Ways to contribute
Examples, not a prescription. Pick the ones that match what you actually have: money, property, time, skills or standing.
Money
Set up a standing transfer
Choose a Black-led or Indigenous-led mutual aid fund, or an individual who has posted a need, and set a monthly transfer you don't revisit. Consistency is the whole point.
Pay rent to the nation whose land you live on
Programs like Real Rent Duwamish in Seattle let residents make monthly payments to the tribe. Use Native Land Digital to learn whose land you are on, then look for your local equivalent or give to the nation directly.
Fund a specific need
A security deposit, a medical bill, a semester of tuition, a car repair that keeps someone employed. Specific needs met fully beat general gifts spread thin.
Tithe an inheritance or windfall
Inherited wealth is where the gap compounds. Commit a percentage of any inheritance, home-sale gain or bonus and give it directly.
Pay more than the price
Deliberately overpay Black and Indigenous artists, tradespeople, musicians and small businesses. Tip at the top of the range. Buy the original, not the print.
Write it into your will
A bequest to a descendant community fund or reparations organization moves wealth across generations, which is exactly where it was taken.
Land and housing
Gift or match a down payment
Homeownership drove white wealth in the 20th century while Black families were excluded by law. Gifting or matching a down payment reverses one piece of that directly.
Rent below market
If you own rental property, offer a long-term lease at a below-market rate to a family affected by displacement or gentrification, and don't raise it.
Return or share land
Donate land to a tribe or a Black land trust, place a conservation easement that grants access, or include tribes in the sale of family property. First Nations Development Institute is a good place to start learning how.
Time and skills
Give your profession away
Lawyers, accountants, designers, developers, therapists, tutors: offer a fixed number of pro bono hours a month to Black- and Indigenous-led organizations or individuals, with no application process.
Open your network
Hire, refer, introduce, write the recommendation, make the warm intro. Access to networks is wealth that was also hoarded.
Do the unglamorous work
Childcare, rides, errands, moving help, meal trains. Mutual aid networks always need hands, not just dollars.
Voice and power
Support H.R. 40 and local commissions
Call your representatives about H.R. 40. Show up when your city council debates a reparations study or program, as Evanston, Asheville, Providence and St. Paul have done.
Research your own family's history
Coming to the Table and Reparations4Slavery offer guides for white families to trace what their ancestors held and benefited from, and what repair might look like.
Move institutional money
Push your employer, congregation, alma mater or city to study its history and fund repair. Georgetown, Princeton Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary have each done this; yours can too.
Start this week
- Pick one item above that you can begin this week. Something small and recurring beats something large and theoretical.
- Set it to repeat automatically, then write down what you chose and why.
- Learn whose land you live on and what happened there.
- Tell one person what you are doing. Not to be praised, but to make it normal.
In Philadelphia? Start with your own address.
Item three on the list above has a tool. The address lookup shows the 1937 redlining grade for your block, the property's deed history, and what public records say about the quarter mile around it. It is part of a small research library built from the city's open data.