The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLM GNF) has released a report for its fiscal year ending in 2021 that highlights the organization’s efforts toward achieving its policy goals, including $2 million in grants awarded.

The report, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation: 2020-2021 Impact Report (22 pages, PDF), traces the network’s activities in the year following the murder of George Floyd and during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and explores the growth of BLM’s digital activism and organizing efforts. With a focus on several policy initiatives, the report calls for government divestment from the carceral system and investment in new forms of public safety and expanded access to health care for tens of millions of Americans to address the long-term racial healthcare inequities made apparent by the pandemic. The report also notes the successful defeat of Proposition 25 in California that would have reduced access to due process for people accused of crimes, increased state power to supervise ostensibly innocent people, and deployed racially biased algorithms to determine who is detained before trial.

The report also highlights 10 grants of $200,000 each to organizations including BOLD Women’s Leadership Network, Equity and Transformation Chicago, Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, Transgender Cultural District, Brooklyn Boihood, House of Pentacles, House of GG (Griffin-Gracy Educational Retreat & Historical Center), and the Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and Michael O.D. Brown We Love Our Sons & Daughters foundations.

“Over this fiscal year, we poured millions into organizations fighting for Black liberation,” said BLM GNF chair Cicley Gay. “We amplified and invested in Black artistic work that helped us imagine what thriving could look like. We sparked dialogue and inspired action around policies harming Black people and planted even more seeds for the cultural change that will propel us into an abolitionist future. We are continuing our evolution from an organization focused solely on the work of responding to Black death to also uplifting and affirming Black life and the pursuit of Black joy.”

(Photo credit: Getty Images/FG Trade)