Black Youth Strategy Artwork by: Jess Campbell Working in accountable relationship with Black communities / Grants & Programs / Black Youth / Black Youth Strategy About The Black Youth Fund (BYF), as established in our Strategic Plan 2025-2030, is informed by the Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy report, and the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) 2024 State of the Sector Policy report Built on Hope: Nonprofit Sector Seeking Stability. The Unfunded report found that “grants to Black-serving organizations represented a meagre 0.7 percent of total grants during the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years”. This research –along with the summer of Black uprisings following state-sanctioned murders of Black people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in the United States and Regis Korchinski-Paquet and D’Andre Campbell in Canada among many others– catalyzed the creation of Black philanthropic organizations in the country, including the Foundation for Black Communities (FFBC), which Laidlaw provided a capital transfer of $1.5M towards their endowment. Artwork by: Jess Campbell Black-led philanthropy in Canada Recognizing the urgent need for dedicated investments in Black communities and organizations, the past five years saw an increase in Black-led philanthropy across Canada. Three new Black-led foundations were established: FFBC, Black Opportunity Fund (BOF), and BlackNorth Initiative (BNI). Additionally, new Black-led funding frameworks emerged like the Black-Mandated Funding Framework (BMFF) at the City of Toronto and the B3 Funding Framework in Peel Region. While the concept of philanthropy, culture of giving, and informal collective financial supports in Black communities through pardners, susus, juntas/tandas, sol/sabotay, Njangi, san, stokvels, etc, are not new practices, infrastructure for Black-led philanthropy in Canada is relatively new. Both these reports amplify that Black young people and their communities lack systemic access to ongoing investments from the philanthropic sector. State of the Sector Policy Report Built on Hope: Nonprofit Sector Seeking Stability Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) 2024 This graph, taken from ONN’s presentation on their report, represents the decrease in funding for Black-led, Black-serving, and Black-mandated (B3) organizations The Ontario Nonprofit Network’s 2024 report noted that: while there was a “17% increase in the number of Black-led, Black-Serving, and Black-Mandated (B3) organizations that reported an increase in demand for services, more than two-thirds of B3 respondents, 29% reported being at risk of not existing in the next three years”. Most recent data from ONN’s Built on Hope report shows that foundation funding for B3 organizations are trending down significantly.