Santana
Kilomba Collective is the first collective of Black Brazilian immigrant women in the United States and connects Black Brazilians with other Black women’s organizations in the United States and Latin America to strategize, advance human rights, and uplift Black women’s political activism.
Kilomba’s name refers to the Quilombos, self-sustaining revolutionary communities representing Black Brazilians’ liberation and resistance, memory, radical love, and affection. With that in mind, Kilomba Collective has been driven by its vision: connecting a multigenerational network of Black Brazilian women from different backgrounds and centering the experiences of Black Brazilian women and girls in the United States and Canada.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, Kilomba supported their community with local and international organizers and activists focused on issues around health and maternal health, COVID-19, racism, police brutality, and more. During the pandemic, Kilomba launched two booklets in the Portuguese language with resources for immigrants impacted by the pandemic, in addition to supporting families through food baskets and online therapy.
With a community of more than 100 members of various ages, backgrounds, and professional backgrounds, living across the United States and Canada, Kilomba remains committed to Black people from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Latinx Racial Equity Project
Location: Bay Area, CA
Region: National
Founding: 2010
Founders/leadership: Amate Perez, founder; Janvieve Williams Comrie, co-founding trainer; Heidi Lopez, project director
The Latinx Racial Equity Project (LREP) exists to train and empower Latinos to lead from a framework of decolonization and racial equity. Through an equity driven framework, LREP trains leaders to create healthier work and movement environments and build more equitable organizations and systems that reduce inequitable outcomes for everyone.
In large parts of the Latinx community, aspiring to whiteness is the norm. To challenge this, founder Ana Perez created the LREP as a space to understand how colonization has impacted communities of the global majority and the challenges they face. LREP also works to build on the resiliency and cultural strengths that have kept Latinos alive to dream up a future free from oppression. Perez is a decolonizing Indigenous and queer Latinx, a parent, and a writer who has worked in the race and equity field for over 20 years. Her expertise includes racial equity training and coaching, transformational organizational change, leadership development, and building collaborations rooted in community empowerment frameworks. Perez is also a National WKKF Racial Equity and Healing Fellow.
Janvieve Williams Comrie, the co-founding trainer, is a human rights strategist, trainer, and organizer with a deep commitment to building powerful social movements for racial justice and human rights. She is internationally recognized for her work with NGOs, grassroots organizations, and the UN. Comrie serves social movements as a facilitator, communications consultant, and strategic planning consultant.
In 2021 LREP joined forces with a collective of organizations — including CARECEN SF, Chicana/Latina Foundation, Galería de la Raza, and Instituto Familiar de la Raza — for the Caravan of Children campaign denouncing the recent reopening of detention facilities. The work uplifted the voices of the children and asked the Biden Administration to #UncageReUnifyHeal. The campaign called on communities to contact members of the Family Reunification Task Force to prioritize and expedite the process to #UncageReunifyHeal the children in ICE detention.
LREP’s goal is to nurture a growing Latino community that embraces deeply held multiracial, multicultural, and equity values to counter, and hopefully change, the possibility of a majority Latino population that continues to replicate inequity at all levels in America. When more Latino leaders understand the racial diversity and oppression dynamics of the Latino community, they can challenge those dynamics. Doing so creates healthier work and movement environments that build more equitable organizations and systems and reduce inequitable outcomes for everyone.
Movement Generation (Past Project)
Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2004
Founders/leadership: Zak Sinclair, founding director
Movement Generation is rooted in vibrant social movements led by low-income communities and communities of color and committed to a Just Transition. Built out by a planning committee that included grassroots organizers, movement builders, and popular educators, Movement Generation’s concept intends to inspire and engage in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture.
During their first two years, Movement Generation was housed by the School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL) and Movement Strategy Center. During that time, they brought together more than 70 young movement leaders from more than 30 organizations for two cycles of ten-month movement strategy discussions. Movement Generation has since engaged with over 150 organizations and thousands of change agents (community leaders, activists, and organizers) through intensive retreats, political education, hands-on skills workshops, peer exchange, campaign development, alliance building, and strategic support.
NEWHAB
Location: National
Founding: 2014
Founders/leadership: Lamisa Chowdhury, project director
NEWHAB (The Network for Energy, Water, and Health in Affordable Buildings) is the national social impact and anti-racist learning network of the Energy Efficiency for All project. Approximately 300 members representing the four corners of the United States, and from diverse sectors and backgrounds, share an interest in learning from each other and coming together to wrestle with the complex problems that cannot be solved alone. Members include energy efficiency program implementers, affordable housing owners and developers, community organizers, environmental justice advocates, public agency officials, healthy home implementers, contractors, residents and resident advocates, utilities, and lenders and funders. NEWHAB focuses on root causes and intentional, leveraged action aimed at increasing the health of overlapping systems that create housing and energy instability for people of color and underserved communities while hosting regular engagement opportunities, including training and learning exchanges and collaborative problem-solving sessions, by and for members.
NEWHAB is open to all individuals working collectively toward making affordable multi-family homes energy and water efficient and is dedicated to a future where everyone has a good home that is permanently affordable, protects health, and contributes to climate and community resilience.
Oakland Rising (Past Project)
Location: Oakland, CA
Region: California
Founding: 2006
Founders/Leadership: Liz Suk, Executive Director
Oakland Rising was founded in 2006 by the executive directors from APEN, Ella Baker Center, E-BASE, and Urban Habitat. They envisioned an alliance of organizations that aligned with their civic engagement work, collectively worked on electoral organizing, and strengthened the social justice movement in Oakland. By aligning regional like-minded forces, leading with values that center social justice, and flexing people’s power through mass-based electoral organizing, Oakland Rising works toward realizing shared dreams of health, happiness, safety, and opportunity for all.
A multilingual, multiracial economic justice collaborative, Oakland Rising, is building the political power of working-class communities of color along with three local alliances: Bay Rising, San Francisco Rising, and Silicon Valley Rising. Together, in response to the mounting inequity and displacement occurring in the Bay Area, they work to build political power that advances genuinely progressive policy solutions supporting healthy, equitable, and inclusive communities for all.
Together, the collaborative has won flagship policies at local and state levels that included a minimum wage increase; a tenant protection ordinance; a landmark jobs policy that featured living wages, local hires, and job access for workers with disadvantages, prior incarcerations, and other employment barriers; Prop 47, a state measure reallocating resources from incarceration to community-based re-entry services; and Proposition 30, a state measure that returned $6 billion to the state for critical services by raising taxes on the wealthiest Californians.
Oakland Rising remains committed and forward-thinking, ready to face new challenges supporting a thriving, progressive community in Oakland.