Grantmakers for Southern Progress (GSP) is a membership-based network of philanthropic leaders, practitioners, and individuals dedicated to leveraging resources for structural change in the South. Our mission is to transform philanthropic giving and practice in the South that prioritizes equity-focused structural change. As philanthropic giving and practices center equity this will facilitate the strengthening of the organizational infrastructure and the building of power within Southern communities to significantly increase racial, gender, and economic outcomes for people across the South.
We envision a growing network of philanthropic organizations and actors who fund across a spectrum of tools and strategies. Who have the explicit intention to increase investments in organizations that are led by people of color that are seeking to build political power, economic opportunity and social inclusion. GSP is a network that works towards philanthropy being in accountable relationship with directly affected communities. Therefore, we encourage and support our members to listen to and work with social movements and organization working for racial, economic and gender justice.
GSP’s Race and Gender Equity Leadership Cohort Program creates an intentional space to build authentic relationships, sharpen systemic analysis and technical skills, cultivate passions and interests, and inspire a common vision to help shape and organize institutional philanthropy into a committed and effective partner to the movement for structural change in the South in service of justice. The program is a strategic intervention designed to identify, develop, and support justice-minded, anti-racist leaders, in partnership with communities in pursuit of equity and justice, to assert new vision, values, and ways of working that are focused on repairing the harm that white supremacy, anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity, sexism, homophobia, classism, and capitalism has done to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color as well as poor white people in the South.