Unlocking Resources in a Time of Crisis & Possibility
FROM: JOSEPH ROWNTREE FOUNDATION CONFERENCE KEYNOTE
In her keynote address, Nwamaka Agbo challenges the traditional philanthropic impulse to merely dismantle broken systems, arguing instead for a proactive shift toward building new, equitable structures rooted in Restorative Economics. Drawing on the wisdom of Audre Lorde and the principles of Black Feminist thought, Agbo reimagines community wealth not as individual accumulation but as collective stewardship, where those most impacted by systemic harm are empowered as both owners and decision-makers. Through the lens of the Kataly Foundation’s work, she outlines a practical blueprint for transitioning from extractive capitalism to regenerative models that prioritize land, housing, and financial sovereignty for Black, Indigenous, and communities of color.
Key Takeaways
Shift from Dismantling to Building: Rather than focusing energy on tearing down oppressive systems—which often centers the oppressor’s worldview—Agbo advocates for becoming "builders" who construct new, resilient communities based on interdependence, equity, and shared abundance.
Restorative Economics Framework: This approach prioritizes community stewardship and democratic governance, ensuring that marginalized groups hold ownership and decision-making power over assets, thereby fostering self-determination and collective political, economic, and cultural power.
Integrated Capital Strategy: The Kataly Foundation employs an integrated capital model that combines non-extractive, patient financial investments with non-financial support like capacity building, helping de-risk projects for broader investment while proving that investing in Black and brown communities is viable and essential.
Focus on Foundational Assets: Key areas of intervention include equitable economic development (such as community-owned buildings), alternative financial infrastructure (community loan funds), land and housing stabilization (via land trusts), and climate-resilient built environments.
Practitioner-Funder Model: By staffing the foundation with individuals who have lived experience in organizing and policy advocacy, the Kataly Foundation operates as a steadfast partner that leans into challenges with empathy and expertise, moving beyond analysis paralysis to learn through action and authentic relationship-building.
Full Transcript
>> Nwamaka Agbo:
You know, I should have worn higher heels. [audience laughs]
I'm gonna step off to the side and you guys are just going to kind of watch me hold my notes while I do this.
So you'll see the top of my head [audience laughs] Well first off let me say it's just such a pleasure to be here. I want to thank Cassie Robinson for reaching out to me inviting me to be here today, the Joseph Roundtree foundation, and all of you that have decided to participate in this conversation.
00:00:43
I'm gonna do something a little bit different than I typically do when I give my talks. I'm going to spend more time giving context, and the reason I want to give more context is because what I'm observing is that in an effort to fast forward and figure things out and kind of innovate new strategies we oftentimes end up replicating a lot of the same ills we're trying to address. And so if you could bear with me, I'm going to give you a little bit more context for my work, how I’ve come to be in philanthropy, and particularly my work on the Restorative Economics Framework.
00:01:26
The queer Black feminist Audre Lorde—the essayist, the poet—has always been a source of inspiration for me. And this is because her ability to articulate and make visceral the most fundamental aspects of what it means to find joy and liberation inside of a world that consistently denied her humanity and right to exist as a free Black woman deeply moves and inspires me.
Her example of how she lived her life and her writings on Black Feminism required her to insist on her right to live and thrive in a world whose tools were intended to make her heal and capitulate to systems that only wanted to extract labor and life from her in service of itself. For me, this simple refrain, “The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house,” is an important one that calls us into recognizing the four walls of the house that we have been trapped inside of and to take action in creating a new house—a world view that celebrates and cherishes our unique and diverse humanity. A worldview centered on our understanding of interdependence, and a world view where we are not required to flatten ourselves into sameness into the lowest common denominator, but one that is made up of a resilient and rich ability to process and make room for the complexity of our diversity.
00:03:04
For me it's important to explicitly name the tools that we have built this burning house that we find ourselves in. The house that is both on fire and flooding at the same time from climate chaos. A house that is riddled with pests—a rising authoritarianism in our democracy. A house whose foundation of global capitalism is crumbling in the late stages with growing inequality between the Haves and the Have-nots. The tools that built this house are racism, sexism, patriarchy, and capitalism—and all other systems that seek to justify and oppress the dehumanization of others. This is not a house that I want to live in. It is not a house that was built for me. As a queer Black woman, as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, this is not a house that I can feel safe in.
00:04:04
And so to keep the metaphor going a little bit longer… I understand that so many of our social movements in the global North have focused on dismantling the house and this makes sense as a harm and mitigation strategy. And, so much of how I was trained as an organizer was to push back on harmful policies and polluting developments that hurt Black, Indigenous, and brown communities. When we feel ourselves backed up against a wall, the natural response is to destruct, to tear down the systems and sometimes even the people that threaten our sense of safety. But what I've also learned is that by tapping into the same energy of destruction, we end up inadvertently becoming the very same thing we're fighting against. I no longer want to focus on dismantling the Master's house because doing so centers their world view, it centers a frame rather than my own humanity. Plus, we're already watching the signs that the house is starting to crumble on its own, so why not let it? By giving energy to it, focusing our attention and resources on it, and trying to reform it, we end up propping it up and we end up giving life and relevancy to something that we know is on its way out.
00:05:31
For me this is the time of builders. I want to build a new house—a house that understands the abundance of what the planet has to offer all of us. One where we don't hoard resources, but rather share them equitably. A house that recognizes the fundamental human rights of each person to have access to shelter, health care, education, and food. A house that is governed and managed not by the tyranny of the minority cloaked as democracy but by the people coming together to make decisions that center their collective well-being.
00:06:11
And for me this house is not a McMansion as we call it in the United States. I refuse to fall into the typical capitalist frames of “is this scalable?” and “can we replicate it?” There is not one house that we must contort ourselves to live inside of but a compound of many houses distributed across continents and around the world rooted in the same values of interdependence, collective liberation, and community accountability. But that each home is designed and constructed to withstand the unique social, political, economic, and environmental conditions they're rooted in.
00:06:53
In order to build a house like this, I know that we will need new tools. Or rather, we need to return to and reclaim the tools and wisdoms of so many Native and Indigenous communities—cultures that we all come from that are a part of our lineage. Cultural tools that remember what it's like to live in balance with the planet and our neighbors. Cultural tools that respect the humanity and autonomy of others even if they are different from us. Cultural tools that recognize our safety comes from the health and well-being of the collective. So for some years now I've been experimenting with a set of tools that I think, I hope, and pray can begin to be the blueprint for how we can build this metaphorical compound together.
00:07:49
And so when my work on Restorative Economics is focused in on a theory of liberation that's rooted in first, Community Stewardship: a recognition that our ability to move forward and how we think about building community wealth so that we're not just looking at the individual riches of one individual or one organization, but we're actually thinking intentionally of how we build shared prosperity so that the community together benefits from the assets that we all have to share.
00:08:25
And that the other key piece to this is the (Community) Governance of these assets: how we come together to make decisions together. We are now in a moment where we have to rethink our democracy. We have to rethink who the decision makers are, and how decisions are made on our behalfs. My work and my goal is to figure out how we center those that are most impacted by a project so that they are both the owners of that asset but also the decision makers. Because for far too often Black and brown communities have only been impacted by projects, by development and have not had the say or the financial benefits of these projects.
00:09:09
And the goal here being that when we come together to collectively own and govern assets, we actually end up creating Self-Determination and Sovereignty. And by doing so, then we're able to build the Political, the Economic, and the Cultural Power of our communities together.
00:09:30
And so the work of Restorative Economic centers on some key principles. First we really want to lift up, we find it important to lift up and acknowledge the hurt and harm that has been levied against certain communities and used to build the wealth that we now see happening across countries in the Western world. The other key piece of the work is to really lift up the importance of democratic leadership and governance in these projects—ensuring that communities are figuring out how to be in relationship with one another so they can make decisions about how to manage this asset, manage their community together, and knowing that when they make decisions together that center the needs of the most impacted, they actually end up making decisions that are better for the community as a whole.
00:10:22
We also find it important that the projects that we support are deeply rooted in supporting social movements. Social movements that are at the front lines of contesting for power, at the front lines of actually advocating for what communities need back at home. And that by doing so we actually need to have strong strategic partnerships with values-aligned partners—like our lawyers, our accountants, our architects—that can help us think through how to develop our communities from the ground up, rooted in our values of collective liberation.
00:10:57
And so with our work at the Restorative Economies Fund at the Kataly Foundation, we really focus in on community wealth building projects, and there's a set of types of projects that we focus in on because we see them as foundational to how we actually start to build a strong economic foundation for local communities. So continuing to focus on the democratic leadership of these projects, being mindful of how these projects build political, economic, and cultural power. And that these projects are actually looking at how we create systemic change, how we are actually seeking to challenge and transform financial systems that hurt and harm so many communities when we can actually be investing in and regenerating them.
00:11:49
And that a lot of this work also requires us to build the capacity and human development of communities. We know to be true that the racial wealth gap is not just a gap in access to capital, but it's also a gap in access to knowledge, skills, and expertise. So how can we be intentional about building the capacity of communities alongside the actual projects themselves.
00:12:13
And so with the projects that we focus on, we first look at supporting Equitable Economic Development projects. These are projects where we might see a group of people, a group of organizations coming together to acquire a building and develop it for the purposes of supporting the needs of a local community. Those purposes might be providing services or programs or affordable housing, and I think I've seen the Nikishka somewhere—Nikishka (Iyengar) from The Guild—hopefully you get a chance to go to her panel later… is an example of a beautiful Equitable Economic Development building project.
00:12:51
We also then seek to support Community-Governed Loan Funds—those loan funds where we see communities coming together to create alternative financial infrastructure that actually meets the needs of their community members. And so being able to have financial systems that are tied to and connected to the movement building work of social organizations on the ground. And I think we have Leo Freeman from Seed Commons as well also in the front—another organization that we're honored to support at the Kataly Foundation.
00:13:26
Distinct from Equitable Economic Development projects we also support Land and Housing Stabilization Projects. We see land as a non-renewable resource and housing as a human right. So those projects that might look like community land trusts or perpetual purpose trusts that are looking to take land and housing out of this speculative market to stabilize the land so that we can provide access to public housing for communities into perpetuity.
00:13:53
And then more and more as we face climate change, we know it's important to support built environment projects—projects where we see community members thinking through how to create microgrid renewable energy systems, or storm water management systems, or even microgrid internet infrastructure systems. We think that if we can invest in supporting communities and having Equitable Economic Development projects, Community-Governed Loan Funds, Land and Housing Stabilization initiatives, and Built Environment projects that so many of the communities that have been locked out and left behind of what our economy has to offer can actually start to have an economic foundational base by which to create a more prosperous community for all of them together.
00:14:40
With our work at the Restorative Economies Fund, we take on what’s called an Integrated Capital approach. Integrated Capital looks at providing both financial and non-financial resources to communities across the capital spectrum. So for a project like The Guild, or like seed Commons, we may end up providing multi-year general operating support to support the ongoing operations of the organization. We may then also look at providing a one-time capital contribution—that initial capital injection that a project might need to get off the ground. And then work closely with the projects to think through how we could structure what's called a non-extractive investment, an investment that's below market rate—looking at zero to one percent—but providing long-term, patient capital so that the terms give the project enough time to actually start to prove their business model and generate revenue.
00:15:37
Being able to activate all of the tools, the financial tools, that philanthropy has to offer is actually critical in supporting so many projects and communities that have not had access to capital before. And, by providing non-extractive investments, we also then make it possible for other capital markets, other financial institutions, that may not be able to do a below-market rate investment. But if we have our investments in there at the bottom, then they feel more secure and able to come in to learn about the project and then make an investment with their terms. And hopefully over time, by co-investing alongside us, they can come to understand that Black and brown communities are not actually risky to invest in. They are actually the communities that are at the front lines of helping us solve so many of the problems impacting society today.
00:16:36
This is the work that I have the pleasure of doing at the Kataly Foundation. We seek to support community-owned and community-governed projects. And my colleague Lina is somewhere as well—Lina Shalabi—if you want to hound somebody at the end to know a bit more about our work. But since our founding as a foundation, we have had the ability to really figure out how do we show up and support so many projects across the United States that are trying to figure out how we start to create a Just Transition out of our extractive and pollutive economic system and towards one that's more regenerative. Our mission at the Kataly Foundation is quite explicit about who we support and why we support them. We think it's important to be intentional about providing our resources to support the building of the political and the economic power and cultural power of Black, Indigenous, and all communities of color.
00:17:37
As a spend-out foundation, we are looking to really ensure that we are moving our resources into communities so that they have what they need to continue to sustain and regenerate themselves beyond the sun setting of our foundation. We deeply believe that when communities have access to the resources that they need, they are able to build vibrant and self-determined livelihoods for themselves. And so at the Kataly Foundation, we focus on these key values that help us to really understand how we show up in being a steadfast partner with our grantees and with the borrowers that we invest in.
00:18:16
One of the things that's really unique about how we show up is that we're called what we call ourselves as a Practitioner Funder Team. So our staff is hired/is made up of people who come from a lived and movement experience doing this work on the ground. I myself have a background in community organizing, policy advocacy, electoral politics. And so as Practitioner Funders, we're able to show up both with the knowledge, the skills, the expertise, but also access to the networks of so many of our grantees. And then as a funder where you're also able to move with the level of empathy and understanding that it is inevitable that so many of the grantees and projects that we support will come up against barriers. Our work is to not back down when we see organizations coming up against a hard moment, but to figure out how we lean in, and how we actually bring our knowledge and our skills to support this project in getting over the hurdle.
00:19:16
As a foundation that was founded in 2018, we have been steadfastly focusing in on how we redistribute our resources. We were capitalized to the tune of half a billion dollars, and we were given the audacious goal to spend out and sunset within 10 to 15 years. And what we've observed across our three programs is that because there are so many pressing problems impacting the world right now, we are actually spending out faster than we had intended. And this is because we really tried to lean into understanding that our resources that we have are here to support communities. And so it's important for us that we are capitalizing these organizations so that they have what they need to push back against so many of the forces that are impacting their communities, but also what they need to build. And what they need to build beyond and outside of a system that they know is no longer working for them.
00:20:16
In addition to our work with the Restorative Economies Fund, we also have our Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective—a collective that provides grant-making dollars to environmental justice organizations focused on building power, collective healing, and land-based projects. We also have our Mindfulness and Healing Justice program area a project that's also focused on how we support Black and brown communities in having access to mindfulness and contemplative practices so that they can heal.
00:20:49
What we know to be true at the Kataly Foundation is that this work cannot and should not be an intellectual study. Right? As philanthropy, we need to kind of get over our analysis paralysis of wanting to understand a problem just right before we act. What we know to be true is that you actually learn by doing. And by doing, that's how we as individuals ourselves are also able to be transformed through the work. As much as we are trying to change systems and culture, we as individuals also need to shift how we show up and question do we actually have the capacity to be an authentic relationship with our neighbors. And if not, how do we need to change to do so.
00:21:39
So I'm extremely honored to lead the work of the Kataly Foundation and to be the Managing Director of our Restorative Economies Fund. We are learning so much about what it takes to build and what it takes to support communities that are trying to find a new way forward. I'm excited to hear from the rest of you throughout the course of our day to learn more about what you're doing, more about your viewpoints on what it takes for us to actually build a just transition that supports all of us. Thank you. [Applause]
Related Resources
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde
Learn more about Kataly Foundation’s programs:
Explore more of Nwamaka’s Talks