For Immediate Release: June 23, 2020
The following statement can be attributed to Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change, the largest online racial justice organization in the country which has helped more than 7 million people fight racism in the last month.
“Color Of Change does not take financial corporate donations, as a way to ensure we maintain autonomy in our work which regularly takes on corporate targets. In the last month however, Color Of Change has received an outpouring of unexpected donations from individuals and organizations looking to support our work. We strongly believe that movements are built by many individuals coming together to enact change and we see the hundreds of thousands of individual donations received in the last month as a rallying cry for us to grow and continue the work. While the bulk of recent donations have been from individual small donors, some corporations have announced or sent donations without realizing that Color Of Change does not accept this kind of financial support.
In response The Color Of Change’s board has created “The Emergency Fund For Racial Justice” in partnership with the Amalgamated Foundation. This independent, rapid response fund will ensure this moment benefits Black-led organizations and their partners around the country by distributing corporate funding to local social justice, grassroots and non-profit organizations based on need, impact and opportunity. We take this responsibility seriously and Color Of Change’s board is now taking time to thoughtfully set up a transparent process to account for the amount of corporate money raised and set up a responsible process for redistribution. As part of our mission to challenge injustice and hold corporate leaders accountable, Color Of Change continues to urge corporations to follow donations with deeper relationship building. Deep systemic racism is killing Black people in our country and dismantling it demands that we put action behind our dollars.”