The Opportunity Fund is a left-of-center grantmaking organization that is based in Pittsburgh and focuses on grantmaking in Western Pennsylvania. The Fund awards grants to organizations and enterprises that advance left-of-center social and economic policies, with particular focus on African-American and LGBT-interest advocacy. The Fund also provides grants to organizations involved in performing and visual arts. ^[1]

Overview and Activities

In December of 2019, the Opportunity Fund announced that in its eighth cycle of funding, it established grants totaling $896,200. Since its founding in 2015, the Opportunity Fund has awarded 421 grants totaling over $5.3 million. Notable recipients include the left-wing Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), the Abolitionist Law Center, and the Women’s Law Project. ^[2]

In 2020 alone, the Opportunity Fund awarded 53 grants to left-of-center, Pittsburgh-based organizations, totaling $638,500. In April 2020, the Fund created a $500,000 COVID-19 Response Fund for previous applicants to receive funding throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of these grants went to support performing arts organizations that had their operations halted during the pandemic, including Alia Musica Pittsburgh and Chatham Baroque. ^[3]

The Opportunity Fund also initiated the Investing in Professional Artists performing arts grantmaking program with the Pittsburgh Foundation and Heinz Endowments. Together, the grantmaking organizations have awarded $170,000 since June of 2020 to both individual artists and Pittsburgh-based organizations to support public art. ^[4]

Leadership

Jake Goodman is the executive director of the Opportunity Fund. ^[5] Goodman has argued that “racism and white supremacy and anti-Blackness are baked and caked onto every American system, and into American life and into our own bodies as white people.” ^[6]