I’m writing this in December of 2022, just as The Carmack Collective is about to launch. To best explain the genesis of this project and what we hope to accomplish, I want to first tell you a bit about myself.
I’ll start in 2016. That was, of course, the year Donald Trump was elected President, but on a more personal note, it was the year I graduated from college. For the first time, I was living alone as an adult while really beginning to grapple with how I wanted to live in alignment with my values as an inheritor of wealth. These questions led me to Resource Generation and Women Donors Network, which were formative in launching my redistribution and donor organizing journey.
Since 2019, I’ve been working as a full time organizer and funder in a variety of capacities. Over these last few years, I’ve come to learn a lot more about donor best-practices and family organizing as I grew and evolved my redistribution. The Carmack Collective is a $10 million family endowed fund that will serve as the next iteration of this work. Not only is this an opportunity to begin to scale up the redistribution of inherited and family wealth, but it’s also an opportunity to create a project that openly engages with weaknesses and contradictions inherent to the field of philanthropy.
Of course you can read through our website to learn more about how we will function, but I want to underscore that The Carmack Collective has been created to embrace principles of transparency and power-sharing. Some of the ways this shows up in our practice are:
- Publicly sharing context on how we grant, how much we grant, and to whom we grant.
- Shifting decision making power to movement leaders through our paid Advisory Board and our Flow Fund.
- Embracing trust based philanthropy best practices by prioritizing multi-year grants, unrestricted funding, minimal application requirements, no reporting requirements, and working to support our grantees in ways that go beyond the financial (i.e. connecting with other funders, connecting with needed resources or skill sets, providing training, etc.)
- Centering frontline movements and grassroots solutions, always aiming to address root issues rather than just addressing symptoms.
- Embracing an internationalist lens and funding Global South led movements that are often on the frontlines of interconnected global crises.
We’ve worked hard to create a values-aligned project that will fund radical work in an urgent moment, but we know that this is a journey that will almost certainly have missteps along the way. We look forward to learning through doing, embracing accountability, grappling with contradiction, and evolving as needed.
Jessie Bluedorn
Founder & Director
More Updates
Reflections From Our Director On The Carmack Collective’s Inaugural Core Grantmaking Cycle
As we complete this first round of grantmaking and reflect on our approach, it is becoming clearer to us what our role is as a funder and we will shift our approach going forward.
The Carmack Collective in the Chronicle of Philanthropy
Thank you to the Chronicle of Philanthropy for this exciting coverage of The Carmack Collective, our Director Jessie Bluedorn, and the work we will be doing upon launch.
2024 Annual Report
We are excited to share The Carmack Collective’s 2024 Annual Report, highlighting our work to confront the fossil fuel industry’s impact on our climate and communities. In our second year, we scaled our grantmaking from $750,000 to nearly $1 million, supporting frontline organizations and creative initiatives driving real change. From building movements to shifting narratives, […]