Three smiling females, a woman with short blonde hair, glasses, and a denim jacket, a woman with braided hair and a yellow jacket, and a young girl in a light green hoodie, in an indoor setting with a wooden cabinet in the background.

BLAC Fund: Building Local Alignment in Community Fund

Logo for Black Fund with text 'Building Local Alignment & Community'.
BLAC Fund applications are now open!
click to apply!
Applications close february 28, 2026!
2026 General Information Session
2026 Childcare Information Session

The Building Local Alignment and Community (BLAC) Fund is a participatory grant process powered by IBBG. The BLAC fund will regrant $1M by 2027 to reproductive health and wellbeing organizations and projects across Nebraska that support and are led by underserved populations, including but not limited to Black women, femmes, and girls.

2026 General Grant Application Overview
2026 BLAC Fund General FAQs
2026 Childcare Grant Application Overview
2026 Childcare FAQs

BLAC Fund Childcare Opportunity:
We’re excited to announce a new opportunity through the 2026 BLAC Fund, created specifically to support underrepresented childcare providers across Nebraska. IBBG will invest $250,000 in grants to help sustain and strengthen childcare businesses in economically distressed and underserved communities.

Goals of the initiative:

Advanced strategies that require public health, healthcare and social service (multi-sector) systems, as well as funders and intermediaries, to demonstrate accountability to community residents, their priorities and racial equity

Model participatory grantmaking approaches that shift power and influence to communities – and share lessons across RWJF and beyond in ways that seed new norms for how philanthropy is done

Provide additional support for community-led nonprofits for technical assistance, policy advocacy, leadership development, community organizing, and other priorities and needs they identify

Foster meaningful, transparent, and equitable partnerships between community-led nonprofits and multi-sector systems in advancing racial and health equity

Center communities of color, low-income residents and other individuals and groups facing historic and ongoing harm from systemic inequities as co-creators and beneficiaries of local efforts to advance health equity

The BLAC Fund Council is...

  • Three-year council service  

  • Represent target communities with shared identities and lived experience 

  • No experience in philanthropy is required

“Participatory grantmaking” is defined as:

Co-designing funding strategies and priorities
Reviewing and assessing proposals
Establishing decision-making criteria
Making funding decisions
Participating in and co-designing the evaluation of an initiative

2024 Blac Fund Council

  • A woman with braided hair and gold hoop earrings smiling outdoors in a brown long-sleeve top, with colorful flowers and a garden in the background.

    Jasmine Reddick (She/Her)

  • Smiling woman with dreadlocks sitting in a wheelchair outdoors, wearing a black sleeveless top, with colorful garden and pathway in the background.

    Kween Alabi (She/Her/They)

  • A smiling woman with glasses and curly hair sitting on a white armchair indoors, wearing a light purple sleeveless top and gold jewelry.

    Tainesha Owens (She/Her)

  • A woman with short curly hair wearing red glasses, colorful earrings, a gold choker, and a colorful scarf around her neck. She is dressed in a black top with cape-like sleeves and is standing outdoors with a flower garden and a decorative fence in the background, smiling at the camera.

    Dr. Toccara Steele (She/Her)