By Jordan Meadows
Staff Writer
Since its founding in 2017, the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium has set out to do one thing: transform the philanthropic landscape for Black girls and women across the South.
In 2017, LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, encountered a report from the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative showing that Black women and girls received less than one percent of the $4.8 billion in philanthropic investments flowing into the South. Determined to change that narrative, Brown joined with Felicia Lucky of the BlackBelt Community Foundation, Alice Jenkins of the Fund for Southern Communities and Margo Miller of the Appalachian Community Fund. Together, they formed Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium as anchor institutions committed to centering Black girls and women in grantmaking.
To date, the consortium reports awarding more than $11.4 million to over 250 Black women-led organizations and more than 800 girls across its 13-state footprint, including the organization’s Youth Ambassadors program. The program engages young leaders as advocates, helping shape grant funding priorities and inform content for the annual Southern Black Girls conference. In January 2025, Youth Ambassadors from across the 13-state region gathered in Charlotte for a day of learning and collaboration.
“For more than twenty years, I've worked alongside communities and know first-hand that communities of color experience the disproportionate impacts from environmental pollution and climate change,” said Executive Director Chanceé Lundy. “Black women are often on the front lines advocating for justice and building innovative community based solutions with little to no resources."
In 2022, the consortium partnered with Megan Thee Stallion’s Pete and Thomas Foundation to launch the “Joy Is Our Journey Dream Tour,” a monthlong bus tour that created space for Black girls to connect across the South. That same year, the organization hosted its inaugural Black Girls Dream Conference. The Southern Black Girls has since expanded through partnerships with Comic Relief US and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation.
The organization recently launched its Environment and Climate Justice Fund, a new grant initiative supporting organizations that advocate for and build solutions around environmental and climate justice impacting Black girls, women and femme-identifying youth across 13 Southern states—including North Carolina. The fund awards grants ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 to underfunded organizations advancing environmental and climate justice.
“Even in difficult times, investing in organizations that center Black girls and women is an act of resistance, imagination, and faith in the future,” said Lundy.
Lundy has helped guide Southern Black Girls into a new era of growth and national recognition. In 2024, she was invited by the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, to engage with leaders and activists on shared challenges around climate change, equity and economic empowerment. The Southern Black Girls’ climate fund opened during Black Climate Week 2026, a national campaign led by The Solutions Project and the NAACP that centers Black communities as hubs of climate innovation and justice.
“By centering joy as both resilience and resistance, Southern Black Girls is building a future in which our communities have the infrastructure, resources, and power to survive and thrive amid environmental pollution and climate change,” Lundy said.
Southern Black Girls also convenes a Wisdom Council to guide its focus on regional and statewide issues affecting Black girls and women. Through its Sage Circle, a monthly session for its network, partners lead conversations aimed at strengthening the broader community. Its Joy Network, hosted on the Mighty Networks platform, serves as a digital hub where Black girls and women across the South can share resources, collaborate and participate in virtual events.
In 2024, the organization launched its “Resistance and Resilience” grant through the Black Girls Defense Fund, offering $2,000 mini-grants to support community-led efforts addressing adultification, dehumanization and violence impacting Black girls.
“There’s a particular kind of calmness in the eye of the storm. There’s a particular kind of calmness when you center yourself back into your own body. I had to recenter myself and be grounded on who I am and what I believe. I believe that love will win,” Brown said. “The South is my home. I love the South. It’s beautiful.”
Through grantmaking, youth leadership development, national partnerships and now environmental and climate justice funding, Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium continues to reshape how philanthropy flows in the South by ensuring that Black girls and women are centered as architects of change.
