The Grassroots Community Giving Circle project (GCGC) was piloted to respond to 2 needs in the community: 

1. To respond to a direct ask from Freedom Project that we, as white-bodied allies, help raise money for mutual aid (housing, basic needs) for the community impacted by incarceration and racial inequity. We are being asked to donate our time, voices, and connections to help raise money in ways that are in alignment with our core values of connection, empathy, accountability and equity.
2. The need to build relationships in community that deepen in anti-racist ways of being and doing, while contributing in ways that truly matter. 

Our approach to meet these needs is to get in relationships and get down to business! In the GCGC project, we will: 

• Learn about the historical roots of the racial wealth gap, and how history relates to our own relationship with money. 
• Learn about the practice of “fund-shifting,” a way to give differently as a part of community and individual anti-racism practices.
• Explore the concept of reparations, from the institutional to the personal 
• Give and receive empathy and self-reflection on the intersections of race and money
• Get support to make invitation for connection with people in your own community and to speak up as an advocate for collective liberation
• Build a community with other anti-racist practitioners who are looking for ways to make meaningful contributions by showing up and using our voices. 
• Learn and get support about creating your own grassroots community giving circle, imagined as a group of friends, family, community members who decide together to commit to funding an aspect of the Freedom Project budget, at whatever level matches their capacity and passions.
• Respond to a need for allies to get together and help expand the impact of Freedom Project’s annual funding appeal