STORY OF CYPRESS FUND
Cypress Fund was created in 2019 by a team of organizers and donors rooted in North and South Carolina. We share a deep belief that the best solutions for our communities are built through people-powered, grassroots organizing and led by Southern folks deeply impacted by the conditions on the ground. Additionally, we have been inspired by the multitude of Social Justice Funds across the country that are promoting social change through donor organizing and democratizing philanthropy through Giving Projects, and we are creating the very first fund of that kind in the U.S. South. We hold a strong belief that in order to sustain social justice movements, we must work towards the redistribution of wealth and power. Our Giving Projects and Movement-Advised Grants are designed to put resources and decision-making power in the hands of organizers and everyday community members. We are working to create visible alternatives to traditional philanthropic practices that keep power in the hands of the wealthy and are redistributing resources so that movements can be fully self-determined, rather than reliant.
Read more about our story and our namesake tree by clicking below:
The Bald Cypress
Like our movements, bald cypress trees’ large bases and intertwining roots make them resilient and beautiful. Like our people, they stand tall in their dignity across the Southeastern United States, growing all the way from the marshlands of Virginia to the bayous of Louisiana. Like our communities, cypress swamps have been places of refuge, safety, and self-determination for centuries, including housing marooned communities and providing important paths along the Underground Railroad. The Cypress Fund looks to our namesake tree for inspiration, as the oldest trees east of California, growing and witnessing this land long before colonization and providing the most accurate climate record on Earth.
The first seeds of the Cypress Fund began floating around in conversations David Roswell and Maggie Heraty were having with each other, with progressive donors across the country, and with organizers they are close to in North Carolina. David and Maggie have been living and organizing in Durham, North Carolina since 2014. In that time, they have been redistributing the wealth that David inherited from generations of oil extraction. Much of this work was informed by their own organizing as member-leaders in Resource Generation, and later as donors in Solidaire Donor Network, in which they organize other young folks to support and get involved in grassroots movements, fight classism, and show up as their full selves. Through this work, they have seen the incredible power and possibility in the movements and organizations in the Carolinas. As descendants of enslavers in North and South Carolina, and as white people living in this country, they are committed to a reparations framework, and wanted to create a grantmaking institution led by the people it works to empower.
After months of conversations, the seed began germinating. Bryan Perlmutter and Chi-Ante Singletary – two skillful organizers from the Carolinas with deep relationships and experience in movement and in donor organizing, fundraising, and grant-making – joined the founding team. Collectively, the team interviewed dozens of organizers and funders to better understand the landscape, the history of social justice funding in the region, and the need and opportunity for a new fund. In October of 2019, the Cypress Fund held its first convening with twenty movement leaders in the Carolinas. At this gathering, leaders worked together to envision the Cypress Fund, identify needs, and discuss strategy and governance for the Fund.
Now, as the Cypress Fund begins to sprout and grow, it continues to root down in the histories of susu’s, cross-class and multi-racial freedom struggles led by those most affected, and rich and resilient ecologies and communities across the south.