Featured Projects

Whether advising families and foundations or incubating new nonprofits and collaboratives, explore how we're approaching important issues and helping foster innovation in philanthropy.

Arts & Culture

International Fund for Public Interest Media

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International Fund for Public Interest Media

The International Fund for Public Interest Media is a first-of-its-kind multilateral initiative that aims to radically increase the amount of funding available to support ethical, fact-based journalism and boost the long-term economic resilience of independent media. The International Fund supports media organizations as well as experiments and innovations at the media ecosystem level. It works closely with its grant recipients and partners to develop and disseminate insights about both the challenges facing public interest media as well as potential pathways to economic sustainability.

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Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums

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Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums

Our mission is to increase the inclusion of Black perspectives and narratives in North American art museums to make our institutions more equitable and excellent spaces of cultural engagement.

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Spirit Aligned Leadership Program

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Spirit Aligned Leadership Program

As a Sponsored Project of RPA, The Leadership Program aims to strengthen Indigenous communities and address pressing systemic problems and oppressions through investing in and elevating the inherent power of the undervalued assets of North American Indigenous women.

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Tippet Rise Art Center

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Tippet Rise Art Center

Created by the trustees of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, who engaged RPA for advisory services through every step of conceptualizing and building the art center, Tippet Rise Art Center exhibits large-scale, outdoor sculptures and hosts classical chamber music and recitals on a 12,000-acre working sheep and cattle ranch in Fishtail, Montana.

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Art for Justice Fund

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Art for Justice Fund

A five-year initiative seeded by philanthropist and art collector Agnes Gund donating the proceeds from the sale of art in her collection. The Funds aims to turn art into action, investing more than $100 million into strategic efforts to reform the criminal justice system. RPA allowed the Fund a way to quickly and strategically begin operating and responding to an urgent issue facing the US by providing programmatic, advisory and governance support.

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Fundación Amparo

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Fundación Amparo

RPA's work with a Mexican family foundation transitioning leadership to its next generation.

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Upstart Co-Lab

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Upstart Co-Lab

Upstart Co-Lab believes in the power of creative people to solve problems. With support from RPA on operational and financial management services, Upstart is disrupting how creativity is funded by connecting the $12 trillion of socially responsible and impact investing capital in the U.S. to the $804 billion U.S. creative economy.

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Climate & Environment

Accelerate Resilience L.A.

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Accelerate Resilience L.A.

Accelerate Resilience L.A. (ARLA) envisions Los Angeles as a climate-resilient region that is safer, healthier, and more prepared for our increasingly dangerous climate reality. ARLA supports the implementation of community-driven living infrastructure at scale across Los Angeles County, advancing community resilience, stabilizing local climates, and regenerating interconnected social and ecological systems. This includes ecosystem health, social cohesion, economic resilience, and equity⁠⁠. We promote whole-systems thinking and building capacity for action⁠. We strive to establish and maintain meaningful relationships with the communities with whom we partner, and are committed to transparency, reciprocity, and humility.

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Just Transition Fund

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Just Transition Fund

The Just Transition Fund is on a mission to create economic opportunity for the frontline communities and workers hardest hit by the transition away from coal.

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Global Commons Alliance

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Global Commons Alliance

The Global Commons Alliance is an unprecedented partnership of more than 50 of the world’s most forward-looking organisations in philanthropy, science, business and advocacy.

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Fashion Makes Change

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Fashion Makes Change

Fashion Makes Change is building a community in the fashion industry to advance progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals in an effort to create a more equitable future.  

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Shark Conservation Fund

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Shark Conservation Fund

A funder collaborative, the Shark Conservation Fund is focused on reversing the precipitous decline of the world’s sharks and rays and ensuring their long‐term conservation and management. In addition to the funds that will flow through the partnership, this initiative aims to catalyze $100 million of support in the global conservation and sustainable management of sharks and rays by 2025.

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The Earth Charter Fund

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The Earth Charter Fund

Established by Steven Rockefeller, Sr., this RPA Sponsored Project initiative aims to create a "soft law" document that sets forth the fundamental principles of an emerging new global impact ethic. The Earth Charter is the product of a decade-long, worldwide, cross-cultural dialogue on common goals and shared values. It seeks to inspire in all people a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the whole human family, the greater community of life, and future generations.

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Oceans 5

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Oceans 5

RPA is the home for Oceans 5, an international funder collaborative dedicated to protecting the world’s five oceans. Oceans 5 focuses on large, opportunistic projects and campaigns to establish marine reserves in places like the Seychelles and in the Arctic regions of Russia and Canada as well as constraining overfishing through policy and regulations development.

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Education

College Promise

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College Promise

College Promise is a national, non-partisan, non-profit initiative that builds broad public support for funding the first two or more years of postsecondary education for hard-working students, and ensuring those students have access to quality educational opportunities and supports.

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Promise Venture Studio

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Promise Venture Studio

Promise venture studio is an RPA Sponsored Project that attracts, supports and connects entrepreneurs focused on early childhood development (ECD). The mission is to create a vibrant community that supports entrepreneurs and their ventures in ECD. They aim to catalyze system-wide change — and create sustainable impact for the most disadvantaged children (age 0-5) and their families in the U.S.

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Collaborative for Spirituality in Education

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Collaborative for Spirituality in Education

A project established by Steven Rockefeller, Sr. to promote the spiritual and moral development of young people in and through U.S. PreK-12 independent and public schools with the long-term goal of better integrating the head and the heart in all spheres and at all levels of American society.

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Achieving Success in Postsecondary Education

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Achieving Success in Postsecondary Education

Detailed reports providing an analysis of the state of student debt in the U.S., challenging business trends that universities and colleges encounter and qualitative and quantitative trends in postsecondary education funding. RPA and the TIAA Institute partnered to look at the landscape of student debt in the U.S. as well as trends and innovative approaches in private funding of higher education.

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The Earth Charter Fund

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The Earth Charter Fund

Established by Steven Rockefeller, Sr., this RPA Sponsored Project initiative aims to create a "soft law" document that sets forth the fundamental principles of an emerging new global impact ethic. The Earth Charter is the product of a decade-long, worldwide, cross-cultural dialogue on common goals and shared values. It seeks to inspire in all people a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the whole human family, the greater community of life, and future generations.

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Echidna Giving

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Echidna Giving

Echidna Giving joins critical thinkers, innovators and practitioners to advance girls’ education in the developing world. RPA helps Echidna Giving with flexibility to make grants, cover operation expenses and sponsor special programs to make progress against their mission.

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LIGHT Awards

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LIGHT Awards

The Light Award Leverages innovation by growing and honoring teachers. In creating the LIGHT Awards, RPA led the Intrepid Philanthropy Foundation through a thoughtful program-design process that emphasized input from educators. It involved benchmarking, focus groups and a retreat attended by current and former teachers, and was capped off by a pilot year of LIGHT Awards grants to selected teams of teachers in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. RPA remains a critical partner in the management of the program.

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Financial Inclusion

Gender Centre of Excellence

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Gender Centre of Excellence

With a mission focused on advancing women's financial inclusion, the Gender Centre of Excellence seeks to be the premier centre of excellence and knowledge hub for innovative and scalable solutions in Nigeria and beyond.

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Support for an Enabling Regulatory Environment (SERE)

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Support for an Enabling Regulatory Environment (SERE)

SERE in Yoruba Means: “Doing Good”

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FinnSalud

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FinnSalud

FinnSalud measures financial health outcomes would allow relevant stakeholders to assess the extent to which financial inclusion efforts actually improve people’s ability to manage daily expenses, prepare for and overcome financial shocks, achieve life goals, and take advantage of opportunities for economic mobility.

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Catalyst Fund

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Catalyst Fund

RPA currently sponsors the Catalyst Fund, an investment initiative designed to provide early stage capital injections for fin-tech start-ups that design and produce financial inclusion solutions. Over three years, RPA expects to make up to 20 investments in small firms that are sourced by a network of investors that includes Accion Venture Labs, Gray Ghost Ventures, Quona, Omidyar Network, and 500 Startups. Capital for this effort is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and JP Morgan Chase.

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Health

The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund

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The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors has been honored to serve as a strategic partner of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund since 2008. The Illumination Fund invited RPA to help document and assess its Healthy Food & Community Change initiative and to flesh out insights that could be helpful to others who are involved in, or considering involvement in, philanthropy that uses food as a vehicle to improve communities.

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Community Health Acceleration Partnership

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Community Health Acceleration Partnership

As a sponsored project of RPA, Community Health Acceleration Partnership is a partnership of governments, NGO's, academic institutions and corporations jointly working to attain the UN Millennium Development Goals around child survival, maternal health and the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

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Impact Investing

Impact Investing Handbook

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Impact Investing Handbook

This in-depth, detailed, and practical handbook provides asset owners--including families, individuals, foundations, and corporations--insight on how to more fully align their full range of investments with their values.

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Impact Investing: an Introduction

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Impact Investing: an Introduction

This guide is part of our Philanthropy Roadmap series and is expressly written for donors who may wish to complement traditional grantmaking approaches as they invest their assets to promote change.

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Impact Investing: Strategy and Action

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Impact Investing: Strategy and Action

This guide explains how to take practical steps towards implementing your first impact investment.

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Catalyst Fund

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Catalyst Fund

RPA currently sponsors the Catalyst Fund, an investment initiative designed to provide early stage capital injections for fin-tech start-ups that design and produce financial inclusion solutions. Over three years, RPA expects to make up to 20 investments in small firms that are sourced by a network of investors that includes Accion Venture Labs, Gray Ghost Ventures, Quona, Omidyar Network, and 500 Startups. Capital for this effort is provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and JP Morgan Chase.

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Upstart Co-Lab

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Upstart Co-Lab

Upstart Co-Lab believes in the power of creative people to solve problems. With support from RPA on operational and financial management services, Upstart is disrupting how creativity is funded by connecting the $12 trillion of socially responsible and impact investing capital in the U.S. to the $804 billion U.S. creative economy.

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Philanthropic Practice

Fondation CHANEL

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Fondation CHANEL

Fondation CHANEL has the vision "for women and girls to be free to shape their own destiny." In preparation for an upcoming increase in organizational resources, RPA conducted a multi–pronged evaluation of its grantmaking programs, processes, governance, and operations. RPA’s evaluation included interviews, surveys, metrics, and additional research. Based on the findings, RPA made recommendations to help the foundation attain its goals as it prepared to scale up.

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Fondazione CRT

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Fondazione CRT

Fondazione CRT engaged RPA to help identify opportunities for integrating an SDG lens in its work. As part of these efforts, RPA worked with CRT to help it understand how its work aligns with the SDGs, assess progress on relevant SDGs, and identify key indicators that demonstrate the foundation’s contribution to priority SDGs. As a result, RPA provided CRT with an analysis of current work, developed an SDG-focused strategy for maximum impact, and developed robust implementation and communication plans.

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Resilience Initiative

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Resilience Initiative

The Resilience Initiative (RI)  was established in December 2017 as a project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and funded by the Packard Foundation to build the operational and personal resilience of organizations as they adapt to shifting policy and programmatic demands and increasing challenges to their operations and the wellbeing of their staff.

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Theory of the Foundation

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Theory of the Foundation

At RPA, we actively work to understand the future of giving. As we build knowledge and collaboration in our field, our expertise grows, allowing us to place our client work within a deep understanding of the broader context in which we’re working. Our Theory of the Foundation initiative represents a key example of how our research shapes the sector and informs our partnerships.

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Fund for Shared Insight

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Fund for Shared Insight

A funding collaborative to pool financial, intellectual and human resources together so as to stimulate innovation and support increased openness between foundations, grantees and those we seek to help. RPA coordinates with different funders on their priorities and provides admin and financial supports that contributes to the success of the initiative.

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Philanthropy and the SDGs

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Philanthropy and the SDGs

In 2015, all 193 Member States of the UN pledged to achieve an ambitious set of 17 goals over the next 15 years. To help the philanthropy sector engage more effectively in the global development goal processes, RPA launched the SDG Philanthropy Platform, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and Foundation Center (FC), with seed funding from the Conrad N. Hilton, Ford and The MasterCard Foundations, and growing support from other partners and handed it to the WINGS Philanthropic Network in 2019. RPA also authored two guides on Philanthropy and the SDGs to help funders maximize impact.

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Rights & Equity

Worker Justice & Dignity Fund

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Worker Justice & Dignity Fund

The Worker Justice & Dignity Fund creates the conditions for all people to live and work in dignity. By resourcing sectors historically excluded from worker protections, we seek to build worker power and transform the system. We center the voices and vision of those most impacted by injustice to reimagine and build an economy that works for everyone.

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CARE Fund

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CARE Fund

The Care for All with Respect and Equity (CARE) Fund invests in movement building for a universal publicly supported care infrastructure that fuels the economy, improves family wellbeing, creates millions of good jobs, promotes equity, and enables people with disabilities and older adults to live independently with safety and dignity.

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Mayors Migration Council

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Mayors Migration Council

With most of the world’s migrants and displaced people living in cities, Mayors Migration Council's mission is to help mayors get a seat at the global policy table and unlock resources to accelerate and scale local solutions. Together, these actions will make a tangible difference in the lives of urban migrants, displaced people, and receiving communities worldwide.

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Abundant Futures Fund

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Abundant Futures Fund

Abundant Futures Fund is a new funder collaborative to widen the circle of funders and allies supporting immigration issues and the immigrant justice movement. The first national effort of this magnitude to focus on increasing funding for immigration, AFF aims to raise $100 million in the next five years to ignite meaningful change on immigration.

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Fondation CHANEL

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Fondation CHANEL

Fondation CHANEL has the vision "for women and girls to be free to shape their own destiny." In preparation for an upcoming increase in organizational resources, RPA conducted a multi–pronged evaluation of its grantmaking programs, processes, governance, and operations. RPA’s evaluation included interviews, surveys, metrics, and additional research. Based on the findings, RPA made recommendations to help the foundation attain its goals as it prepared to scale up.

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Lemann Foundation

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Lemann Foundation

Making Brazil a more just and equitable place by guaranteeing access to high-quality public education for Brazilians of all backgrounds while supporting the development of leaders committed to the social transformation of Brazil.

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Afghan Future Fund

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Afghan Future Fund

This special-purpose fund is intended to support humanitarian response, relief, and recovery efforts for Afghan people.

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IRIS (International Resource for Impact & Storytelling)

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IRIS (International Resource for Impact & Storytelling)

Imagine the future. Transform the present. Story making a world of change.

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Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity

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Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity

As an RPA Sponsored Project, The Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity (CGRE) seeks to provide new funding to advance reproductive health and gender equity, recognizing these as inextricably linked.

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Pop Culture Collaborative Fund

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Pop Culture Collaborative Fund

The goal of Pop Culture Collaborative is to help transform narratives in pop culture about people of color, immigrants and refugees, Muslims and other communities that are deeply affected by harmful portrayals and stereotypes.

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Collective Future Fund

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Collective Future Fund

The vision of the Collective Future Fund is to create a future where all girls and women, cis, transgender and gender non-confirming, can live, learn and work with safety and dignity. The collaborative will focus on supporting strategies to remove structural barriers, starting with the workplace as a focus of inequity and violence, as well as a potential site for movement building.

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Just Beginnings Collaborative

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Just Beginnings Collaborative

Just Beginnings Collaborative is a movement-building platform designed to initiate, cultivate and fund strategic efforts to end child sexual abuse. As the Collaborative's U.S. fiscal sponsor, RPA provides employment services, grants and financial management for the team to develop an effective social change campaign.

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