The John Rex Endowment offered our first Racial Equity Capacity Building Request for Proposals (RFP) earlier this year to organizations that had received funding in the last five years, 2017-2021, from the Endowment. 

Our familiarity with organizations that applied to this RFP allowed the Endowment to dive deeper into our own racial equity work and helped create our second funding opportunity—all while learning more about the needs of our grant-funded partners.   

We are pleased to announce that the John Rex Endowment Board of Directors approved a total of $900,000 in Racial Equity Capacity Building grants to Arts Access, Inc., El Pueblo, Haven House Services, and Learning Together. Each organization will receive $75,000 per year over three years ($225,000 total per organization) beginning August 2022. 

The Purpose of Racial Equity Funding 

This grant designates funding to continue building capacity in several ways—an increase in knowledge, skills, confidence/commitment, and resources/stability—as we work to strengthen the systems that support the social emotional health of children. 

The organizations awarded will utilize their funding to strengthen their racial equity commitment as follows:   

• Arts Access, Inc. will align its core values of racial equity with an intersection of disability. Arts Access also plans to take a deep dive into the root issues of race and how it impacts disability in education.  
• El Pueblo will explore ways to support Latinx youth to manage family dynamics, overall stressors, and develop coping skills to support their healing. El Pueblo also plans to explore effective ways to continue collectively reflecting on white supremacy characteristics and develop specific strategies to engage in conversations about colorism and push back on anti-Blackness in the Latinx community. 
• Haven House Services will strengthen its staff capacity to directly support social emotional health in youth—helping those served to understand their own social identities in terms of race, class, gender, etc., and how these shape interpretations of youth behavior. Haven House will also reconsider terms, approaches and models to ensure that they are using a racial equity lens in all of their work with youth. 
• Learning Together will identify how to create a community and partnership among their diverse group of caregivers that will benefit their entire community — teachers, parents and guardians, and children. Learning Together also plans to use a focused assessment to help determine where they currently are throughout the organization including staff, board, programs, and administration.  

The John Rex Endowment is excited to support this work and partner with nonprofits that share in our commitment to center racial equity and justice to improve the social emotional health of children living in Wake County.  

The second round of our Racial Equity Capacity Building funding opportunity is now available.