We bridge funders and organizers to support youth organizing and its commitment to systemic change and social justice.
We provide direct support to youth organizing groups across the country through innovative programs.
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LEARN MOREFCYO helps build philanthropic, intellectual and organizational capital necessary to strengthen and grow youth organizing.
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Apply now for FCYO's next National Youth CORE Convening, taking place November 16-19th in Albuquerque, NM!
FCYO is excited to hold it's second regional briefing on November 15-17, 2017. This briefing will have funder-to-funder activities and opportunities to participate alongside young leaders from across the country in FCYO's second national YouthCORE convening: Youth Power 2017: From Rooted Resilience to Rising Power (taking place Nove 16-19). FCYO is collaborating with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and will seek to update the Southwest Story, uplifting youth organizing across New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Texas.
In this second webinar, FCYO and Global Action Project, a social justice youth media organization, lifted up impactful community-based transformative media organizing, in relation to campaigns that seek to expand the narrative framework around "sanctuary" and build local community defense infrastructure.
The Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) is preparing to launch a new grant making program in the fall of 2017 to support low-income young people and young people of color who are at the forefront of organizing for social, economic, and racial justice. Pipelines to Power will support youth and intergenerational organizing groups in strengthening organizing strategies to build the power necessary to win meaningful change for historically disenfranchised communities across the U.S. LOIs are due July 7th.
On May 9th, 2017 FCYO held the first of a two-part webinar series on Sanctuary and Transformative Media Organizing. The first webinar focuses on how youth organizers are defining sanctuary and organizing around it in cities, neighborhoods, and schools.
August 1 & 2 of 2017, FCYO and the California Endowment will host funders in Los Angeles to learn about how, youth leaders and communities across California are working together to advance young people as drivers of change. This event is the first in a series of briefings and learning sessions for regional and national youth funders as we develop new philanthropic strategies to support young people working together to improve their communities.
Published in 2004, OPS 5 analyzes the emergence and practice of youth organizing amidst California's bellwether politics and culture, and the immense geopolitical and cultural diversity of its subregions - Los Angeles, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Central Valley. OPS 5 was one of five installments that detailed the development of youth organizing in specific regions across the United States. Whether a “region” has a coherent identity is debatable. Still, this place-based dissection brings us closer to work that by definition is grounded in and led by communities.
From 2003-2006, the FCYO implemented and coordinated the Roots Initiative, a grantmaking and capacity-building project involving ten dynamic Youth Organizing groups from around the country. Overall, we hoped to develop, analyze and take action on information both macro and micro: macro considerations of the state of youth organizing practice, generally, as illustrated by the ten groups; and micro, focusing on ways to address specific capacity-building challenges faced by individual groups. This Toolkit provides, additionally, various suites of tools (in the form of templates, worksheets and exercises) that we hope are useful to organizations undertaking a broad range of organizational development efforts.
On November 15, 2016, the Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) held the tenth webinar as part of our Youth Community Organizing Resource Exchange (Youth CORE), a set of projects that seeks to build a more powerful and well-connected youth organizing field. This webinar is titled Invest/Divest:A Post Election Strategy to End Mass Incarceration and Fund Our Vision.
On September 29th, 2016 FCYO held the ninth Youth CORE webinar in partnership with the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT). This webinar featured panelists from the Philadelphia Student Union, Survivors Organizing for Liberation and Casa de Paz & Volleyball Internacional discussing reducing reliance on foundation funding and building independent financial power.
On August 30, 2016 FCYO held an information webinar on our programs launching in the 2016-2017 fiscal year, including our Moment to Movement Fund application process, Learning & Exchange Fund, Healthy Communities III, Capacity Building, Youth Organizing Landscape Map and more. View the recording here!
The National Youth Alliance for Boys and Men of Color has released a statement in the wake of recent murders of people of color across the country.
On June 23, 2016 FCYO held its 8th Youth CORE webinar as part of our Youth Community Organizing Resource Exchange (Youth CORE), a set of projects that seeks to build a more powerful and well-connected youth organizing field. This webinar examined how organizers are using digital tools - text messaging, social media, email and the web - to reach young people and their adult allies, bring them into a campaign and move them to action.
In March of 2016, FCYO held the seventh webinar as part of our Youth Community Organizing Resource Exchange (Youth CORE), a set of projects that seeks to build a more powerful and well-connected youth organizing field. This webinar focused on Strategies to Unlock Foundation Funding for Youth Organizing
Published in May, 2011, OPS 11 illustrates the power that youth organizing, specifically organizing for education reform, has on young people – from increasing self-efficacy and strengthening leadership capacity, to building collective power, academic motivation, and future commitment to civic engagement. Drawing on six years of data, OPS 11 expanded on OPS 10, “Building a Pipeline for Justice”, which underscored the importance of developing a pathway for young people to sustain the social justice movement.
In February of 2016, FCYO held the sixth webinar as part of our Youth Community Organizing Resource Exchange (Youth CORE), a set of projects that seeks to build a more powerful and well-connected youth organizing field. This webinar focused on Momentum Based Organizing: Turning Moments into Mass Movements.
In January of 2016, FCYO held the fifth webinar as part of our Youth Community Organizing Resource Exchange (Youth CORE), a set of projects that seeks to build a more powerful and well-connected youth organizing field. This webinar focused on Healing, Support, and Transformation: Supporting Young People's Needs While Organizing.
Released in 2015, the ReGenerations: Leadership Pipeline Toolkit provides curriculum and tools for groups interested in improving their work building the holistic development of young leaders at each stage of a social justice leadership pipeline. This toolkit has with a specific emphasis on supporting staff in facilitating young people’s transition in the final stage. We hope these tools will be an important resource in supporting the next generational of social justice leaders.
This toolkit, developed in partnership with the Community Resource Exchange (CRE) as part of our 2015 Financial Management Technical Assistance Project, provides a list of vetted websites with financial management resources that are easy to use and free trainings that can help staff build their skills at no cost.
Published in September 2004, OPS 6 describes the sociopolitical and historical backdrop of efforts by youth and their communities to build hope and local power for social change and justice in the South, and how local and regional dynamics shaped those organizing efforts. OPS 6 was one of five installments that detailed the development of youth organizing in specific regions across the United States. Whether a “region”has a coherent identity is debatable. Still, this place-based dissection brings us closer to work that by definition is grounded in and led by communities.
Check out this amazing highlight list from FCYO's 2015 National Youth CORE convening in Durham, NC, put together by our ally the Perrin Family Foundation.
February 18th at 1pm ET, the Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) will hold the first webinar as part of our new Youth Community Organizing Resource Exchange (Youth CORE), a set of projects that will seek to build a more powerful and well-connected youth organizing field over the next three years. This first in a series of field-wide webinars, one component of the Youth CORE projects, focuses on the ReGenerations: Leadership Pipeline Toolkit produced by FCYO and the Movement Strategy Center.
In December of 2015, FCYO held the fourth webinar as part of our Youth Community Organizing Resource Exchange (Youth CORE), a set of projects that seeks to build a more powerful and well-connected youth organizing field.On this webinar, FCYO shared some of our lessons learned about youth organizing and voter engagement and attendees heard from two organizations that have successfully integrated voter engagement into their work.
From 2012-2015, Global Action Project, Data Center and Research Action Design conducted a national research project—Media in Action: A Field Scan of Media & Youth Organizing in the U.S. The project sought to understand how youth organizers are using media to advance social justice and movement-building work throughout the United States.
The Youth Organizing Institute and FCYO co-hosted youth organizers from across the country in Durham, NC, November 12 - 15, 2015 for a convening titled: Youth Power: "Who we are, Where we have come from and Where we are going."
Released in 2015 in partnership with Quadrant Metrics, LLC, Now or Never is a research report on the youth civic engagement ecosystem in the current political landscape. The report examines how civic engagement leaders can look to the field of youth organizing for promising new strategies to assist them in increasing voter participation, passing beneficial policies, affecting redistricting in 2021, and changing how the Millennial Generation thinks about values and policies for their lifetimes.
This webinar, held in December 2013, focused on our 2013 National Youth Organizing Field Scan report, the most comprehensive report on the state of the field of youth organizing since our last scan in 2010. FCYO and respondents from the youth organizing field and philanthropy discussed how the field has grown in maturity and power, but faces important challenges in continuing to push for social change and building the leadership of young people. Attendees discussed how funders committed to supporting this work can work together to address the financial challenges facing the field.
In 2013, FCYO released its last National Field Scan, the most comprehensive report on the field of youth organizing since its previous scan in 2010. The report documents important advances made by the field, identifies significant challenges facing youth organizers, offers detailed analysis of the trends, opportunities and challenges facing the field, and offers recommendations for funders.
The National Youth Alliance on Boys and Men of Color, in partnership with the Executive’s Alliance on Boys and Men of Color, launched the first annual Justice Reinvestment Community Award Fund to provide $500,000 in support for youth-led campaigns and rapid response on urgent issues impacting local communities across the country.