In the Spaces Between: Moments of Change at Tara Health in 2024
By Elise Belusa, Executive Director
Dear Friends,
As I reflect on 2024, I find myself grappling with a year that defied easy narratives. We continue to discover that transforming from the inside out is never black and white - it's a constant practice of showing up, making mistakes, trying again, and sometimes getting it right. Yet our commitment to truly living our values has become some of the most nourishing and joyful work we've ever done. Being authentic, just, equitable, and transparent in our practices and relationships will remain our north star through our closure in December 2028.
Our work has always centered on relationships – they are the foundation of everything we do. This year, we experienced their power while working supporting all-trimester abortion providers during an urgent funding crisis, watching our anchor organizations continue their vital work, and conducting our first grantee perception report to understand how we have (and haven't) shown up in alignment with our values.
We also intentionally invested in our relationships between board and staff. Through shared experiences and vulnerable conversations, we moved from a framework of "power over" to connecting from a place of shared humanity. This deeper connection resulted in new, nourishing relationships while also revealing that our past efforts to shift decision-making authority from board to staff had created distance between different parts of our organization. Now we're learning that we need new ways to shift power without building walls – and figuring out what that actually means in practice.
2024 also taught us, sometimes painfully, that we don't always show up the way we intend to, and we lost some important relationships because of this. These losses pushed us to examine how we still unconsciously hold onto control, perpetuate harmful dynamics, and sometimes prioritize our own comfort over real change. While sitting with these hard truths, I am deeply moved by how we continued to live into our core belief: when we create spaces for real relationships – the hard parts, the good, and all the spaces between – something transforms.
As we look ahead to 2025, we know there will be challenges – indeed, there already have been. So, we want to bring forward a spirit of joy and celebration for the work we're proud of, which you'll find highlighted in the sections below. Through our newly launched blog, LinkedIn, and video storytelling, we've also started sharing both our successes and our struggles as we navigate this complex work, and in the coming year, we’ll expand these efforts significantly.
I hope you’ll join us and follow along.
In partnership,
Elise Belusa
OPENING UP: Centering Relationships and Transparency
In April, staff and board gathered in Montgomery, Alabama to engage directly with our country's history of racial terror. We visited the Equal Justice Initiative's Legacy Sites, and honored Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey at the Mothers of Gynecology Monument. Alongside our experiences of grief and despair, we also experienced the power of remembrance and healing, guided by Keecha Harris and Associates and somatic practitioner Panya Walker. These days cracked open our relationships to one another as we began to imagine what healing could look like in practice.
Some of our deepest work happened in December, when we brought together our board, staff, and anchor organizations. We grappled with fundamental questions: What does this work really mean? How do we authentically reckon with power? How do we even talk about power? How do we tell a story about ourselves without centering ourselves?
Across these experiences, our time was both joyful and challenging, but through difficult conversations and moments of connection, shared meals and honest feedback, we lived our values of authenticity and deepened our commitment to relationships as a key component of change.
BUILDING UP: Leveraging All of Our Resources
We took concrete steps toward our spend-down commitments this year, realigning our investment portfolio while continuing strategic grantmaking. While the majority of our grants supported our anchor partners, we also continued significant investments in the Race, Healing, and Joy project, our Southern Fund portfolio, and provided rapid response support through our Flex Fund. We also forgave $1.5 million in debt to support our partners - a reminder that sometimes the most impactful move is to simply let go, whether of financial control, traditional investment approaches, or established ways of working.
As our work evolved, so did our team. We welcomed Mia Reilly to staff and formed partnerships with Studio Mesh, 1R Productions, and Langhum Mitchell Communications - expanding our capacity to document and share the insights emerging from this work.
BLOOMING FORTH: Anchor Organizations in Action
Our anchor organizations are at the heart of how we're trying to approach spend-down differently. Rather than simply closing our doors and hoping our impact continues, we're working to transfer both resources and relationships to organizations deeply rooted in their communities. It's a strategy we're still figuring out together.
Rhia Ventures helped us see what was possible here. They showed us early on in Tara’s existence that we could do more than just move money – we could seed new institutions that carry forward not just funding, but relationships and knowledge built over years. As we developed our spend down strategy, we expanded this approach, supporting the creation of additional anchor organizations led by our former portfolio leads who brought their own deep expertise and connections to the work.
This year, we watched Orchid Capital Collective, The Center for Business and Social Justice at BSR, and the Oasis Institute (website forthcoming) demonstrate what’s possible when philanthropy commits to transferring both financial and human capital to leaders deeply rooted in their movements and communities. We encourage you to learn more and explore their work, and look forward to sharing more about these organizations in the coming months.
