Tulane Alumni Black History Month Mutual Aid Fund

*If you are a Tulane Alumni who wants to become a committed fundraiser or donor , click here to sign up & someone from our team will reach out to you within 48 hours. If you are on this page donating on behalf of a Tulane Alumni who has signed on to the TACCF, be sure to put their name in your donation so they can track their total contribution!

BRIEF OVERVIEW (read below for full story or visit our website at http://bit.ly/tulanealumnifund): 

We are asking 30 Tulane Alumni to commit to donating or raising at least $1,000 each during Black History Month (also known as Black Futures Month ). Our goal is to contribute at least $30,000 in mutual aid funds to Black communities by the end of February. 100% of proceeds will go directly towards BYP1000-New Orleans and their ongoing mutual aid program they have been running since March 2020.
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COMPLETE OVERVIEW: (1. About the TACCF Black History/Futures Month Fund, 2. About BYP100NOLA,         3. How Does Your Donation Get to BYP100NOLA, 4. About/History of the TACCF)

What is The Tulane Alumni Black History/Futures Month Alumni Fundraiser?

This is the second fundraiser initiated by the Tulane Alumni Community Contribution Fund (TACCF). Launched in November 2020 by Mwende "FreeQuency" Katwiwa (c.o 2014), Anna Rajo Miller (c.o 2014) & Winnie Pritchett (c.o 2014), the TACCF has already raised & donated $20,000 to BYP100New Orleans from our first alumni fundraiser that took place between Nov & Dec 2020 (Phase 1).

During Black History/Futures Month, we want to continue our commitment to resourcing Black organizers & communities in New Orleans by fundraising an additional $30,000 in mutual aid funds (Phase 2).

In order to do this, we need 30 Tulane alumni to commit to donating or fundraising at least $1000 from their networks during the month of February. Sign up as a committed contributor here  and we will provide you with a fundraising toolkit and support you as you reach out to your community. As on 2/1/2021, we need 18 more Tulane alumni to come on to reach our goal, join us!

About BYP100-New Orleans

Founded in 2013, BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100) is a member-based organization of Black youth activists creating justice and freedom for all Black people (the New Orleans chapter was founded in 2014). Since quarantine, BYP100-New Orleans has been fundraising for and managing a community COVID19 Support Fund for Black New Orleanians. To date, the fund has redistributed thousands of dollars in Mutual Aid to support rent, groceries, and other urgent needs. The need is so great that each round BYP100 opens, the funds get depleted in less than 48 hours. To learn more about BYP100 click here .

How does your contribution get to BYP100 New Orleans?
We (the team - Mwende, Anna & Winnie) will manage the withdrawal of funds from GoFundMe and complete the transfer of funds directly to BYP100 New Orleans. Anyone who is interested in seeing transfer receipts can email us directly at [email redacted] and we will happily provide them!

About/History of the Tulane Alumni Community Contribution Fund (TACCF)

The TACCF is a network of Tulane alumni reinvesting our resources in Black organizers and organizations in New Orleans. By asking Tulane alumni to financially contribute to Black youth organizers in New Orleans, we are inviting ourselves to rethink what alumni giving looks like and does.

This summer, in the midst of COVID19’s disproportionate impact on Black communities, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor & Ahmaud Arbery (and others whose names did not reach the mainstream news cycle) continued to expose a system ingrained with systemic violence against Black people. In the weeks after George Floyd’s murder, the movement known as ‘Black Lives Matter’ received an unprecedented amount of donations and social support (this was particularly interesting considering the negative reception #BlackLivesMatter received during its emergence in the early 2010s). Some of it was performative, but in that time, a moment of possibility also emerged.

Unfortunately, much of the initial outpouring of support has stopped or significantly slowed despite the need remaining. As alumni of Tulane University (a predominantly white institution [PWI] in New Orleans, a majority Black city that is rapidly gentrifying) we want to start 2021 off with continued commitment to resourcing Black Liberation work in New Orleans. We are looking to raise 30K by the end of February aka Black History/Futures Month - we hope you will join us.

These first two Phases of the TACCF are initial steps in asking Tulane alumni to reconsider traditional alumni giving.  Tulane University’s endowment is over 1 billion dollars and it received over 127 million dollars in donations during the 2019 to 2020 fiscal year.  Instead of giving to an already well funded institution, we are pushing alumni to reinvest our resources in the communities and people whose city we occupied during our time at Tulane during this time of collective need.

As alumni, we are asking ourselves:

SHORT TERM: How can we support Black people in this moment- Black History/Future Month -  in the city where we experienced, learned, and benefited from as students?

LONG TERM: How can we strategize to use our alumni status to make reparative demands from the institution itself to the local community?

Ultimately, the TACCF is an invitation for Tulane alumni to examine our participation and benefit from systemic racism and take actionable steps in our commitment to resourcing Black organizers and communities. We believe this project to be a starting point for deeper conversation & action around reparations which we will begin engaging with once we’ve reached our $50,000 fundraising goal from Phase 1 & 2. In the final phase of the project (Phase 3), we will make a demand for an ongoing mutual aid fund for Black New Orleanians financed by Tulane University using a reparations framework sign up here to join our reparations study group in preparation for Phase 3).

For more information about the project visit our website .

*Please note there is no official affiliation between the TACCF and Tulane University or official Tulane University Alumni Chapters*