GiveSankofa
Go back. Give back.
Investing in people. Resourcing possibility. Strengthening communities.
SAN•KO•FA
SAN (to return)
KO (to go)
FA (to fetch, to seek, to take)
“Sankofa,” an Adinkra term, reminds us of the importance of reclaiming useful things from our past to guide us into the future.
GiveSankofa invests in leaders, ideas, and communities creating public good, providing access to capital, coaching, relationships, restoration, and opportunity that help people imagine, build, sustain, and contribute.
Why GiveSankofa Exists
Invest in the People Carrying the Work
Too often, we invest in the work without adequately investing in the people carrying it.
Leaders creating public good are expected to continuously produce, solve, respond, and serve, often without sufficient access to capital, coaching, restoration, relationships, or space to imagine.
Promising ideas may never receive the early investment necessary to grow.
People with tremendous wisdom and leadership capacity may lack access to the relationships and resources that open doors.
GiveSankofa exists to help close those gaps.
We invest not only in what people can produce, but in their capacity to lead, imagine, sustain themselves, and create possibility for others.
How We Invest
More Than Money
We believe meaningful investment can take many forms.
Financial Investment
We provide direct financial support where resources can create space, access, and possibility. Today, this includes the Leader in Residence stipend. As GiveSankofa grows, we envision expanding this investment through grants, scholarships, fellowships, and other forms of philanthropic support.
Coaching & Leadership
We invest in people's capacity through coaching, reflection, strategic advising, and leadership development.
Restoration & Space
We create room for leaders to pause, reflect, restore, explore, and imagine what comes next.
Relationships & Opportunity
We help expand access to relationships, networks, mentors, learning, and opportunities that can help people move ideas and aspirations forward.
Featured Initiative
Leader in Residence
Investing in leaders who have spent years investing in others.
The GiveSankofa Leader in Residence provides experienced leaders with financial support, executive coaching, reflection, restoration, strategic advising, and protected time to imagine what comes next—or reimagine how they lead where they are.
The residency is built on a simple premise:
Leaders who spend their lives creating possibility for others also deserve time, resources, relationships, and support to imagine what is possible for themselves.
Sankofa BEE FREE Coaching
Expanding Access to Transformational Coaching
High-quality coaching can create powerful opportunities for reflection, growth, alignment, and leadership development. Yet access is often determined by income, employment, or organizational resources.
Through Sankofa BEE FREE Coaching, individuals can apply for coaching grants that provide access to high-quality coaching at no or reduced cost.
Coaching supports individuals in strengthening their sense of purpose, power and choice, personal leadership, well-being, and capacity to navigate life and professional transitions.
Our Investment Philosophy
We Invest Differently
We believe sustainable change requires investment in more than programs.
We invest in people.
Because people carry the work.
We invest for the long term.
Because meaningful change rarely fits neatly inside a grant cycle.
We invest in restoration.
Because sustainable contribution requires sustainable people.
We invest in relationships.
Because access to people, knowledge, and opportunity can change what becomes possible.
We invest in possibility.
Because emerging ideas need room to develop before everything can be measured.
Building for Generations
GiveSankofa is being intentionally built for the long term.
What begins with investments in leaders, coaching, and leadership sustainability can grow over time to include scholarships, fellowships, grants, educational opportunity, and other forms of enduring philanthropic investment.
Our aspiration is not simply to build programs.
It is to build an institution capable of investing in people and communities across generations.
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