Headwaters Foundation for Justice
About Us
Headwaters is a community foundation that serves as a catalyst for social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.
There’s a reason people are passionate about social change. It’s because we know that if we can remove the root causes of injustice — the things that create poverty and discrimination and inequality — we can change the human condition, replacing desperation with opportunity, despair with hope. That’s the big picture.
The small detail is that injustice often is invisible. It takes a lot of dedicated people and groups seeing it for what it is and working where injustice thrives in order to make big change possible. This change is happening. Our two-decades of work — and, more importantly, the work of the tireless groups we fund — has had a measurable effect. Our role is right in the middle, between the big picture and the small details, making sure we fund the fight well, connecting those with means with those on the front lines of change, and training grassroots organizations so their roots reach even deeper and wider. Through technical assistance, community-led grantmaking and donor education, Headwaters supports grassroots groups by addressing the root causes of injustice:
Grantmaking Programs:
In 2009, Headwaters awarded $378,175 in 28 grants to nonprofit organizations in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Headwaters gives grants to organizations that are based in a community with constituent leadership, addressing the root causes of problems in our society, working in a cooperative manner with other groups in the community, and have limited access to traditional funding sources.
Capacity Building Program:
The goal of our capacity building program is to help organizations and their leaders develop core skills, deepen political analysis, and build organizational effectiveness and sustainability for long-term social justice impact. Capacity building goes hand in hand with grantmaking – supporting grantees and other grassroots groups so they have the tools to be more effective in advancing their mission.
Donor Education & Communication:
Headwaters offers donor education programs to encourage individuals to advocate, invest in and give strategically for justice.
Our Mission
Through grantmaking and organizational assistance, Headwaters supports grassroots groups addressing the root causes of injustice. Headwaters engages and partners with a committed community of donors and allies who work for justice. Our grantees have made some incredible strides for justice. Here are just a few of their accomplishments:
--Produced an Emmy-award nominated documentary highlighting the grantee's focal issue.
--Helped write developing legislation lowering the barriers to legal residency.
--Collected over 500 affidavits for use in a class-action law suit.
Injustice isn’t an accident. Take spying on your own citizens without warrants. Or siphoning money away from after-school programs. Or not opening an investigation when a black girl gets shot. Or looking the other way when a woman gets beaten. Folks shrug their shoulders because the issue seems too big to confront. Or too small to reveal its place in a larger pattern. They explain away these things as accidents. Oversights. Hard choices. Which is why we fund. And why we train. And how we’ve created a movement for changing society at its core by connecting the many involved.
Why We Need a New Website
Headwaters is passionate about bringing people together to confront injustice and work towards a common goal of social change. While our current website describes our mission well, it doesn't help to implement it. We need a more approachable and interactive website in order to promote communication between our grantee groups, donors, activists, and the general public. Giving those dedicated individuals an opportunity to share their strategies and successes with others is a crucial part of our mission, and it also creates the kind of dialogue and brainstorming needed to end the injustices in our world for good.
Our goal is to have a website that will:
• Stream video, webcasts, and contain photos, as well as allow people to upload their own videos and photos that are related to our work
• Contain message boards or create listservs
• Act as an online resource library containing articles, training videos and other tools
• Allow people to post events happening in the community
• An interface where nonprofits can enter their organization name, project name, project description, total cost of project, project budget, videos and pictures, etc.
• Have a running tally on front page that says something like: 1,434,382 people have helped raise $79,001,365 for 18,514 nonprofits using this website
• Have links to our Facebook and Twitter pages
• Be overall more user-friendly, easier to navigate, and highly interactive
How Our New Site Will Help Make the World Greener
A new website will help us work greener by consolidating a number of the resources we offer to the community in one place, thus reducing browsing and searching time for access to articles, trainings, other grantees and members, and other resources.
Messages From Supporters
When the judges choose which non-profits will be selected to participate in this year's Challenge they will take into account testimonials from beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, board members and other
