Joint Grants

HSF understands that the structural inequities that negatively impact low-income youth of color also affect low- and no-wage workers and low-income communities. Thus we see a natural connection between our youth Organizing and Economic Justice Program Areas. Moreover, we think that it is important for the sustainability and growth of the social justice movement overall to incorporate youth leadership in a systematic and deliberate fashion. if we have learned nothing else over the last several years of supporting youth organizing, we have learned that it takes more than just good intentions to effectively engage and promote the leadership of young people in organizing. While we know what some of the components of successful youth organizing are in general terms, we do not understand what works well enough to develop a strategy of promoting youth leadership in adult organizing organizations. Therefore, we decided that we would make an exploratory round of grants to a range of adult led, economic justice organizations that have or are beginning to incorporate youth leadership into their organizing work. We invited four current HSF grassroots partners whose work we were familiar with, who we had good relationships with and that represented different models for integrating youth leadership. The purpose of HSF Joint Youth Organizing and Economic Justice grants was to:

• advance HSF's and the social justice field's understanding of how to integrate youth leadership into adult social justice organizations;
• to encourage other social justice organizations to integrate youth leadership into their work; and
• begin to fund the vision of an "inter-generational" social justice movement.

Between 2005 and 2006, HSF made 8 joint grants totaling $360,000.

Lessons Learned
As of 2007 though, HSF discontinued the Joint Grants Program Area. (In 2008, organizations which had been supported through the Joint Grants program area were either transferred to our Youth Organizing Program Area or Economic Justice Program Area, depending on the goals of their work.) Currently, lessons learned from the exploratory Joint Grants inform the Foundation's overall strategy for supporting community organizing through grantmaking, learning and leveraging activities.