Case Studies
Tactical Incubation: Culture Shift Collective
Objective
Incubate a tactical vehicle to combat political disinformation by converting Black and Brown cultural spaces – nightlife, gaming, and barbershops – into civic engagement engines.
Landscape
Traditional political and advocacy campaigns are failing to reach non-college Black youth, African immigrant, and Afro-Caribbean communities. They face an enormous disinformation gap, and standard organizers lack the cultural authority to pierce the bubble.
The actual influence in these communities belongs to DJs, party promoters, barbers, and service industry workers. They operate in the cultural sphere and are often excluded from civic organizing.
Action
In 2025, Kwesi Chappin and Faith Campbell came to Piece By Piece with a plan to turn these “culture wave makers” into change agents. Kwesi was already running large-scale cultural events as a DJ on the side from his political work; Faith was building brand strategies. Both had decades of experience in Black grassroots organizing.
Piece By Piece built their operational foundation, securing seed capital and setting up the legal, financial, and digital hosting infrastructure so they could focus purely on execution. Once the backend was locked, we mapped the region to figure out where best to pilot the program, ultimately deploying Culture Shift Collective into an active ground operation across multiple municipalities that was struggling to reach non-college youth.
To scale the deployment, we designed a 6-month leadership accelerator. We worked with Kwesi and Faith to train these local cultural influencers in narrative development, data tools, and campaign management, bypassing traditional classroom models for hands-on, modular practice.
Results
The initial operation executed 12 culturally resonant events across key cities, pairing massive block parties with intimate, issue-based conversations hosted in recording studios and lounges. By linking these in-person events with continuous digital spaces, CSC pulled disconnected youth into a living civic ecosystem that engaged them holistically from a place of wholeness.
The return on this incubation is a sustainable and growing cohort of 20 civic organizers with hundreds of newly engaged people in their networks who are ready to take action in critical moments.
The project demonstrates how PxP helps build innovative programs that respond to communities’ needs in novel ways, producing experiments that yield real results and can be replicated by others in the sector.
Grantmaking: Visionary Freedom Fund
Objective
Engineer an accountable grantmaking vehicle that puts decision-making power over millions of dollars directly in the hands of system-impacted youth organizers.
Landscape
Traditional philanthropy is inherently top-down. Wealthy, disconnected boards make financial decisions for marginalized communities they never interact with. At the same time, youth justice movements are chronically underfunded. When capital is available, young organizers are forced through exhausting administrative hoops, navigating lengthy applications, uncompensated site visits, and compliance hurdles designed for established institutions.
Action
Piece by Piece built the Visionary Freedom Fund (VFF) from scratch to bypass these institutional bottlenecks. We constructed an intergenerational “Power Table,” seating 8 youth organizers (ages 16-19) alongside 4 adult movement leaders and 11 institutional funders.
Before moving the first dollar, we brought together legacy funders and youth organizers to establish a shared values framework across race, gender, and geography. To ensure the young organizers could command the room, we provided ongoing 1-on-1 coaching behind the scenes. We then compelled the traditional funders to take their grantmaking directives directly from the youth organizers.
We absorbed all administrative burdens so the donors and youth could focus purely on strategy. We built the rubrics, mapped an applicant pool of over 600 organizations, and managed all legal compliance. For the over 500 applicants who didn’t make the cut, we ran 1-on-1 rejection debriefs to explain the rubric, provide total transparency, and give opportunities for growth.
For the grantees, we went beyond the check. We hosted narrative infrastructure convenings that plugged these youth organizations directly into a network of filmmakers, journalists, and cultural workers to scale their messaging. We helped them build backend operations for their organizations and wrote their final grant reports, removing the extractive reporting burden usually placed on grantees. Through it all, we applied a wholeness-based approach that prioritized their organizational health alongside their campaign outcomes.
Results
We catalyzed an initial $1 million seed investment into $3.6 million of deployed capital. We distributed 2-year general operating grants to roughly 40 youth-led organizations nationwide, providing a stabilized runway for their operations.
Because the youth drove the criteria, 100% of the capital went to organizations led by Black, Immigrant, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, and AAPI communities. The capital successfully penetrated regions that legacy foundations admit are “places where we would never go.”
The Power Table doubled as a human incubator. The youth leaders leveraged the experience to secure significant jobs in the sector as adults, and several are now running their own organizations.
To amplify the impact, we ran sector-wide briefings to train the philanthropic community on the model. The operation’s architecture was so effective that peer foundations copied the open-source blueprint.
VFF proves our capacity to operate as a full-service grantmaking engine.
If a donor wants to move capital equitably, we can run the entire operation from mapping the board to cutting the final checks.
Networking: The Southern Summit
Objective
Engineer a 3-day regional convergence to align 550 organizers across every Southern state. The operation was designed to build wholeness across the region, replacing regional isolation with interwoven structural power and rejecting short-term electoral timelines for long-term coalition building.
The operation was designed to build structural wholeness across the region. We focused the agenda entirely on long-term coalition building, organizational health, and relational trust.
Landscape
The U.S South is historically resourced and on the frontlines fighting entrenched white supremacy and authoritarianism. Progressive organizers exist across the region, but they often operate in silos.
Because national funders usually view the South through a short-term electoral lens, local leaders rarely get the physical space to coordinate a unified, cross-state strategy.
Action
Piece by Piece operated as the central convener and logistical engine for the 2024 Southern Summit, executing the operation in partnership with multiple regional organizations. We assembled the core leadership team, raised the capital, directed the outreach, and constructed the tactical agenda.
We also managed the entire physical footprint. We negotiated and executed all hotel, food, and vendor contracts. We absorbed the administrative weight so the attendees could focus entirely on sharing tactics and building infrastructure.
Results
We successfully unified 550 organizers from every Southern state under one roof. Attendees left the summit with a precise understanding of which organizing tactics are currently working and which are actively failing on the ground.
They took this tactical intelligence back to organizations across the South, forging active networks between groups that usually operate alone. Beyond the immediate training, the summit proved our capacity to fund, organize, and execute large-scale logistical operations across a massive geographic region.
Training: VSPN
Objective
Incubate a raw activist from a regional cohort into a capable executive. Provide the operational backing she needed to launch and scale her own vision – the Virginia Student Power Network (VSPN) – giving QTBIPOC students at public universities power within their institutions and in state elections.
Landscape
Young organizers across Virginia – from Richmond to Blacksburg to the Piedmont Valley – were fighting identical battles against rent gouging, university neoliberalism, and the carceral state.
They were also geographically isolated and frustrated with the way traditional electoral campaigns parachute onto campuses every two years to harvest votes, leaving no permanent infrastructure behind. Student energy burns out quickly without trained leaders and ongoing organizing structures, and campus groups collapse the second their founders graduate.
Action
We used our regional training cohort as a talent incubator. We identified a sharp young leader named Kalia and pulled her in for mentorship.
When Kalia launched VSPN, Piece by Piece built the structural backend from the ground up to support her. We provided continuous 1-on-1 coaching to bring her executive skills up to speed so she could drive the machine herself.
Once she had the operational reins, she trained her members to map the state legislature and other power centers, deploying tactical political education to their peers.
Results
Incubating a single young leader from a cohort scaled directly into significant organizational success, and VSPN has now expanded into a permanent statewide political force.
Under homegrown executive leadership, the students joined coalitions and projected real legislative power. They mobilized the grassroots pressure required to help pass in-state tuition reform in 2020 and secure state financial aid for undocumented students in 2021.
They also played a pivotal role in securing a statewide ban on pretextual police stops, helped halt anti-trans legislation and deployed rapid-response interventions to protect community members from wrongful ICE operations. The network went on to mobilize thousands of students to vote in the 2025 and 2026 Virginia elections.
Let’s get to work.