Leading Through Crisis: NMV’s 2020 Groups to Watch

Published

By Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman

In the categories:

We’re delighted to announce the 19 finalists for our 2020 Expanded Open Call: NMV’s 2020 Groups to Watch.

At NMV, it’s our job to find and resource the progressive leaders who will guide us toward a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.

And now, after our team spent more than 600 hours reviewing applications and conducted 98 (!) interviews, we’re incredibly excited to get to tell you about some of the entrepreneurs poised to lead our country out of this year of crisis!

NMV’s 2020 Expanded Open Call received more than 1,200 in-scope applications – more than double our previous record – and the following 19 Groups to Watch are the best of the best.

These projects specialize in building movements, shaping narratives, and sparking civic engagement to respond to systems of oppression and build towards a just and equitable future. They are also the finalists for our 2020 Open Call (the recipients of funding will be announced later this year). We’re inspired by the work these brilliant entrepreneurs are doing and are thrilled to recognize their leadership.

NMV’s 2020 Groups to Watch:

A/B Partners creates new narratives about people, power and social change to transform our politics and the economy.

The Algorithmic Justice League is building a cultural movement for equitable and accountable Artificial Intelligence. Its mission is to raise awareness about the impacts of AI, equip advocates with empirical research, build the voice and choice of the most impacted communities, and galvanize researchers, policy makers, and industry practitioners to mitigate AI harms and biases.

Climate Cabinet provides targeted data, messaging, and policy solutions for every district in the United States – empowering activists, political campaigns, and policymakers to solve the climate crisis.

The Decolonizing Wealth Project aims to collectively move us all from disparities to equity by promoting a world vision in which everyone can live our best lives, thrive in our cultures, and bring about healing from generations of colonial trauma. The organization redistributes wealth equitably, exercising the value of reciprocity.

FreeCap is a financial data provider empowering investors to move their money out of prisons and into companies with solutions to mass incarceration.

FreeFrom’s COVID-19 Survivor Financial Recovery Strategy blends short-term rapid response with sustainable long-term solutions, creating the infrastructure and ecosystem to help survivors of intimate partner violence build the financial security they need to stay safe.

Indiegraf, a sister company of local news publisher The Discourse, is a network of entrepreneurial journalists pooling resources to make it easier to launch digital news outlets in local news deserts.

Momentum is a community of leaders dedicated to the craft & understanding of popular movements. They are launching a pilot Frontloading Cohort to seed a wave of movements capable of translating this period of upheaval into an enduring justice that doesn’t leave anyone behind.

One Fair Wage organizes workers, employers and consumers for improved wages and working conditions in the service sector – particularly now, during the COVID-19 pandemic – and ultimately, for an end to all subminimum wages in the United States.

OpenField is a comprehensive organizing toolkit that enables organizations to host phone banks, launch canvasses, and remotely register voters from a single interface.

Project Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations is a Black and Indigenous-led effort to build an intersectional mass movement to reckon with America’s past, redistribute wealth and power to those robbed by white supremacy, and transform this country into a truly multiracial democracy.

RAHEEM is the independent online service for reporting police conduct in the United States, working to end police terror against Black people by making police behavior visible and accountable.

Rapid Response is open source phone and text communication software for the grassroots movement, making it easy for organizations to build trust and engage communities through helplines and SMS.  

SmokeSygnals is moving the marginalized history of Native Americans from the shadows and into the light through interactive museum and event attractions in a safe, post COVID-19 format.

Solidarity Tech is building organizing software for people-powered, progressive movements & campaigns.

Stareable is the leading platform and festival dedicated to elevating under-represented digital creators in mainstream Hollywood.

Switchboard, the virtual home of the Data 4 Black Lives movement, cultivates collaboration between organizers and technologists on the frontlines of racial justice.

Three Point Strategies works at the intersection of electoral politics and social justice with candidates and organizations across the country seeking electoral power for transformative change. 

TILA Studios is a visual arts incubator that empowers black women visual artists to create and showcase their art to increase representation in museum and gallery spaces because only 4% of art in galleries and museums across the United States are from black women artists.