Our Programs
CONNECT
Organizational Membership
To foster trust and connection among people of color-led and serving organizations
Color Congress is a membership body that serves majority people of color* (POC) and POC-led* organizations* that offer programming in service of filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color in the documentary field. Membership is for organizations that wish to work with peer organizations to build power as an ecosystem.* The membership program is free and participation is voluntary.
SUPPORT
Field Building Program
To build organizational and collective capacity, and strengthen transformational collaboration between people of color organizations
The Field Building Program provides the infrastructure for collaborative, field-led work and resources members’ collective needs and ambitions. In Summer 2022, Color Congress member organizations directed a $525K fund toward technical assistance to strengthen organizational sustainability. In 2024 our members are directing a $300k annual fund toward a field experiment that can address a challenge they share. Stay tuned.
RESOURCE
Organizational Grant Program
To address chronic disinvestment and stabilize POC-led documentary organizations
In June 2022, we distributed $1.35 million dollars in unrestricted 2-year grants to 17 organizations across the continental and non-continental United States. These organizations are some of the most vital to the communities they serve - and some of the most vulnerable. We are thrilled to be able to support them.
The 2022 grantees of this program are:
La Asociación de Documentalistas de Puerto Rico (AdocPR)
Arab Film and Media Institute
Arkansas Soul Media
Beyond Inclusion
Bitchitra Collective
Black Documentary Collective
Comfrey Films (fka House of Pentacles)
Distribution Advocates
Entre Film Center
Hayti Film Festival
Klamath Trinity Resource Conservation District
Lede New Orleans
The Luminal Theater
Mezcla Media Collective
No Evil Eye Cinema
Open Doors/Reality Poets
Third World Newsreel
About the Organizational Grant Program
Based on the research published in the Beyond Inclusion report, majority people of color (POC) and POC-led organizations working in documentary constitute a powerful ecosystem that is and has been a significant force for change. They are a primary gateway through which filmmakers and leaders of color enter the nonfiction field. And yet most are not properly resourced and have been working with minimal resources, in some cases for decades. The result is some organizations are barely able to sustain their vital core work and are limited in their ability to grow, take risks, and dream into being the future of the field we need.
The intention of the Color Congress unrestricted 2-year grants is to support those majority POC and POC-led organizations that navigate financial precarity, but which offer critical support to the documentary field and to their communities (based on geographic location, racial and ethnic identities, roles and functions in the field, etc.), so they can sustain or grow their work and contribute to the POC nonfiction storytelling field ecosystem.