The John Rex Endowment is pleased to announce the awards of our second funding opportunity to support Racial Equity Capacity Building.  

This month, the Endowment’s Board of Directors approved a total of $900,000 in grants to Artspace, Big Brothers Big Sisters, CORRAL Riding Academy, and The Hope Center at Pullen. Each organization will receive $75,000 per year over three years ($225,000 total per organization) beginning November 2022. 

 The Purpose of Racial Equity Funding  

As the Endowment continues its mission of strengthening organizations that center racial equity and justice to improve the social emotional health of children living in Wake County, we are excited to learn from and partner with nonprofits that share our commitment. 

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

• Artspace, in its 36th year of operations, is at a pivotal point in its organizational life cycle. Expanding on the vision and efforts of its new majority Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other People of Color leadership team, Artspace intends to use this grant award to support and strengthen its mission and create the framework for staff and board to work together on a long-term strategy and action plan to integrate ideas for inclusion, diversity, equity, access, and success into Artspace’s educational programming, particularly for youth. 

• Big Brothers Big Sisters will continue to strengthen its racial equity training and staff capacity to directly support the social emotional health of youth with a goal to ensure that all their practices, policies, procedures, training, mentorships, and partnerships are created and implemented through a racial equity lens. 

• CORRAL Riding Academy: To ensure that every participant sees themselves reflected in our greater community, CORRAL will use these funds to continue its commitment to supporting children’s social emotional health. CORRAL will do this by exploring and incorporating racially equitable practices to continue to build representation in every branch of our community and building lasting relationships by creating a genuinely safe environment for all. 

• The Hope Center at Pullen will use these funds to connect with the support and expertise needed to make their goal of incorporating anti-racism, equity, and diversity into every aspect of their work a reality. On an individual level, The Hope Center at Pullen will work to better meet the social emotional health needs of the foster youth they serve. On a system-wide level, The Hope Center is situated to impact how the child welfare system interacts with youth—reducing the trauma they experience before they come through the doors and bringing greater stability to their lives. 

The John Rex Endowment is excited to support the work of these organizations. The Endowment has offered two grant funding opportunities for racial equity —awarding a total of $1.8 million in Racial Equity Capacity Building this year.