Molly Gochman

Founder & President

Lawanna Kimbro

Managing Director of Stardust Fund

Molly Gochman

Founder & President

Lawanna Kimbro

Managing Director of Stardust Fund

WHO ARE WE?

I believe we live in a world where full participation is required for our best future and is the greatest good we can offer. Stardust is our active, ever-changing, and humble participation to illuminate the value within us all.

We Start as stardust &Endas stardust.

We must take this moment, and make the most of it.
-Molly Gochman

Why we do it

STARDUST

Fund

believes in the inherent power of women to create change in the world and the need to center leaders who have been historically left of out philanthropic giving.

We are committed to being in service of our Community Partners in innovative ways to meet the needs expressed. Those efforts range from direct financial grants to on-the-ground active support and everything in between.

Our work is rooted in listening to the challenges our partners face and creating innovative ways to meet their direct needs in both the short and long term.
why-we-do
This approach is built on a foundational commitment to effective, impactful support that comes without constraints and silos, but instead meets the naming of needs with action.

Core Principles

Intersectional Racial & Gender Equity Lens

We commit to ensuring the needs of those most affected by the societal issues are the largest voices in our giving and support focus. This means an understanding that Black leaders, especially those serving low-income, LGBTQIA+, and children are deserving of specific attention and resources.

Respect For The Work Of Community Partners

We commit to ensuring the needs of those most affected by the societal issues are the largest voices in our giving and support focus. This means an understanding that Black leaders, especially those serving low-income, LGBTQIA+, and children are deserving of specific attention and resources.

Leading With Love

We have a deep abiding love for those doing the work. We display that love by reclaiming the original meaning of the word of philanthropy: “the love of humanity” in both word & action. That love of humanity is built into everything wedo, most importantly, through supporting our Community Partners and the people they serve by meeting their needs with innovative solutions rather than attempting to make them fit into boxes of someone else’s creation.

Urgency In Action

Taking action NOW is a crucial commitment we make to meet the needs of our Community Partners and in the development of the Earthseed Fund which does DIRECT GIVING, providing emergency funds to individuals quickly in times of crisis and beyond.
Part of this urgency requires us to remove the cumbersome bureaucratic processes generally present in philanthropic giving to ensure our Community Partners are able to focus on their work rather than proving themselves to us.

Earthseed

FUND

Our Principles allow us to understand the fundamental truth that meeting the needs of those served by our Community Partners must extend beyond organization based grants.

Through our relationships with our Community Partners, we are able to identify, connect with and give funding directly to people in the midst of crisis.

Stardust Fund’s commitment to marginalized people impacted by things like poverty, housing insecurity, trafficking & the criminal legal system also means showing up when they need us to, quickly and without reservation..

The Earthseed Fund distributes resources directly to those in need of emergency support no questions asked. We live into these words from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower:

There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.

Earthseed Fund aims to live up to that demand.

See some of our

Community Partners