Positive Women’s Network - USA
Location: Oakland, CA; Houston, TX
Region: National
Founding: 2008
Founders/leadership: Naina Khanna, co-director
Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN-USA) is a national membership body of women living with HIV. It was founded in 2008 by 28 women leaders living with HIV, diverse in background and experiences — rural, southern, and urban, of diverse races and ethnicities, and spanning a spectrum of ages ranging from 21 to 72 years old. A foundational part of the MSC ecosystem since 2013, PWN-USA’s mission is to prepare and involve women and people of trans experience living with HIV in all levels of policy and decision-making, strengthening the strategic power of all women living with HIV in the United States.
Every day, Positive Women’s Network – USA inspires, informs, and mobilizes women living with HIV to advocate for changes that improve their lives and uphold their rights. PWN-USA develops a leadership pipeline and policy agenda that applies a gender lens to the domestic HIV epidemic grounded in social justice and human rights. An organizing machine populated by self-identified women living with HIV — including women of transgender experience — members participate in workgroups, regional chapters, training, and events. PWN-USA supports regional chapters in building leadership at a local, state, and federal advocacy level.
Community informed, the PWN-USA board of directors consists entirely of women living with HIV, representing the epidemic’s diverse communities. Co-director Naina Khanna supports a vision of a world where women living with HIV can live long, healthy, dignified lives that are free from stigma and discrimination.
A national speaker, trainer, and advocate, Naina Khanna has worked in the HIV field since 2005, following her HIV diagnosis in 2002. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for AIDS United, the National Steering Committee for the US People Living with HIV Caucus, is a member of the Women’s HIV Research Initiative and served on President Obama’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) from 2010-2014.
RadOps
Location: Durham, NC
Region: National
Founding: 2020
Founders/leadership: Yashna Maya Padamsee, project lead; advisory council: Tara Shaui Ellison; Chanda Jones; Mijo Lee; Felicia Martinez; Mae Singerman
The RadOps Network started in 2016 as an online social media group of over 500 people to build a support and resource-sharing network of like-minded operations workers within social movement organizations. The RadOps Project is the next step, building off of the RadOps network and framework, and seeks to uplift and make accessible the RadOps approach through shareable media and resources such as toolkits, social media infographics, online interviews, panels, and workshops.
Operations include the work areas of operations, administration, finance, events, development, volunteer and intern coordination, and/or the often invisible behind the scenes work in progressive and radical organizations, cooperatives, volunteer groups, and businesses.
The RadOps approach is an explicit justice-based framework and method; and RadOps has a demonstrated commitment to movement building and anti-oppression values and behavior, including centering the voices, experiences, and leadership of BIPOC, people with disabilities, women, LGBTQIA+ people, and others targeted by systems of oppression.
In many organizations, administrative work, which is historically women’s work or feminized labor, is devalued. RadOps see the operations, finance, and human resources teams and our/their labor as an integral part of the greater work. This value of respecting historically women’s work, respect for invisible labor, and honoring the dignity of all labor is put into action within each organization by valuing the work of the full team.
Reimagine! (Past Project)
Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2014
Founders/leadership: Jess Clarke, project director & editor
Reimagine! (formerly RP&E) is the national journal of environmental and social justice, serving as an essential tool for building the movements for justice through reporting, analysis, and research. Incubated at MSC in 2014, the organization creates long-form, slow-media productions including in-depth reporting and immersive journalism. Highlighted works include two interviews conducted in collaboration with the California Environmental Justice Alliance on Central and Inland Valley residents choking on the pollution generated by Amazon’s ever-expanding warehouse operations; stories and interviews from the powerful women of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA); and multiple contributions from Kelly Curry, a fiercely independent food justice organizer from Oakland. Reimagine welcomes participation from writers and organizers committed to using a race, class, and gender analysis in their work.
The Reimagine! Workers network provides production services and infrastructure capacity for community-based organizations creating movement media. Radio Reimagine hosts podcasts from Race, Poverty & the Environment (RP&E), NOOL — Weaving the Threads, and other allied producers. And, Reimagine!’s cataloged research papers cover topics like climate change, environmental justice, economic equality, and more.
reSet Project

Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: 2014
Founders/leadership: Rufaro Gwarada; Aparna Shah
The reSet Project cultivates imagination and builds power toward inclusive and participatory governance that centers people and the natural world. Working with tribal, community and state leaders, artists, cultural workers, organizers, communicators, academics, and advocates, they seed cultural shifts and intentionally integrate arts and cultural organizing to ensure that decision making power and influence reside within communities and tribes. Rooted in their unwavering love and collective strength, the reSet Project activates whole people, thriving families, and interconnected communities from a place of expansive vision. Together, they’re rebuilding a world of care, joy, and belonging.
Launching in Summer 2021, reSet and the Resonance Network are working with organizational partners across the country in a collaborative learning community to deepen their understanding and practice of collective governance, guided by the WeGovern agreements.
Resources:
The reSet Project builds on many years of experience and partnerships, as described in these reports which articulate their grounding ideas:
Cultural Strategy: An Introduction and Primer, 2019
The what, why, and how of Cultural Strategy. Commissioned from Art/Work Practice with the support of Unbound Philanthropy.
Until We Are All Free: A Case Study in Cultural Strategy, 2019
A summary of Until We Are All Free, our culture-led racial justice initiative with CultureStrike in partnership with Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Commissioned from Art/Work Practice with the support of Unbound Philanthropy.
Resonance Network
Location: Oakland, CA
Region: National
Founding: 2017
Founders/leadership: Alexis Flanagan, co-director; Aimee Thompson, co-director
Resonance Network believes how we work together, communicate, and organize ourselves is integral to the change we want to see in the world. Through transparency, shared leadership, and a culture that values healing and developing new ideas and approaches to transform, Resonance Network connects people who are imagining and building a world rooted in deep relationship, vibrant community, and connection to our planet.
When violence keeps us disconnected from our humanity and each other, Resonance Network participants come together because they see the widespread hunger for — and possibility of — something different. Resonance Network participants work together to uproot violence that particularly affects women, girls, and gender-oppressed people. They work together to center people who most experience the impacts of historical and current systems of oppression; creating conditions for communities to be thriving, just, and compassionate through practices that foster deep connection and relationship building.
MSC works in collaboration with Resonance Network’s Oversight Circle on traditional governance tasks and roles with a board of directors. With significant input from other network members, the Catalyst Circle uses network principles of co-design, advice, and consent to make decisions about infrastructure and strategy for the network. Through power-sharing and collective decision-making, it makes room for a governance system that centers compassion, deep relationship, and collective thriving.
Since its inception in 2017, Resonance Network took root with the first cohort of movement leaders to take part in Move to End Violence, a ten year program of the NoVo Foundation. Resonance Network has supported 37 experimental projects through the Innovation Lab, hosted a series of leader convening and facilitated state-based dialogue, capacity-building, and strategy support with coalitions in the broader movement to end violence against women and girls.
One example of Resonance Network participants coming together to envision a world beyond the dominant power structures was Workshopping the Worldview, which called on participants to channel their creativity and ancestral wisdom to envision together what a reimagined world — a world beyond violence, the world we all deserve to live in — could look like, sound like, feel like, taste like, and who we would need to be to bring it into being. Now, Resonance Network is creating a new online platform for network participants to connect and work with each other.
Roots
Location: Oakland, CA
Founding: November 2019
Founders/leadership: Priya Iyer, founder
Birthing people of color are twice as likely to experience perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMAD) compared to White women. One reason this problem persists is that the Western mental health model in the United States was not designed by and with BIPOC communities. Exacerbated by income, untreated PMADs cost $14 billion annually; and they affect not only the birthing parent but are passed down across three generations.
Roots mission is to prevent postpartum mood disorders for BIPOC, low income birthing people, and build a legacy of generational mental wellness. Roots believe every birthing person, starting with BIPOC, low income communities in America, should have access to culturally reverent peer education and support around mental wellness during pregnancy and postpartum.
Roots’ mission is driven by domestic birth inequity, and a critical component of this is perinatal mental health. Roots use a text based adaptation of the Mothers and Babies curriculum. The tools and skills taught in this curriculum could prevent up to 50 percent of the episodes related to postpartum depression.
The goal is to work with 120 BIPOC, low income birthing people in the next nine months by hiring and training three BIPOC peer support specialists and partnering with Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), for their initial pilot starting in April 2022.
Saginaw Just Transition Indaba
Location: Saginaw, MI
Founding: 2021
Founders/leadership: Pamela Pugh, founder and co-director; Teresa Stitt, co-director; Hurley Coleman III, John Pugh, Hurley Coleman, Jr., Michelle McGregor, co-founders
In the middle of the city of Saginaw, MI, sits a 54-acre fairground that was once the home of the biggest fair in the region from the 1930s to the 1960s. By 2000, the lot and its historic gates had grown into a wasteland in the middle of the Fairgrounds neighborhood. Instances like this inspired community residents to take matters into their own hands, aligning efforts with the Saginaw Just Transition Indaba — an organization founded to promote Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), centered and recognized as the leaders in decisions made about them and their neighborhoods for more equitable and inclusive economic development opportunities. Composed of six community and faith-based organizations, the Indaba came together to combat poverty by mobilizing and utilizing public and private resources to provide education and employment opportunities and motivate productivity for better living, learning, and working conditions for the people of Saginaw.
With supporting partners throughout the city, the Indaba aims to reduce food and energy insecurity through the eventual development of the community, including the old fairground acreage into a park and recreation center, urban farm, and a community center that provides educational, cultural, social, and recreation opportunities to the community.
The six community and faith-based organizations that make up the Indaba include Saginaw County Community Action Committee, Fairground Neighborhood Association, World Outreach Campus, First Ward Community Service, and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (Florida A&M).
Borrowing from the Florida A&M University Sustainability Action Plan, the Saginaw Just Transition Indaba involves the convening and collective action of the aforementioned organizations along with local youth, seniors, entrepreneurs, academia members, and policymakers. The organization’s goals include working together toward food and energy justice, inclusive economic development, health equity, and general wellbeing for neighborhood residents, including Saginaw County seniors, youth, entrepreneurs, and BIPOC, low income, and ALICE residents living in Saginaw, Buena Vista, and Bridgeport Township.
Sandbranch Revitalization Fund

Location: Sandbranch, TX
Region: Dallas County, TX
Founders/leadership: Tonnette Yarbough Byrd; Jacqui Patterson
Believe it or not, there are folks living just 14 miles from Dallas, TX — one of the wealthiest cities in the world — who do not have access to clean, running water.
In 1878, emancipated from enslavement, Allen Hawthorne and 11 other people from Louisiana collectively purchased this parcel southeast of Dallas — as a homestead, and to provide opportunity and financial security for their families. A Freedmen’s Settlement, it was called Sandbranch — so-named for its abundance of sand and gravel, just one of the area’s abundant natural resources. Like so many Black and low income communities, those resources were exploited for industrial and agricultural uses that rarely benefited the community. Today, a dwindling population of residents faces pressure to move from pollution, a lack of infrastructure, and unfair zoning that prohibits many essential capital improvements.
Sandbranch is an underdog. In its 142-year history, the community has never had running water. It lacks a sewage system and its groundwater became contaminated in the 1980s. Living in a waterless town means living in a place without fire hydrants or a way to put out fires, leaving homes and businesses destroyed. There is no trash pick-up and residents must burn their garbage — adding to the air pollution caused by adjacent cement plants. Every drop of drinkable water in Sandbranch is shipped in. The closest grocery store is seven miles away; the closest health care facility is 35 miles away. There are no streetlights and few signs. Yet, Sandbranch is rising.
Today, 100 intrepid Sandbranch residents — property owners and taxpayers — are determined to make their community a healthy and thriving place to call home. They’re led by the Sandbranch Planning Committee, whose first priority is to provide drinking water directly to 25 households through the cutting edge, regenerative technology of Hydropanels — a solar-powered system that extracts clean drinking water from the air.
In addition to water, they plan to increase access to fresh food, equitable healthcare, opportunity, and basic infrastructure (streetlights, trash removal, sewerage, signage). With help from MSC, the Chisholm Legacy Project, and the Until Justice Corporation, the affiliated Sandbranch Revitalization Fund centers on water justice, food justice, and land justice — all rooted in a Just Transition.
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is sponsoring Hydropanels for two homes while working to raise additional funds and urge other large environmental organizations to make similar investments in Sandbranch and other frontline communities struggling to access clean drinking water.
Read about Sandbranch’s historic cemetery.
Read about Sandbranch, Texas, and the Intersectionality of American Water.
STEM Funders Network
Location: Georgia
Region: National
Founding: 2012
Founders/leadership: Errika Moore, executive director
STEM Funders Network (SFN) helps grantmakers leverage their considerable social and economic influence to create equitable access to STEM learning experiences for underrepresented populations — from cradle to career. By transforming and strengthening the STEM philanthropic ecosystem, SFN is leading a collaborative movement that elevates grantmaking standards through informed, intentional investments.
STEM Funders Network members are a diverse mix of private, family, community, and corporate foundations working together to increase the knowledge and expertise of grantmakers investing in STEM, leveraging their collective resources to influence the philanthropic industry positively, and collaborating on high impact projects to create collective impact.
SFN Believes:
- Talent is ubiquitous, but unfortunately, opportunities are not. We believe every individual should have an equitable opportunity to engage in high-quality STEM experiences across the learning continuum that will enhance their ability to succeed in a STEM career or other chosen path.
- We are a driving force for positive change. Our innovative efforts pave the way for new behaviors that support equity in and access to STEM opportunities from early childhood to early career, starting with funding organizations whose considerable power can lead to systemic transformation.
- Our work is critical to eradicating racial and social injustices that prohibit individuals from achieving full access to STEM learning opportunities that can improve their lives.
- Initiatives and activities of the STEM Funders Network are informed by research and will be evaluated for effectiveness and impact to measure change.
Supported by the Executive Steering Committee, members come together collectively to identify and pursue overarching strategies, policies, and opportunities that can positively impact the STEM equity ecosystem. Initiatives represent opportunities that reflect multifunder support over the past few years and leverage resources, ideas, and leadership. Each member decides on whether to collaborate with other members on an initiative and how they can collectively support it.
Check out STEM Funders Network’s upcoming events.
TAYHub

Location: Oakland, CA
Region: Califonia
Founding: 2020
Founders/leadership: Brooklyn Williams, project director
In the spring of 2020, a coalition of transitional-aged youth (TAY) and adults who serve them, including stakeholders who work for Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), the city of Oakland, Alameda County, Peralta Colleges, faith-based organizations, and community-based organizations, won a campaign for a Career Technical Education (CTE) Hub at 1025 2nd Avenue in Oakland California. Included in the Measure Y Bond project list, CTE Hub at 1025 2nd Avenue, also known as TAYHub, secured funding from OUSD facilities bond, the city of Oakland, and through private support. With fiscal sponsorship from MSC, TAYHub is establishing a planning process to serve youths who need alternative pathways to post-secondary success.
The location is integral to the TAYHub vision. Situated in the heart of Oakland, close to public transportation, and across the street from Laney College, Dewey Academy, and La Escuelita Education Center, the location is not only safe, healthy, and accessible, but it builds on the important history of the land — honoring the legacy of Marcus Foster, the first Black superintendent of Oakland Unified School District.
TAYHub will provide in-depth support, wrap around services (health, wellness, social, emotional, etc.), a technical education center with hands-on job training on real life equipment in several trades, a space for athletic programs, a student-run cafe, and additional services and support for OUSD students and family.