The Building Local Alignment & Community (BLAC) Fund is a participatory grant process powered by IBBG. Through this approach, individuals directly impacted by reproductive health and wellbeing are involved in funding decisions, ensuring resources are directed toward the needs and priorities most relevant to the community.
At IBBG, participatory grantmaking means intentionally shifting power away from traditional philanthropic structures and placing it into the hands of Black women, femmes, girls, and other underserved communities. We center lived experience through community-led grant review committees, values-based scoring, transparent decision-making processes, and ongoing feedback loops with grantees. By grounding funding decisions in community expertise rather than institutional gatekeeping, we redistribute both resources and authority, ensuring those closest to the work help shape the solutions.
The BLAC Fund invests $1 million to reproductive health and wellbeing organizations and projects across Nebraska.
Goals of the Initiative
Center communities of color, low-income residents and other individuals and groups facing historic and ongoing harm from systemic inequities as co-creators and beneficiaries of local efforts to advance health equity
Advanced strategies that require public health, healthcare and social service (multi-sector) systems, as well as funders and intermediaries, to demonstrate accountability to community residents, their priorities and racial equity
Provide additional support for community-led nonprofits for technical assistance, policy advocacy, leadership development, community organizing, and other priorities and needs they identify
Model participatory grantmaking approaches that shift power and influence to communities – and share lessons across RWJF and beyond in ways that seed new norms for how philanthropy is done
Foster meaningful, transparent, and equitable partnerships between community-led nonprofits and multi-sector systems in advancing racial and health equity
Award Recipients
2025 Grantees
Center for Holistic Development, Inc.
Hit These Trails
Identity Preparatory Academy
Inclusive Healers of the Heartland, Inc.
Pink Lotus Project NE
The Sanctuary Collective
2026 Grantees
Hello Joy Inc.
Joy Brings Light
Mom Power Inc.
2026 Care Economy Grantees
Benjamin Academy Daycare
Brighten Our Future Early Learning Center Inc.
C.R.E.A.T.E. Child Enrichment Center
Chosen 1 Child Development Center
Every Kid Begins With K
Gifted Minds Learning Center
Kids Count 2 Childcare Preschool - 66th Street
Tiny Treasures Childcare
Vasser Academy
The BLAC Fund Executive Committee.
The BLAC Fund Executive Committees is a community-led leadership body that guides the grantmaking process for the BLAC Fund through a participatory grant-making model. Rather than relying on traditional funding decisions, community members, particularly Black women and femmes, lead the review of applications and help determine where resources are invested. Through a collaborative, consensus-based decision-making process, the committee ensures funding reflects community priorities, lived experience, and the expertise of those closest to the work. This approach helps build trust, reimagine how funding decisions are made, and invest in organizations advancing reproductive well-being, economic opportunity, and thriving communities across Nebraska.