We’re writing with updates from the RG Migrant Justice Solidarity Working Group, recently renamed the Hummingbird Collective. (Much less of a mouthful, right?) This funding project was born out of an idea at last year’s Making Money Make Change, and has grown and developed in ways we couldn’t have imagined when we first sat around a table together in the redwood forest. We continue to be excited about, deeply committed to, and totally inspired by the work of funding grassroots migrant justice in Arizona and beyond. Throughout this work we’ve been asking ourselves the question, “How, as people with wealth, do we respond to critical moments in the struggle for racial and economic justice?” We continue to be challenged and driven by this question. So, where are we at in our process?
The work
We continue to be in dialogue with organizers from 8 organizations we connected with while on a delegation to Arizona last April.  A core belief held by our funding collective is that people most impacted by injustice know best what the solutions to injustice look like. We’re working to shift decision-making power over how money is allocated away from ourselves, and towards the organizers who have direct experience in the struggle for migrant justice. Though we’ve learned from some amazing models of cross-class giving, navigating what it looks like to move money in a way that resists the traditional power dynamics of philanthropy is totally challenging! We’re collectively working through a lot of questions about what makes the most sense to fund, what being democratic in a funding process looks like, and how to do justice to process while recognizing some amount of urgency. We’re learning a lot, y’all. Concrete ideas for what we’re funding, when, and how, are brewing and coming together. We’re working hard to move a significant chunk of money by the end of the year.
Turning the Tide on Hate Conference
We moved over $2000 to support Turning the Tide, a conference and strategy session that took place this May. Turning the Tide was a convening of grassroots migrant justice organizations from around the country, with a focus on stopping the police and ICE collaborations that are leading to more deportations now than ever before in US history.  Many of the organizers we’ve met through our work in Arizona were part of the convening, and 6 members of the Hummingbird Collective joined as well. We had a chance to learn from organizations around the country about the strategies they’re using to resist anti-immigrant bills in states that limit non-citizen’s abilities to attend school, rent property, and work. We learned about the community defense networks (Committees for Defense of the Barrio) being organized around the country to build resilient, self-determining neighborhood networks of defense against deportations. We did a lot of listening and learning, and we got to engage in conversations about the role of donors and of white folks in this work. By sharing our experiences in this space, we were able to connect with other folks thinking about privilege in similar ways, and growing the dialogue and network of allies.
Building our skills
In August, 6 of us went through a fundraising training in RG’s New York office. Our amazing trainers, Emily Nepon and Yasmeen Perez, each have over ten years of grassroots fundraising under their belts. As someone who has had no fundraising training, I left feeling excited and demystified, and with the reflection that as people with access to wealthy networks, learning how to fundraise is an important part of being accountable to the movements we’re committed to.
Resistance in Georgia
A massive anti-immigrant bill was recently passed in Georgia, and a huge day of action was called for July 2nd.  A call went out around the country for organizers to support the mobilization. James and Margot drove to Georgia for the July 2nd day of actions. They painted banners, helped out on a media team, and were marshalls for the massive march that took place. They showed up, they threw down, they sweated, a lot.
First round of grants
On August 1st we moved $8,000 in the form of $1,000 grants to each of the 8 organizations we’ve been partnering with. A few examples of who this money is funding:

• 3rd Space, a fabulous collective of queer folks of color and allies working for to make the invisible visible in Phoenix