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Our individual grantmaking is designed to honor and sustain the impact of Asheville’s community leaders.
We’ve learned that individuals, who often work outside of organizations and traditional funding structures, are indispensable parts of the social change ecosystem. We fund individuals working in wide-ranging community efforts – from artistic interventions to grassroots organizing, from the creation of healing spaces to leading nonprofit, governmental, and private entity collaborations.
Tzedek Impact Awards
The Tzedek Impact Awards are designed to honor individuals who have engaged in systems change or community healing work in the Asheville region using the wisdom gained by directly navigating systems of oppression. BIPOC, LGBTQ and Jewish individuals are encouraged to apply.
Each Tzedek Impact Awardee will receive $3,000 in recognition and celebration of past achievements and accomplishments that further Tzedek’s mission and vision by addressing one or more systems of injustice, including:
- White nationalism
- Antisemitism
- Homophobia or heterosexism
- Transphobia
- White supremacy or racism
- Xenophobia
Three rounds of Impact Awards will be distributed in April 2023, July 2023, and October 2023. Community members who would like to be considered are invited to submit a self-nomination when an award cycle is open. More information is available here.
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Tzedek Brilliance Awards
UPDATE: The Brilliance Awards 2023 cycle is now closed.
The Tzedek Brilliance Awards honor Asheville’s leaders who are engaged in impactful, intersectional efforts to further racial justice, LGBTQ equality, and/or to dismantle antisemitism. The Brilliance Awards are designed to cultivate the well-being of individual brilliant community leaders by investing in their spaciousness, autonomy, and wisdom.
The Tzedek Brilliance Awards are a one-time no-strings-attached grant of $50,000 given to leaders who have consistently shown up to dismantle systemic oppression in the Asheville, North Carolina region. Tzedek grants two Brilliance Awards per year, including:
- The Ella Baker Brilliance Award – This award is offered In honor of the civil rights legend, community organizer and strategist, Ella Baker, who co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. The Ella Baker Brilliance Award will be given to a Black community leader in Asheville who has empowered and organized others to address systemic oppression in our area and has lived in our area for at least 5 years.
- The Pauli Murray Brilliance Award – This award is offered in honor of Pauli Murray, a brilliant Black legal scholar, priest and activist, who fully embodied the concept of intersectional activism. Their legal work was the inspiration for Thurgood Marshall’s victory in Brown vs Board of Education and Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s victory in securing employment rights for women. The Pauli Murray Brilliance Award will be given to a community leader who has lived in the Asheville area for at least 5 years and who, like Pauli Murray, has been involved in a wide variety of social justice efforts and who understands that all struggles for liberation are connected.
Community members who would like to be considered or who would like to nominate someone else are invited to submit a nomination when the award cycle is open. More information is available here.