Leveling Up: BGDM Is Now A 501(c)(3) Nonprofit

This fall, Brown Girls Doc Mafia reached a momentous organizational milestone when we began full operations under our official status as a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. As a charitable organization recognized by the IRS in the United States of America, we are afforded the convenience of accepting tax-free donations, while the newly minted status also allows us to grow as a community. This enables us to diversify our support streams and continue to bring our community of BIPOC women and nonbinary documentary professionals even more programmatic offerings and essential services.

What does this mean for you? To start, not much will change for our BGDM members. We are the same community that we’ve always been, and will continue to serve our membership by listening to their needs, in order to inform our robust slate of grants, artist programs, and opportunity offerings. We will also continue to center our values in all we endeavor to do.

Most of all, as we embark on our next great phase as a nonprofit, we would like to thank you, our allies and community supporters, for helping us reach this pivotal moment as an organization. Your continued encouragement, support, and belief in our mission to nurture, amplify, and invest in the creative capacity and professional success of BIPOC women and nonbinary people working in the documentary industry is the reason we have reached this juncture today. Whether you were front and center or working tirelessly behind the scenes, your efforts have been critical to BGDM’s success.

Thanks to your generosity, we look ahead, towards all that is possible. We aim to prioritize increasing support staff and services for our community by providing greater membership benefits, creating innovative tools, developing new programmatic and grant opportunities, and increasing our access, activism, and imprint in the documentary space.

Lastly, with our new status, we would like to take a moment to thank and reintroduce our Board of Directors: Denae Peters, Ursula Liang, Nicole Tsien, and Tracy Nguyen-Chung. This dynamic group of industry thought leaders have been with us since the very start, and lead by great example as documentary professionals and activists working towards meaningful and lasting change for us all. With their guidance we are looking to continue to advance social justice for our members and the industry at large.

Help us celebrate our new nonprofit status by making a recurring donation today!