Facing Race: A National Conference in St. Louis, MO — November 20-22, 2024

Faybra Jabulani

Lead Racial Equity Capacity Catalyst | Forward Through Ferguson
Pronouns: she/her
Faybra Jabulani (she/her) is the Lead Racial Equity Capacity Catalyst of Forward Through Ferguson. She is a proud St. Louisan with a background in teaching, facilitation, community engagement, nonprofit startup, and facilitating Racial Equity initiatives. Her work touches community advocates representing institutions, initiatives, and coalitions, reaching approximately 400 changemakers and 100 institutions during her four-year tenure at FTF. She is a member of the Deaconess Foundation Institute for Black Liberation and the 2023 LeadBlack cohort. She is a contributor to the Antiracism in Health Equity Consortium, convened by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity.

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Presentations from Facing Race 2024

Building Racial Equity Capacity: Justice Philanthropy

In 2014, a police officer killed Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, MO. A global uprising followed, sparked by the region-wide uprising’s intensity and the compelling passion of local leaders demanding change. In 2016, Forward Through Ferguson (FTF), a social-impact 501(c) (3), was established to ensure that the legacy of the Ferguson Uprising remains in the collective consciousness and political strategy of the St. Louis region.

The Ferguson Commission recommended 189 actions, including creating a sustained, community-led fund to catalyze racial equity, community healing, and justice in the region. In 2019, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Missouri Foundation for Health, and Deaconess Foundation answered the call to launch a pilot version of this fund with FTF. Through this investment, the 2020–23 pilot enabled antiracist, trust-based grantmaking infrastructure to set the foundation for new practices of Justice philanthropy. The call for such a fund acknowledged the powerful systems-wide impact potential the philanthropic sector has to advance racial equity.

More and more philanthropic organizational leaders see this, but they struggle with the "how." This session will focus on tools and lessons of how FTF’s Build Racial Equity Capacity (BREC) team has worked with philanthropic leaders, including: organizational racial equity capacity assessments, education to build capacity, the philanthropy-specific Racial Equity Roundtable cohort model, and key lessons from the pilot fund.

Activities will engage key components of BREC’s approach: building a network of radically collaborative leaders to grapple with next practices, and infusing racial equity principles and processes into organizational transformation plans.

Speakers: Faybra Jabulani, Sarah C. Murphy