Eleven Organizations Advancing Community-Driven Research and Data Receive $2.3M from Economic Mobility & Opportunity Fund
June 15, 2026 – New York, New York – NEO Philanthropy announced the selection of 11 organizations that are demonstrating community-driven approaches to advance economic mobility and opportunity across the United States. These awards of $2.3M reinforce NEO’s Economic Mobility & Opportunity Fund Research & Data (R&D) initiative commitment to shifting how research is funded and who gets to define it.
Historically, research and data efforts have been concentrated among large elite institutions, which frequently overlooked the lived experience of the very communities most impacted by economic inequity. This initiative seeks to change that by investing directly in organizations rooted in communities with an expansive view of economic mobility and opportunity.
This specific funding opportunity received over 300 applications from organizations across the United States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico eager to engage in quantitative and qualitative methods. The selection process clearly revealed how much innovative, powerful, community-centered work is taking place across the country.
”“It matters deeply that funding decisions are shaped by people who have lived these challenges and are actively building solutions. That perspective brings rigor, realism, and accountability to the process—and it makes being selected feel like a powerful vote of confidence from peers who genuinely understand the work.”
Monica Parisa Rabii, NEO Philanthropy Vice President, Strategic Partnership Programs
Selected organizations were chosen using a participatory design led by a 6-person advisory committee of practitioners and community leaders across housing, economic development, indigenous practice, and violence prevention. Although budget limitations prevented every strong proposal from being funded, the advisory committee was deeply inspired by the range of ideas, practices, and organizations advancing economic mobility in bold and creative ways. Awards span two tracks – innovation and imagination focused on testing new, unconventional ideas, and sustainability and capacity building to sustain and strengthen research and data efforts already underway.
”“Using an advisory committee and participatory design was an intentional effort to shift power to those more proximate to the solutions. This bottom-up approach correctly positions communities as experts and expands what was visible by bringing forward organizations and approaches that are often underrepresented in R&D, with the ultimate goal of helping us to reimagine how we understand and accelerate economic mobility.”
Ciara Coleman, Program Officer for the EMO Fund
The selected projects reflect what becomes possible when research puts lived experience at the center of decision making. From a tenant-led organizing and leadership program exploring rent stabilization as the foundation for economic mobility, to justice-involved women partnering with researchers and policy makers to co-create policy solutions that support health, agency, and well-being, to Indigenous-led efforts reimagining systems of care, governance, and kinship as core to economic opportunity – each project expands how we understand and measure what it means to thrive.
Selected Organizations:
- Beloved Community Incubator | Washington, D.C.
Beloved Community Incubator supports and equips workers in order to organize a regional solidarity economy that centers a livable planet and people—especially poor and working class immigrants and people of color—over profit.
- Housing Justice For All | New York
Housing Justice for All is a coalition of over 80 organizations that represents tenants, homeless New Yorkers, and public housing residents from Brooklyn to Buffalo. Campaigns are led by the people who are fighting to afford housing in New York every single day.
- Indigenous Commons | National
Indigenous Commons is a collective initiative that brings together Indigenous communities, organizations, and Guardians to design a life-affirming economy. It emphasizes the integration of ancestral lifeways with contemporary financial, technological, and governance systems to restore ecosystems, culture, and community well-being.
- Prospera | California
Prospera advances Latina economic empowerment through leadership development, entrepreneurship, and cooperative business ownership. They believe that when women are at the forefront of our local economies, entire communities thrive.
- RestoreHER | Georgia
RestoreHER US.America Inc (RestoreHER) is a policy advocacy reentry organization founded, led by and for justice-involved women of color based in Georgia. RestoreHER addresses the social determinants of criminalization and intersectionality of social inequities through education, leadership, civic engagement and policy change to protect the health, safety, dignity, and restore the rights of all women directly impacted by incarceration, convictions, and/or trauma.
- Reuben V. Anderson Center for Justice | Jackson, MS
The Reuben V. Anderson Center for Justice is dedicated to advancing social justice through community programs, grassroots organizing, and policy advocacy. Their work aims to create a more just and equitable society for all.
- Roots4Change/Jardines de Espacios | Wisconsin
Roots4Change (R4C) is the first women owned cooperative founded by immigrant Latina/Indigenous and community-based Doulas in Wisconsin. R4C walks with immigrant families in their journey of parenting, childbirth, motherhood, and womanhood.
- The Carying Place | North Carolina
The Carying Place teaches homeless working families with children financial literacy and other life skills to attain independent living, while providing short-term housing and support services to address their individual needs.
- The Children’s Gallery | Chicago, IL
TCGC is building a youth-centered cultural infrastructure rooted in care, collaboration, and collective voice. They invest in long-term leadership pathways that move young people from creative participation to shared analysis and public engagement. In neighborhoods where access to sustained, culturally responsive arts education has been historically underfunded, this work is not supplemental. It is structural.
- The Community Grocer | Philadelphia
The Community Grocer is reimagining the corner store as community infrastructure — a model where SNAP recipients can access hot, healthy meals in full compliance with federal policy, weaving together Food is Medicine principles, community resilience, and workforce development within everyday retail.
- Transformational Prison Project | Boston, MA
The Transformational Prison Project is a restorative justice organization led by formerly incarcerated individuals, focused on healing accountability, and systemic change within and beyond prisons.
Advisory Committee Members:
Michael Banks, The Promise Philadelphia
Oksana Mironova, Community Service Society of New York
James Johnson-Piett, Urbane Development
Kathryn Bocanegra, University of Illinois-Chicago
Vanessa Roanhorse, Roanhorse Consulting
Isabel Coronado, NYU Family-Based Justice Center at time of participation
