Promoting Community Leadership Networks for Progressive Social Change

Our mission

The Elias Foundation seeks to promote a more equitable and progressive society by supporting the development of emerging grassroots leaders and their organizations.

The Elias Foundation and Activist Fellowship Program

The Elias Foundation, established in 1999, designed its mission to support progressive organizations which advocate for social, political, and economic change in Westchester County, New York. In view of the interconnected nature of the Hudson Valley, in 2004, the Foundation expanded its focus to the entire region. Central to this work was a commitment to leaders who amplify local voices and to initiatives that are grounded in and led by the communities they serve.

In 2015, the Foundation began to refine its mission by providing direct financial support to individual emerging grassroots leaders. Several of these leaders, identified over the course of Elias’ support of the social justice community, in turn joined with the Foundation in convening advisory gatherings in order to consider how to best deploy the Foundation’s resources going forward.

As a result, in 2019, the Foundation launched the Elias Activist Fellowship Program. The Program relies on the guidance of an Advisory Committee composed of multi-issue leaders with deep experience in movement building across the Hudson Valley. In the spirit of trust-based philanthropy, the Committee determined that Foundation funds could offer support to individual activists to use according to their felt needs – to enhance their capacity as leaders and improve the quality of their day-to-day lives. Fellows have used their Elias support to attend trainings, sharpen leadership skills, pay off student debt, secure sustainable housing, visit countries of origin and engage in activities that nurture their bodies and minds. Ultimately, the goal of the Fellowship is to strengthen community across siloes and build a more resilient regional social justice movement.

Over the past six years, the Activist Fellowship Program has engaged a community of 35 Fellows who receive financial support for five years and participate in regular retreats and gatherings focused on community-building, shared learning, rest and self-care.

The impact of the Fellowship is evident in the trajectories of participating leaders, periodic meetings with Advisory Committee members who serve as mentors, annual reports, and ongoing engagement at Fellowship gatherings. We hope that the broader effects of this support will continue to unfold and be felt for generations.

Through the Fellowship, the Elias Foundation continues to deepen its understanding of the challenges and successes facing community-based organizers and to identify how best to support their development. It is intended that the fellowship structure and learning might be useful to other foundations seeking to diversify their programming.

To learn more about the Elias Activist Fellowship Program and this model of funding grassroots leadership, please contact us at pwithers@eliasfoundation.org. We also plan to publish the program’s processes and tools as open-source resources for others interested in supporting individual activists through 501c3 philanthropy.