Our Story
Our MissionThe GRO Fund builds bold,
evidence-based, and community-led solutions to address poverty & narrow the racial wealth divide.
Our VisionGRO is working to eliminate poverty by centering the expertise and power of those closest to seeming intractable and urgent inequalities.
Our storyThe GRO Fund emerged from the work of the Old Fourth Ward Economic Security Task Force (“Task Force”), a coalition of 28 community members convened by Atlanta City Councilmember Amir Farokhi that included local residents, elected officials, non-profits, faith leaders, and state & national policy advocates. The task force examined the root causes of economic insecurity in Dr. King’s childhood neighborhood – a site of significant inequality today.
The Task Force’s principal recommendation to advance economic security was a guaranteed income program focused on Black women, one of the groups experiencing the most acute and entrenched impacts of widespread financial insecurity, while also recognizing the need for direct approaches to narrowing the racial wealth divide, like Baby Bonds.
The GRO Fund began with the charge to build the recommendation for a guaranteed income program into a reality. We are proud that in the neighborhood where Dr. King was born, pastored Ebenezer Baptist Church, and where he and Mrs. Coretta Scott King are laid to rest, we brought a part of his dream to life through our guaranteed income program.
“I am now convinced that the simplest solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
— Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The In Her Hands guaranteed income program will distribute a total of
$25M to nearly 1,000 women with ripple effects extending to the
participants’ 2,000 children and within the four local economies and communities we serve. And, our work doesn’t stop there. We’re building the nation’s first accelerated Baby Bonds pilot program which will provide young people with a substantial baby bond to invest in wealth building and a guaranteed income.
Learn more about our In Her Hands guaranteed income work here and our baby bonds work here.
OUR PARTNERS
funders and SUPPORTERS
