Updates from Proteus Fund - February 2020
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Dear Colleagues,

Greetings. I hope you were able to find time over the holidays to rest, reflect, and recharge.

2020 has already introduced scary challenges, but also some opportunities in our shared work for positive social change. While Proteus Fund, as many of your organizations, does not work on candidate or electoral campaigns, this year’s elections are the unavoidable background and context to our work. The last few years powerfully illustrate two important themes that run across our programs and projects at Proteus and many of your organizations: the fragility of democracy itself and the urgency of creating game-changing movements.

From threats to the right to protest and access to the ballot box, to escalating attacks on the Muslim, Arab and South Asian (MASA) community, to the crumbling of the separation of church and state, the very underpinnings of our democratic society are under a full-on siege. And as a result, our core and overwhelming response, within philanthropy as within grassroots organizing, public education and advocacy, must evolve further and do so now. We look forward to working with as many of you as possible with a spirit of the deepest urgency towards what has become a national and global imperative.
In This Issue:

Recent new coverage of Colombe Peace Foundation (#Colombe)

Proteus Fund's 25th Anniversary:

Commemorative 25th Anniversary Video (#Video)
RISE Together Fund Podcast (#Podcast)
Piper Fund: From Reform to Justice (#Piper)
Board Conversation: Philanthropy's Changes Over 25 Years (#Board)
As important as 2020 is, Proteus’ work across so many of these issue areas has been constantly evolving and improving. In 2019, Proteus Fund and its aligned organizations awarded over $20 million in grants for the first time in our 25-year history. You will be able to read more about this grantmaking activity a bit later this year in our annual grantmaking and program report – but until then, please visit the Grants Index on our website ([link removed]) to learn more about our incredible grantees and their vital and impactful work.

In 2019, we also celebrated the organization’s 25th anniversary. We took this occasion to gather memories and perspectives from Proteans and organizational allies past and present. We solicited written reflections, convened conversations, and conducted video interviews. In this issue of our newsletter, you’ll find links to our anniversary video, an audio podcast featuring Shireen Zaman and Dimple Abichandani discussing the history of the RISE Together Fund ([link removed]) (RTF) from its founding as the Security & Rights Collaborative, a piece written by Melissa Spatz commemorating Piper Fund ([link removed]) ’s pivotal shift to adopting racial and gender justice lenses in its expanded work, and a conversation between Proteus and PAL board members on how philanthropy has changed over the past twenty-five years.

As we kick off the organization’s second quarter-century, it’s critical to learn from our history as we plan for the future of our contributions to social justice philanthropy. This year, we’ll be undertaking a strategic planning process to align Proteus Fund’s vision, values and mission with the needs we see in the many arenas in which we fund and offer other forms of programming. And we’ll continue to strengthen our core operations in order to ensure we can continue to provide the most effective possible platform to the full range of programs, projects, and funds within the Proteus ecosystem.

Thank you, as always, for your partnership in our shared mission.

Sincerely,

Paul Di Donato
President & CEO
Proteus Fund and Proteus Action League
New York, NY

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In this newsletter, we want to highlight two articles - one recent, one from June 2019 - to draw attention to Colombe Peace Foundation’s long history of funding the anti-war movement and of challenging the exponential increase in militarism of US domestic and international policy. The first piece showcases a few of Colombe’s grantees: Win Without War, which has been funded by Colombe since its inception, and has grown in terms of its strategies, size and methods as it foments and shapes the peace movement; and Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, which Colombe helped to launch last year and which has been sanely and consistently articulating the responsible and diplomacy-focused solutions to various international crises - including the latest controversy with Iran.


** How A Stronger Anti-War Movement Rallied to Stop a March to War With Iran ([link removed])
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Why isn't 2020 more like 2002? Because there's a new infrastructure built to fight American interventions abroad.

Click here to read the full piece in Politico. ([link removed])


** The Anti-War Movement No One Can See ([link removed])
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What if there's an antiwar movement growing right under our noses and we just haven't noticed? What if we don't see it, in part, because it doesn't look like any antiwar movement we've even imagined?

Click here to read the full piece in Common Dreams ([link removed]) .

Colombe Peace Foundation’s grantmaking is premised on the concept that ending war, aggression and militarized conflict at home and abroad requires a new consensus that reflects the growing popular frustration among the public with the status quo of global, open-ended “war on terror” operations. Articulating a shared common interest in changing peace and security policies while broadening the social base is key, both in challenging militarism and the size and wanton expansion of the military budget.

Colombe has been funding the anti-war movement and building the infrastructure for years. The launch of Quincy and the funding to Win Without War are just two among several anti-war groups that comprise an increasingly sophisticated and powerful web of peace-focused grantees. As noted in the Common Dreams article, “one indicator of a successful movement, however incipient, is its power to influence and change those making the decisions.”

As if to answer, the Politico piece notes how rapidly the movement mobilized to show the public's disapproval of military escalation with Iran, launching an organized rapid response campaign that was notably weeks faster to mobilize as compared to 2002 when military engagement was imminent with Iraq. The movement is at least partially responsible for decision-makers’ reticence to escalate the conflict with Iran in 2020.
Learn more about the Colombe Peace Foundation ([link removed])
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Proteus Fund celebrated our 25th Anniversary in 2019. We took this occasion to gather memories and perspectives from Proteans and organizational allies past and present.
View our 25th Anniversary Video:
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Watch the video ([link removed])

Listen to "The Continuity of RISE Together Fund: Looking Back and Looking Ahead," a conversation between Shireen Zaman and Dimple Abichandani
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Listen to the conversation ([link removed])

Piper Fund: From Reform to Justice

Piper Fund’s most recent set of donor briefings, held last October, focused on the rise of white nationalism and the role that democracy funders should play in combatting it. For a donor collaborative that began 25 years ago, with a relatively narrow focus on money in politics, this may seem like a departure. It is, though, a natural growth based on a shift that we made 5 years ago, to apply a racial equity lens to all of our work.

Piper Fund’s transformation is a key chapter in Proteus Fund’s overall story of growth over our first 25 years, and shows the capacity for philanthropy to reenvision our work in pursuit of a more just and equitable world.
Read the full blog post from Melissa Spatz on our website ([link removed])

Board Members Sara Gould and Jesse Beason Discuss Philanthropy's Changes

In September 2019, Proteus Fund board member Sara Gould and Proteus Action League board member Jesse Beason joined Tito Crafts, our Director of Partnership and Communications, for a conversation about how philanthropy - and in particular, social justice philanthropy and the world of public foundations - have changed over Proteus Fund's first 25 years.

You can read a lightly edited transcript of this conversation on our website.
Read the transcript of their conversation on our website ([link removed])

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