Social Justice Fund Northwest Responds to Community by Engaging Activists Directly

The second short video in our video learning series highlights Social Justice Fund Northwest, a Seattle–based foundation working toward long-term social change by funding grassroots community organizing throughout the Northwest.

In May 2019 Foundation board and staff members convened in Seattle for the annual learning retreat. They spent their time focused on this guiding question: How is self-determination expressed in the culturally grounded work of our grantees in Native communities, communities of color, immigrant and refugee communities, and people in rural areas near Seattle? Meeting and interacting with the team at Social Justice Fund NW—including Mijo Lee, executive director—helped build a 360-degree answer to that question.

Social Justice Fund NW used a 2017 Foundation grant to match funds for community-organizing grants to rural organizations outside of Seattle and Portland. As Mijo says, Social Justice Fund NW supports progressive social change by funding “organizations led by the people most directly impacted by the issue they’re working on.”

This video is the second in series of five short learning videos featuring some of our Seattle-area grantee partners. The first focuses on Ventures; the three following installments center on Byrd Barr Place, Chief Seattle Club, and Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network.