In June, Fearless issued a call to action on racial justice. Now the downtown digital services firm is putting up funds for local nonprofits fighting systemic racism.
The Spark Baltimore-based software company said it is matching individual donations to nonprofits in Baltimore and Montgomery, Alabama — the two cities where it has large bases of employees. The company selected orgs that are working on racial justice initiatives and serving underrepresented communities of color.
It’s a response to the summer’s rekindled Black Lives Matter movement that came from the company’s team.
“In response to the killing of George Floyd and the following protests and action, we called a family meeting to give our team members a space to share,” Fearless CEO Delali Dzirasa said in a news release. “The meeting resulted in a list of actions we could take as a company to address racial injustice and one of the top ideas the Fearless family wanted to see was a donation matching program.”
For the nine organizations — six in Baltimore (where it’s headquartered) and three in Montgomery — the company is matching donations up to $50,000. It’ll match the contributions through the end of 2020, and distribution began this week.
The match is available to anyone who lives in either Baltimore or Montgomery. To have your donation matched, submit a donation receipt or other proof of donation to Fearless.
In Baltimore the organizations Fearless is matching donations include Job Opportunities Task Force, Mentoring Mentors, CASA, Out for Justice, Project Pneuma, and Youth Empowered Society.
In Montgomery, the orgs include Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, Alabama Institute of Social Justice, and Tie and Doll.
The team each year aside funds for community orgs, but this year the team members were looking to inspire others. It’s a sign of how the tech community can galvanize others to support locally, as we also saw when SmartLogic donated to Black-led orgs amid the protests in June.
Donte Kirby is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.
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