Funder Manifesto

RUNWAY ROOTS’ APPROACH TO RIGHT RELATIONSHIP

RUNWAY Roots is guided by the principle that capital can be used to heal, repair and connect Black businesses and the communities surrounding them.

This principle informs all aspects of our organizational culture; from our lending and credit processes with our entrepreneurs, to the interpersonal working relationships within our team and with our partners. What makes us unique is the value we place on transformational relationships over transactional ones. We invite you to learn more about our values and culture with respect to investing, philanthropy and equitable partnerships and join us as a mission-aligned investor or funder to further fuel our work.

This Funder Manifesto is designed to help inform our community of investors, and prospective investors, on the ways in which RUNWAY Roots embraces the financial relationships that fuel our work. It is an invitation to capitalize our work in ways that are sustainable and equitable and that center trust-based relationships over transactional ones. We thank you for your time and consideration in reading this document and initiating or sustaining your interaction with our organization in a spirit of likemindedness.

Our Desire is to Transform Finance and Philanthropic Relationships

Since our founding in 2016, RUNWAY has been guided by the principle that capital can be used to heal, repair and connect. This principle informs all aspects of our organizational culture; from our lending and credit processes with our entrepreneurs, to the interpersonal working relationships within our team and with our partners. We stand in solidarity with groups such as the Justice Funders, that are calling for the restoration needed to upend extractive philanthropic practices towards a more regenerative and just future.

We believe in building enriching, interdependent and authentic relationships with our funders and investors. We know that the very nature of our dominant philanthropic and impact investing culture can be extractive rather than replenishing, and that maintaining these relationships can lead to burnout, angst and exhaustion, particularly among Black founders and practitioners. It is why we have chosen to be in “right relationship” with our funders and investors and have created this call to action for others to join us.

Being in “right relationship” means that we both acknowledge (funders and founders alike) that our collective impact will be amplified by our interdependence. It means that we agree to journey together towards co-creating new models of fundraising and social financing. We agree to work together to fund Black-led social enterprises from a place of faith, trust and equity instead of a place of metrics-driven mistrust and bureaucracy fueled by short term financing and investment terms that are not mutually beneficial. We agree to commit to upholding a culture of self-care, healing and restoration within black-led organizations that is a prerequisite to social progress.

Once this happens, we will be able to make and sustain the meaningful investments necessary to rapidly expand and support thriving Black communities. We would have healed, and made whole, a fractured philanthropic and impact investing sector–together.

A Call to Action:

  • I recognize that RUNWAY’s foremost obligation is to their entrepreneurs, community, and to their team of dedicated professionals who power their work. I will demonstrate concern for the interests and well-being of these individuals and understand the difference between my intentions and the outcomes of my actions. I will do my part to engage in ways that center mutual respect and an awareness of the time constraints, both personal and professional, of the RUNWAY Team.

  • Guided by trust in their ability to deliver their program to the best of their ability, I intend to support their ability to serve their core constituency. If I lack clarity on how to do this, I will seek counsel from them.

  • I will honor the time and labor of the RUNWAY team as they fulfill their mission of transforming deeply entrenched systemic barriers for Black entrepreneurs. I will make every attempt to make requests that balance my need to fulfill my organizational requirements with their need to balance fundraising and program delivery. Where possible, I will re-examine time consuming, excessively burdensome administrative processes and streamline my requests for information. Furthermore, I will be cognizant of opportunities I may see where I can reduce, eliminate or redirect expenditures of time or resources that may arise through our partnership.

  • I understand that the RUNWAY team does not merely represent Black communities and entrepreneurs, they themselves are a community of Black nonprofit practitioners, entrepreneurs, artists, activists and fundraisers. I recognize that, as a result, they are not detached from the historical trauma they are actively seeking to correct through their work. By joining as a funder, I will bring a level of cognition and awareness about the social issues present within Black communities and particularly to Black social leaders, as an entry point of my decision to engage. Furthermore, I will take it upon myself to educate myself on issues that I may not be aware of. I will do this on my own and be mindful of RUNWAY’s core mission as an organization dedicated to their entrepreneurs.

Why A Funder’s Manifesto for RUNWAY?

Thank you for reading and digesting our request…

We saw no other way to move our work forward but to call out and leave behind the dismissive, extractive and harmful forces many of us have experienced and endured for far too long. We believe we need to stop living outside of the “right relationships” necessary for true partnership, equity and the resulting systemic change to take shape. Whether conscious or unconscious, the widely accepted practices and protocols of mainstream philanthropy and impact investing often drive an insatiable, unsustainable need for growth, scale and competition. This in turn, produces a divisive culture–internally and externally–and creates harmful practices that usurp the integrity of organization's objectives, goals and programs. Rather than solve the issues we were created to solve, we become beholden to capital, forgoing or greatly altering the original mission, objectives, goals and programs. Over time, the intentions of our work become lost on the conveyor belt of sourcing, selling and servicing an ever-growing list of funder demands.

We don’t expect funders to understand this entirely, which is why we have taken it upon ourselves to spread and share this point of view in a desire to heighten awareness and bring about change. Increasingly, practitioners and founders, especially those of color, have publicly discussed the enormous amounts of time spent setting up systems, work plans, processes, goals and metrics to cater to the ever- changing value systems and requirements of funders. The tail is now wagging the dog and society loses.

Thank you for joining us on this journey of co-creating a new financial code of conduct that is grounded in trust, restoration and equity. Without this restoration and the transitions we are all calling forth, we will continue to feel the malaise of unequal power dynamics perpetuated by these relationships. Our fundamental desire is to call forth mutually beneficial and transformational interactions that are intentionally imbued with love, care and concern for people and planet. May we walk this path together…

In grace and with best regards,

RUNWAY Roots’ Founding Fundraising Circle:

Jessica Norwood, Founder | Konda Mason, Strategic Partnerships | Nina Robinson, Fund Director | Alicia DeLia, Investor Relations