THE IMPACT EDIT | July 7, 2025
The insight and inspo you need this week.
Starting the week with intention, not overwhelm. Every Monday, I gather what’s useful, honest, and worth paying attention to.
July 7, 2025
Upcoming for philanthropy unfiltered
I’m currently reading Cathy Park Hong’s book, Minor Feelings, and it has raised my level of consciousness in a way that feels both validating and unsettling. The way she describes minor feelings—those complex emotions that arise from marginalized experiences but get dismissed when we dare to voice them honestly—has me reflecting on my own experiences in the nonprofit sector.
There’s something particularly insidious about how organizational hierarchies determine whose voices get valued versus whose are brushed aside, whose wisdom gets respected versus whose gets filtered through multiple layers of management until it’s diluted beyond recognition. Support staff, especially younger staff and staff of color, are expected to implement decisions without questioning the logic behind them, and our insights about programming and community-centered relationships are treated as less valid than executive perspectives.
Meanwhile, boardrooms remain spaces where people far removed from the day-to-day work hold ultimate decision-making power over communities they’ve never served and staff they’ve never managed. This week for philanthropy unfiltered, I’ll be discussing the minor feelings I’ve experienced while working in nonprofit spaces: the isolation of being othered, the frustration of performative equity and inclusion in governance structures, and how speaking truth about these dynamics gets reframed as being “difficult” rather than honest. Release date: July 10, 2025.
ICYMI from last week: The Master’s Tools: How Traditional Grantmaking Blocks Liberation
CTA of the Week: Mobilize Against the “Big Beautiful Bill”
On July 4, Trump’s “big beautiful bill” was signed into law, with the House passing it 218-214 and the Senate passing it 51-50. Now, it’s time to mobilize. Here’s how advocates can fight back by focusing on four critical areas:
Implementation oversight: Communities must vigilantly monitor how the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other programs affect vulnerable communities to build a comprehensive record of the law’s real-world impact.
2026 midterm elections: Democrats and progressive groups are preparing to use this legislation as a powerful campaign tool against Republican lawmakers, particularly those in swing districts where constituents will feel the effects of healthcare and nutrition program cuts most acutely.
State-level responses: Advocacy organizations are urging state governments to explore innovative ways to mitigate federal funding losses, including alternative funding mechanisms, expanded state programs, and policy innovations that protect residents from the most severe effects of the cuts.
Legal challenges: Civil rights groups, healthcare organizations, and civil rights attorneys are exploring constitutional and statutory challenges to specific provisions, particularly those affecting disability rights, healthcare access, and due process protections for benefit recipients.
Democracy2025.org is a valuable resource for getting involved, serving as a comprehensive platform that coordinates over 280 advocacy organizations and provides tools for tracking administrative actions and connecting with local resistance efforts.
A Win Worth Celebrating: Flint Finishes Lead Pipe Replacement
A decade after the Flint water crisis began, Michigan has completed the court-ordered replacement of nearly 11,000 lead pipes and restoration of more than 28,000 properties, marking the end of a landmark legal battle that started when cost-cutting measures in 2014 led to lead-contaminated drinking water throughout the city.
The completion comes more than eight years after a federal court settlement required Flint to replace all lead pipes at no cost to residents, a process that required persistent advocacy from community groups including Concerned Pastors for Social Action, Water You Fighting For, the ACLU of Michigan, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, who returned to court six times to ensure compliance. Read more from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In the News
How Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Impacts Medicaid Users: Experts Weigh In, Newsweek
‘Hit us, please’ — America’s left issues a ‘broken arrow’ signal to Europe, The Hill
Why Grantmakers Are Getting Tougher With Nonprofits, philanthropy.org
Narrative Strategies to Address Individualism for Health and Racial Justice, Different & The Same
OPINION: Caribbean cooperatives model advances sustainable development and social justice, Demerara Waves
#WeTheCivic: “America’s” Stories Can’t Be Told Without Us, Nonprofit Quarterly
New research: More evidence that county jail incarceration harms health, raising death rates, Prison Policy Initiative
Philanthropy Is Changing — Governance Must Change, Too, The Center for Effective Philanthropy
Next on Bidaské: Why One of the World’s Most Influential Foundations Is Handing Over the Mic to Native Voices, Native News Online
A Time for Action and Solidarity, National Education Association
How America forgot the best way to defend its democracy, VOX
‘Antagonized for being Hispanic’: Growing claims of racial profiling in LA raids, NPR
Trump’s effort to deport pro-Palestinian activists goes to trial, POLITICO
How theater can teach kids about climate change, The Hechinger Report
Why millennials and Gen Z are rewriting the rules of arts philanthropy, Art Basel
Black Feminist Fund Provides a Rare Lifeline for Global, Black-Women-Led Nonprofits, Inside Philanthropy
Listen + Watch
On the first day of the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly in Portland, Oregon, NEA President Becky Pringle stood before NEA members with a single message: radical gratitude. “We must use our power to take action that leads, action that liberates, action that lasts. And, we cannot simply fight against it. We must also fight forward.”
On this episode of fbi.radio (an independent, nonprofit community radio station, listeners are invited to explore breath as a shared human experience through stories from Dr. Poppy de Souza’s Holding Breath exchange and the Race Matters community, focusing on Long Covid experiences and offering collective wisdom on living with embodied discomfort and disability.
A new season of Drilled has recently launched, a true-crime podcast about climate change that examines the various obstacles preventing an adequate global response to climate change, reported and hosted by a team of investigative climate journalists.
Tools + Resources
The Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, managed by the Community Foundation serving the Texas Hill Country, supports relief and rebuilding efforts for the communities of Hunt, Ingram, Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort after the July 4, 2025 flood.
Staffed by Interrupting Criminalization (IC) Fellow Lewis Raven Wallace, IC offers Abolition Media Office Hours to help journalists, communicators, media makers, and organizers challenge “copaganda,” shift narratives about Palestine, integrate harm reduction and community safety approaches, and support incarcerated people in telling their own stories.
This report ranks all 50 states on their adoption of pro-worker, pro-growth labor reforms, providing workers, businesses, and lawmakers with a comprehensive assessment of each state’s labor policies, unionization rates, and job growth.
This publication argues that grantmaking becomes most equitable and effective when it meaningfully engages diverse voices, especially those historically undervalued, and provides grantmakers with tools, examples, and resources to shift toward a community-driven model.
ICEBlock is an anonymous crowdsourced iOS app that allows users to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity with two taps, functioning like “Waze for ICE sightings” to help communities stay informed about ICE presence within a 5-mile radius while protecting user privacy.
Social Justice Spotlights
Beginning Again brings together twelve narratives of refugees, migrants, and long-term residents in Appalachia to counter stereotypes and reveal the region as a diverse place where belonging and connection are created despite displacement and inequality.
GirlTREK is an organization that unleashes a mass movement for health justice, powered by Black women walking out of their front doors in solidarity to collectively organize, shift policy, change systems, and solve problems facing their daughters through the discipline of daily walking.
The Solutions Project is a national nonprofit that practices “Solidarity Philanthropy” by investing over $50 million in grants to more than 350 grantees, led primarily by women of color, to fund and amplify climate justice solutions created by frontline communities.
The Black Mamas Matter Alliance is a network of Black women-led and Black-led birth and reproductive justice organizations, as well as multidisciplinary professionals, working across the full spectrum of maternal and reproductive health.
No More Deaths is a humanitarian organization based in southern Arizona whose mission is to end death and suffering in the Mexico-US borderlands by providing direct aid to migrants, witnessing and responding to border conditions, and advocating for humane immigration policy.
Professional Development Opps
Forecast Public Art is seeking a Research Fellow to spend 6 months investigating how public art contributes to civic engagement and democratic participation, with findings contributing to a national public art policy platform focused on justice and human dignity for marginalized communities. Application deadline: July 13, 2025.
Save the date: The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in partnership with the Center for Creative Leadership, offers an innovative Community Leadership Network fellowship that supports local leaders in connecting, growing, and leading transformational change toward a more equitable society. Class Four applications will open on August 5, 2025.
Save the date: The Rising Organizers Fellowship is a free, nine-session intensive program designed for new and emerging organizers in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia areas. It provides core organizing skills training and one-on-one coaching with experienced organizers. Applications will be available in August 2025.
From Me to You
“Radical imagination, then, isn’t counter to doing the work of changing our material conditions and improving our quality of life. Rather, radical imagination can inspire us to push beyond the constraints of what we think, and are told, is politically possible.” —Ruha Benjamin, Imagination: A Manifesto
Now more than ever, we need to unleash the power of our imagination. Without new visions, we don’t know what to build; we only know what to dismantle. Let’s not only critique our society as it is right now, but also be unafraid to imagine what it could be. We need to work vigorously toward that future, while deprogramming ourselves from dominant ways of being that don’t align with the world we want to create.
Got something to share?
If you come across a tool, story, opportunity, or call to action that should be on my radar (or if you’re working on something you’d like others to see), I’d love to include it in a future roundup! Send me a message on Substack or email me at tirreab@gmail.com.