An End-of-Year Message from our CEO, Dr. Gislaine Ngounou
Hello, beautiful people!
Wow, what a year it’s been. 2025 showed up—and showed out.
We’ve weathered extraordinary challenges, and yet, we’ve also seen incredible courage and resilience in our communities.
As I reflect on this past year—my first as CEO—I’m reminded that a year can hold so much change, and still, it’s just one moment in the long arc of history. That truth keeps me humble and grounded.
Here’s what we know for sure:
- Grassroots and nonprofit organizations are vital to thriving communities.
- Immigrant communities are central to our shared success.
- Racial equity, diversity, and inclusion are essential to our collective well-being.
- And everyone deserves to live with dignity—to have good work, enough food, decent healthcare, and quality public education.
This year, we’ve seen how all of these values are under attack.
But I’m proud of how the Memorial Fund has responded and lived into our values:
- We stayed true to our mission and stood with partners who show up every day for their communities.
- We nearly doubled the minimum spend required of foundations, to ten percent in 2025, to meet the moment.
- We moved money faster while simplifying our processes, funded critical immigration justice work, mutual aid efforts, and community-rooted innovation.
As we look ahead to 2026, we’re building on this momentum.
- We’ll launch our first community advisory council to ensure those closest to the issues shape the solutions.
- We’ll continue investments in organizing, power building, youth leadership, and community wealth building.
- And we’ll strengthen collaboration across philanthropy, the nonprofit sector, government, and public education—because, quite democracy itself depends on our collective action.
- We will also continue to ask ourselves serious questions about our role, position, and actions – to ensure that we continue to meet the challenges and opportunities before us with the fullness of what is possible and with courage.
I hold both humility and hope as we move forward—humility knowing the answers don’t live with us alone, and hope in what’s possible when we listen deeply, act boldly, and move together.
On behalf of all of us at the Fund, thank you for your partnership and for the daily courage with which you move through the world and work.
Our wish for you and for all of us in this season is this…
Rest, breathe, restore.
Let hope and love be our grounding.
We are builders of dreams,
lovers of humanity,
makers of good trouble.
Together, we rise.
again and again.
toward the liberated world
we all deserve.
Together, we win.