2026 RCWMS Resource Engagement Fellow

It is with great enthusiasm and honor that I share I will be a Resource Engagement Fellow with the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South (RCWMS) in 2026.

Why a Resource Engagement Fellowship, and why now?

2025 was the inaugural year of New Legacy Lab, and it was a year defined by experimenting and learning (it is a lab after all!) about what New Legacy Lab is and can grow to become. Over the last year, we produce some dynamic evenings, including Reimagining Prenups, a Money Story Zine Workshop, the Spectrum of Impact Investing workshop, and the inaugural Year-End Giving Circle. We convened intergenerational donors in conversation about our giving practices. We chatted about Money on Mondays on Instagram. And we developed a framework and curriculum to support justice-oriented giving. It has been a full year.

Our experiments over the last year have refined a few questions in need of further inquiry and praxis,[1] and exploring these questions will be the focus of my Resource Engagement Fellowship. The guiding questions are:

• How might we build a broad, intergenerational community of engaged and justice-oriented donors focused on funding the American South?

• Why is using an intergenerational approach essential to building community among justice-oriented donors? And in what ways does this diverge form the “next gen” approach of traditional philanthropy?

• What are the accessible and sustainable tools, strategies, and infrastructure needed to support donors in orienting toward justice in their giving practices.

As I mentioned above, these questions will be explored through praxis. In that spirit, New Legacy Lab will continue to produce justice-oriented donor learning and community building events. We will continue to connect with and convene donors, and the organizations and professionals who engage with these donors. Most excitingly, we will be writing and recording about justice-oriented giving practices and the New Legacy Garden.

My friend and mentor Sandra Wilcox Conway recently introduced me to the concept of “Hospicing Modernity”, which is about letting go of old ways of being, dying with dignity. In the next year ahead, with this fellowship, New Legacy Lab will work towards "hospicing" – documenting what we’re leaving behind in our Giving and Money Journeys, such as individualism, control-voter, benevolence and guilt-driven giving practice; as well as recognizing where they come from and why it’s time to move forward. This "hospicing" will be matched by embracing imagination, creativity and possibility to create new paths and practices for New Legacy giving to move forward.

I want to end this note with an invitation for imagination, co-creation, experimentation, and learning and with me in this year of Fellowship ahead.

Many thanks to Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South for this generous opportunity*, with extra thanks to the visionary and dedicated leadership of their Executive Director, Jeanette Stokes.

About RCWMS:

RCWMS is a Durham, NC based organization that weaves feminism and spirituality into a vision of justice for the world.RCWMS began in 1977 to support and connect women who understood their lives and work as ministry. Over the years, they have expanded to include a wide variety of programs and resources on feminism, faith, creativity, spirituality, and justice 

*a note on praxis and privilege: In recognition of my class privilege that has contributed to this time and space for thinking and creating, I have paid forward a similar fellowship for 2026 to a friend and co-conspirator who’s work focuses on wealth creation for Black womxn entrepreneurs.

[1] Praxis is the approach or practice of learning through a process of action and reflection. Praxis is a concept developed by Brazilian popular educator Paulo Freire.