The Black Imagination Fund is a left-of-center advocacy group that provides grants to fund projects at Black-led nonprofits and community advocacy groups. The group is a project of the Big We Foundation, which in turn is fiscally sponsored by the Movement Strategy Center, a left-of-center funding and fiscal sponsorship organization that operates many advocacy groups in the United States. The Black Imagination Fund and the Big We Foundation focus funding on groups in the American South and California. It was founded by Anasa Troutman, a Memphis-based left-of-center organizer who previously worked for the Movement Strategy Center. ^{1 2 3 4}

Background

The Black Imagination Fund is one of six programs operated by the Big We Foundation, which provides grants to a variety of nonprofit advocacy groups calling for left-of-center policies on social and economic issues with a focus on programs for minority and women’s groups. Other programs operated by the foundation include one focused on socialist-inspired “restorative economics” which advocates for wealth redistribution stating that “restoration of community wealth stripped by hundreds of years of forced free labor and kept at bay by discriminatory public policy and institutionalized racist, classist practices.” ^{5 4}

The Big We Foundation (and by extension Black Imagination Fund) is a project of the Movement Strategy Center, which fiscally sponsors left-of-center nonprofit organizations and grantmaking initiatives. The foundation was founded in 2018, and the Movement Strategy Center’s directory states that “BWF priority areas — womxn and girls, wellness equity, and restorative economics — are designed to work together in Black, Indigenous, and other BIPOC communities, forming a fully integrated, narrative-based, and holistic approach to their work.” ⁶

Activities

The Black Imagination Fund describes itself as an “Integrated Capital fund resourcing and supporting a visionary Black-led power building, narrative, and culture shift strategy for transformation towards a world of interdependence, abundance, and regeneration.” ⁷ The fund is operated by the Big We Foundation in partnership with Intelligent Mischief, a creative design firm that promotes “Black imagination.” Intelligent Mischief’s website states that “We envision a global archipelago of Black utopias, an autonomous, interdependent network of sovereign places and people motivated by the power of Black love.” ^{7 2}

Specific projects and organizations funded by the Black Imagination Fund were unclear as of late 2024. The group’s website stated in 2024 that “The initial phase of the Fund will focus on building and harnessing narrative and cultural power.” ²

According to a pamphlet describing the Black Imagination Fund, the fund’s four activity areas include capital investments including loans, grants and equity to fund “cooperatively and community owned cultural institutions, creative production and distribution infrastructure, etc” as well as research, field building/ecosystem cultivation, and “Developing and clarifying a Theory of Transformation + Strategy Alignment.” ³

The fund also calls for “an economy in which Black communities are thriving, with full access to the wealth generated by our creative labor” ³ and calls for “ownership and control” of “land, buildings and cultural institutions” and “Ownership and control of cultural capital.” ³

Leadership

The Black Imagination Fund is led by Anasa Troutman, a Memphis-based left-wing organizer and activist who is the founder and CEO of the Big We Foundation and runs BIG We LLC, BIG We Foundation, BIG We Capital, and Historic Clayborn Temple, a Memphis church that was central to the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike. ⁸ Troutman founded Big We in 2015 and previously briefly led a Nashville-based organizing group called Eloveate, and worked for the Movement Strategy Center from 2009 to 2011 and the Highlander Research and Education Center from 2006 to 2009. ¹

1. “Anasa Troutman.” LinkedIn Profile. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://www.linkedin.com/in/anasatroutman/details/experience/
2. “The Black Imagination Fund.” The Big We Foundation. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://www.thebigwe.com/the-black-imagination-fund
3. “The Black Imagination Fund.” The Big We Foundation/Intelligent Mischief. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eee72641a9e231a709dad54/t/642ed6bd077ab43caba77457/1722881925613/THE+BLACK+IMAGINATION+FUND.pdf
4. “Big We Foundation.” The Big We Foundation. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://www.thebigwe.com/big-we-foundation
5. “Restorative Economics.” The Big We Foundation. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://www.thebigwe.com/restorativeeconomics
6. “Big We Foundation.” Movement Strategy Center. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://movementstrategy.org/big-we-foundation/
7. “Home.” Intelligent Mischief. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://www.intelligentmischief.com/
8. “Team.” The Big We Foundation. Accessed November 2, 2024. https://www.thebigwe.com/team