2023 Year in Review
Published on January 3, 2024 by Omar Freilla
What We Did in 2023
Our second year at Collective Diaspora was a time of testing ideas and expanding, stretching, connecting, and forming. Here’s a rundown of what we accomplished.
- We hosted six webinars in our Black Co-ops for Change series. This is a bi-monthly series where we feature Black cooperatives across the African diaspora that are transforming their communities for the better and have them share their lessons learned. You can watch them all here.
- Forty Acre Co-op - “Saving Black Land with Cannabis” (US)
- Mulheres de Pedra - Black Women Building Brazil’s Solidarity Economy (Brazil)
- The Banker Ladies Council - Black Women Demanding Respect for African Cooperative Finance (Canada)
- Cooperative Cleaners of Ontario - “Transforming Lives Through the Power of Cooperatives” (Canada)
- Willow Permanent Real Estate Cooperative - “ Putting Land in Collective Hands” (US)
- Asociación de Mujeres Negras Trabajadoras del Peru - “Black Women Workers of Peru Unite!” (Peru)
- We organized and coordinated a 15 session Black-led workshop series on accountability processes, business modeling, and financial management for AfriLingual, a new all-Black interpreters cooperative of African immigrants based in New York City.
- Our website got a major upgrade as we went from a landing page to a full blown website. Check it out! We contracted Black Panamanian graphics designer Jonathan Hooker of EcomLab Media to build out our new site AND coordinate our social media campaigns. Check out our activity on Instagram.
- We launched a new seasonal newsletter to share the newest news, resources, events and stories from Black cooperators across the diaspora. It’s been called “Rich”, “Exciting”, and “So needed” by our readers. Sign up on our website to get on the distribution list.
- We addressed the 6th Global Social & Solidarity Economy Forum held in Dakar, Senegal. Over 6,000 organizers from all elements of the solidarity economy across 75 countries around the world convened in Dakar. It was the first such gathering ever in Africa - and African cooperatives and social innovators from across the continent made sure to show up in force. Collective Diaspora was there to present on our approach and the power of networks to connect Black cooperatives across the African diaspora through a talk called "Mapping & Connecting the Global Black Cooperative Ecosystem".
- We were really proud of our network recently when the Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective, a cooperative of Black chocolate producers in Africa, the Caribbean and the US, received an order for 18,000 chocolate bars from Equal Exchange! That order was the result of hard work by members of the cooperative and a web of connections strong enough to sidestep the ever present skepticism faced by Black co-ops and Black-led organizations. Collective Diaspora helped to build some of these connections and helped promote their efforts.
- We joined a delegation of Black cooperators from the US in the 2023 Return to Ghana Black Cooperative Conference and Cultural Exchange, organized by Oakland, California-based Repaired Nations. It was an incredible experience and thanks to our work with the Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective we were able to include Mma Chocolate, a Ghanaian women-owned cocoa producers cooperative, in the conference.
- We contracted Pa’lante Technology Cooperative to build a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform for us. This is our first step in building out a global map & directory of Black cooperatives and Black-led cooperative support groups.
- We’ve been joined by 3 new members!!! The Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective. Alliance of Rural Communities of Trinidad & Tobago, and Willow Permanent Real Estate Cooperative
- We organized our very first fundraiser, an in-person chocolate tasting event in New York City featuring chocolates by the Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective, and led by its co-founder and convener, Gillian Goddard.
- We completed a hiring process for a Development Consultant, someone who will support fundraising efforts of both Collective Diaspora and its members. We are excited to announce that we have chosen Renee Shepherd, a highly experienced fundraising professional, to join us in 2024.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Our initial funding from the Echoing Green Foundation concluded in late 2023. We began the year with big dreams of hiring two people to focus on fundraising (development) and education programs, both by spring of 2023. We quickly realized however that we did not have the funds required to make that happen. As such we decided to prioritize fundraising in order to ensure we have the capital needed to pay for doing the work that fulfills the core of our mission. Our Finances & Fundraising Team stepped into a higher gear, organizing our first fundraiser, and our coordinator, Omar Freilla, provided the team with daily updates on development activities. Fortunately, Echoing Green came through with some follow-on funding. And as a result of our efforts we were able to end the year with new grants from the Kataly Foundation, the Black Solidarity Economy Fund, and the National Black Food & Justice Alliance. We also were able to select a development consultant, Renee Shepherd, to coordinate future fundraising efforts. We ended 2023 having met our fundraising goal and are excited for 2024. We’re making the investment in our own internal capacity in order to ensure that we have the means to provide quality services to our members.
What's to Come
We’re excited to begin the year onboarding Renee and taking our fundraising efforts to a higher level. Part of that higher level includes raising capital for our member cooperatives. We’ve already begun that work by raising funds through the US-based National Black Food & Justice Alliance which will be going to support GreenFeen OrganiX, a Black-led composting cooperative in the Bronx, NYC. We’re excited to move that money to GreenFeen and help them build their own capacity with it.
We’re especially excited about building our membership base of Black cooperatives and Black-led co-op support organizations in 2024. This will be a major focus of our efforts as we move throughout the year.
We’ll be continuing our work to build an online map & directory of Black cooperatives and Black-led co-op support organizations.
Thanks to the increased capacity we built in 2023, we expect to be sharing a lot more news and events from across the global Black solidarity economy through our social media, e-newsletter, and our website. So be on the lookout for more info and resources from us, in addition to our bi-monthly Black Co-ops for Change webinar series.