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The Financial Activist Playbook

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The Financial Activist Playbook: A Guide to Strategies Big & Small for Moving Money for Racial Justice, authored by Senior Fellow Jasmine Rashid, was created in the hopes of helping activists find the resources they need to become financially savvy.

In June 2020, Jasmine created a free resource to help people navigate the strategies of economic resistance and power-building called “The Financial Activist Playbook for Supporting Black Lives.” This playbook empowers people to leverage their own money and money that they have the power to influence in and out of the economic justice movement. In listening to the calls from community members and aligned partners, Jasmine decided to take this playbook to the next level by writing and publishing “The Financial Activist Playbook for Racial Justice” an extended and further actionable version of the previous free resource.

Within the BIPOC community, economic subjugation is one of the largest contributors to racial inequality, which happens when financial looters take advantage of situations that are harmful to Black communities. 

Some of the topics covered in the book ranges from investing in Black and Brown communities, leveraging economic people power, and voting with your dollars.

Project Objectives

Jasmine’s objective for writing this book was to ‘demystify the role our money plays in (in)justice.’ The book will provide a guide of how individuals can support building black power by strategic organizing and blended capital strategies such as investing in and giving to BIPOC organizations.

The playbook addresses the current lack of access to capital by providing financial tools and strategies which fight for racial equity.

This interactive playbook will coach individuals through concepts that promote racial equity by using curated information from Jasmine’s community as well as interviews from BIPOC grassroots activists, social entrepreneurs, impact investors and movement leaders.

Project Achievements and Progress

Some of the book’s early signs of progress included feedback from firms and some low-income students who stated they would be auditing their finances and applying some of the strategies from Jasmine’s playbook.

In addition to that, Jasmine was able to accomplish the following:

  • Launched a crowdfunding campaign, which allowed the first 50 supporters to invest in the book production and receive a free PDF copy of the book once completed and access to updates;
  • Presented an overview of the book in hour long presentations to five organizations to garner interest (Too Good to Go, Symbio, Oakland Rotary Club, Financial Feminists, Apple);
  • Received recognition for the book from Teen Vogue and Omidyar network
  • In July 2021, Jasmine led a workshop on Moving Money: A Financial Activist Playbook for Racial Justice at Humanity in Action’s John Lewis Fellowship conference (Unapologetic: The John Lewis Legacy and the Fierce Urgency of the Now)
    In this interactive workshop Jasmine coached the HIA community on how they could take actions big and small for moving money in line with racial justice, such as influencing millions out of the private prison / immigrant detention industry, directing investments into social impact companies, changing who you buy from and bank with. This workshop was designed to be valuable to everyone regardless of how much money they have (or don’t have) in the bank. Jasmine believes that we all have the power to influence the flow of money in our communities.
  • In September 2021, Jasmine was accepted as a fellow to the Just Economy Institute where she’s been collaborating with a cohort of financial activists from across the movement ecosystem to further develop the Playbook content.
  • On April 15, Jasmine led an interactive discussion at the Foundation for Intentional Community titled Moving Money: A Financial Activist Playbook for Racial Justice.
    During this discussion, participants learned about how to influence the flow of money away from institutions in support of private prisons and the immigrant detention industry and toward companies and causes dedicated to social and racial justice.

For more on The Financial Activist Playbook, please see the HIA Racial Equity Grant Report.

Updated April 2022