After 15 years equipping individual foundations to invest in solutions to the South’s most pressing challenges, MDC is expanding its approach to reach cohorts of Southern foundations through the Passing Gear Philanthropy Institute.
Our goal: create a network of at least 20 Southern grantmakers actively employing Passing Gear principles and deploying philanthropic capital to address enduring systemic barriers and catalyze shared wellbeing for people in the South.
The Passing Gear Philanthropy Institute is building the network by creating annual cohorts for the next five years. Each cohort will be open to six grantmaking organizations and will prepare those organizations to work individually in their own communities and collectively with other Passing Gear Philanthropy alumni to address barriers to opportunity and inclusion.
Four foundations—two community foundations and two health-conversion foundations from North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Alabama—are participating in the first cohort that started work in January 2020. We are now accepting requests for information about the 2021-2022 cohort from Southern foundations and grantmaking organizations interested in taking part in this unprecedented opportunity to enhance your philanthropic leadership and join a larger movement to reshape Southern philanthropy and accelerate our region to a more equitable future.