By Kiara Doyal, The Seattle Medium
Friday, April 12, the Black Future Co-op Fund, a local, Black-led philanthropic organization, will host a listening session for Black folks in King and Pierce counties to share their vision for furthering Black liberation from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm in Renton, Washington.
According to T’wina Nobles, CEO of the Black Future Co-op Fund, the organization hopes to gain knowledge from all different types of people during the listening session that will help them shape its grantmaking and operations, and increase the flow of resources to Black nonprofits and communities. The Black Future Co-op Fund was created by Nobles, with the support of her three co-founders, Andrea Caupain Sanderson, Angela Jones J.D., and Michelle Merriweather. Calling themselves “the architects,” this group has made it a focus to make sure that they are celebrating and lifting the Black voices in the community.
The Black Future Co-op Fund team has traveled all over Washington during their listening tour to meet with Black people who are leading powerful work within their communities. The listening tour has provided useful insight for the fund in realizing how each community is unique. Sharing all of the same desires, each community within the Olympic Peninsula, Eastern Washington, Southwest Washington, and Central Washington all want support for healing and need proper investments to help see their visions come to light.
“Our listening tour is an ongoing opportunity for Black Future Co-op Fund to hear directly from the community,” says Nobles. “We want to make sure that our grantmaking is guided by the needs of the community and the desires of the community. The listening tour allows us to travel across the state and hear directly from different communities and share our research while continuing to receive statewide input on the research that can be found in our Black well-being report.”
A relatively new organization, the Black Future Co-op Fund strives to find ways to connect with the community, listen to other voices, and understand what support might be needed from the organization. Redistributing funds that they receive back into the community allows the Black Future Co-op Fund to continue to help fund solutions that will move the Black communities across Washington state forward.
“We launched the fund in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, to create an intermediary to follow up on the commitments from so many community members and organizations that were saying they are committed to Black lives,” says Nobles.
The listening session will operate much like a small group talk show, providing a space for the community to engage in interactive participation.
“We will introduce folks to the fund, who we are, explain why we are visiting that region of the state, dive into some of our research, and then ask the community directly specific questions while still allowing participants to actively participate in the room as well,” says Nobles.
Having the opportunity to enlarge their staff to serve more communities and continually building relationships across the state has shown how impactful the Black Future Co-op Fund has been thus far.
“We have raised over $30 million in the past four years and have already invested over $8 million back into the community, in grantmaking and scholarships,” says Nobles. “The listening tour has allowed the fund to be able to disperse their message across the state and begin building in the communities.”
“I think one positive outcome from doing this work is building really positive relationships and doing what we say we are going to do, and understanding that our community trusts us to do exactly that,” says Nobles. “It really is just consistently helping community members to believe in our organization as a new fund and as a Black-led fund because we are still one of the few in the country.”
Having the opportunity to travel to different regions across Washington and hear exactly what some of those community members are saying has been a huge benefit and positive outcome for Nobles as she and her colleagues continue to embark on the listening tour.
“The Puget Sound listening tour is coming up on April 12, where we will get to educate Washingtonians with our stories that we have shared on our social media,” says Nobles.
For more information or to register for the Puget Sound listening session, please visit