Call for Applications – Pushing Against Racism Fund 2024-25

Strengthening diversity and inclusion within the social skateboarding community worldwide.

We are very excited to announce the 3rd annual Pushing Against Racism Fund, which aims to financially support and strengthen diversity and inclusion within the social skateboarding community worldwide.

A total of $15,000 in grants in 2024 will be awarded to nonprofits across six continents, with input from an international expert jury. The Pushing Against Racism Fund is being organized by the Goodpush Alliance and a coalition of skateboarding-focused organizations around the world, who previously launched the Commitment to Anti-Racism in Skateboarding in May 2021.

The Fund is now open for new applications! Keep reading to find out more and how to apply.

Why Does this Fund Exist?

Access to funds is one of the top issues facing social skateboarding projects worldwide, particularly for smaller projects in low and middle income countries (LMICs) or poorer communities. On top of this, nonprofit organizations around the world continue to prop up institutional and structural racism. The leadership of many social skateboarding projects is mostly white — mirroring a trend in the wider nonprofit sector that has historically relied on unfair practices such as unpaid interns, volunteers, and centralizing positions of power in Western countries.

To respond to these challenges, the Pushing Against Racism working group created a fund to financially support greater diversity and inclusion within the social skateboarding community.

About the Fund

The Pushing Against Racism Fund will distribute a total of $15,000 USD in grants to support social skateboarding projects on six continents. We will select one project per continent to receive $2000 each, as well as six smaller projects around the world to receive $500 each.

The funds will be granted to support projects led by people of color or from disenfranchised communities, and/or to support increased diversity and inclusion within social skateboarding. Funded activities could be skate programs, events, or paid internships to youth from communities affected by racism. The hope is that the Fund will help to direct more money, profile, and resources to support more diverse leadership within social skateboarding in coming years.

Some examples of past grantee projects include:

A day trip to a newly built skatepark and a guided tour of the Afro Museum in São Paulo, Brazil, with Coletivo Love CT Skate.
A series of creative workshops, employability and resource-sharing sessions for and by BPOC, QTPOC and neurodiverse folks, with Melanin Skate Gals & Pals in London, UK.
Employment of the first coaches from the local community by Skateboarding Papua New Guinea and Skate Timor.
Women and queer-led skate meet-ups hosted by Dencity.ng in four cities in Nigeria with skate lessons provided for beginners.
Multi-day skateboarding and creative workshops by U Can Skate for indigenous children and youth in a remote part of Mexico.

A total of 12 projects will be supported across two funding categories:

Six “Continent grants” of $2000 – for larger, more established organizations (one project selected per continent)
Six “Community grants” of $500 – for smaller or new projects (no geographic limitation)

Essential Criteria:

Geography – Based in one of 6 eligible continents: Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America
Commitment – Applicants must have signed on to the Commitment to Anti-Racism in Skateboarding.
Registration – Applicants must be a registered nonprofit or have a partner nonprofit that funds can be sent to.
Concept – Must show a strong project concept involving skateboarding and the ability to carry it out between June 2024 - April 2025.

Guiding Criteria (what we are looking for in applications):

Our priority is to support projects led by people of color or other ethnically disenfranchised groups.
We will prioritize projects serving people of color and under-served communities (such as economically disadvantaged, immigrants, refugees), as well as those addressing intersectionality (gender, sexuality, race).
Both one-off events (ie. public skatepark ‘takeovers’ or contests/festivals) and programs running as long as ten months are eligible. We will prioritize sustainable projects that have a potential of continuity.
We are open to applicants who are new to skateboarding or who have less experience creating/running projects, however the project idea needs to be well thought-out and display commitment and motivation.
The aim of the project should include one of the following elements:
- Improve physical and mental well-being of disenfranchised communities
- Promote greater racial equity in skateboarding
- Provide access to skateboarding in underserved communities
- Projects that feature additional social elements (like connecting participants to greater art/educational/leadership opportunities through skateboarding) are encouraged but this is not essential.

Guiding principles/sensitivity check:

If you are doing work advocating for the rights of particular groups/communities that you aren't a part of, we encourage you to check in with someone with lived experience and expertise. We can all reproduce racism and racist practices even if we are from a marginalized/minority group ourselves.
We recommend conducting a sensitivity check if you intend to work with multiracial and multiethnic participants outside of your own community in order to understand cultural protocols and cultural appropriation.
Be transparent about your intentions and goals for your project and work collaboratively with individuals and communities to ensure that their voices and perspectives are heard and valued.

Selection Process and Jury Members:

The applications will be shortlisted by the Pushing Against Racism working group, and then shared with an expert jury with representatives from each continent for their input before the final selection. We are honored to have the following jury members on board:

Oceania: Lomas Amini - Practitioner in using culturally safe, therapeutic concepts in Creative/Performing Arts and Sports to enhance Early Intervention initiatives for young people.
South America: Andrés Chong Qui Toris - Skateboarder, labor lawyer, law professor, entrepreneur from Guayaquil, Ecuador. Founder of SBEC SKATEBOARDING
North America: Luke Cianciotto - Skater, organizer, and academic from Chicago
Europe: Thao Nguyen Tran - Vietnamese-German skateboarder and researcher
Africa: Francisco L Vinho - Founder of social skate organization, Maputo Skate, in Mozambique
Asia: Jin Yob Kim - Skater and editor-in-chief of The Quiet Leaf magazine, based in Seoul, South Korea

How to Apply

Simply fill out this application form or alternatively, you can submit a video/audio application – instructions here.

On Tuesday 12th March, we will host two Application Support Webinars to help guide you through the application process and answer any questions you may have. Sign up here.