Ezra Berkley Nepon
Ezra Berkley Nepon is a Philadelphia-based writer and grassroots fundraiser. Nepon has served as development staff of William Way LGBT Center and Sylvia Rivera Law Project, co-authoring the 2013 Sylvia Rivera Law Project report “From The Bottom Up: Strategies and Practices for Membership‐Based Organizations.” Nepon has served as a board member of Resource Generation and New Society Educational Foundation, and has presented on panels at conferences including “Queer Dreams and Non Profit Blues,” “Money & The Movement Conference: Grassroots Fundraising in Times of Economic Crisis,” and the Council on Foundations Conference. As a fundraising consultant and trainer, Nepon has worked with Leeway Foundation, Media Action Grassroots Network, Hummingbird Collective: Migrant Justice Solidarity Working Group, and many more. Nepon has also published two articles about crowdfunding in the Grassroots Fundraising Journal: “Crowdfunding: The New Wave of Online Grassroots Fundraising” (Nov-Dec 2011), and “Emily Post-Capitalism and the Revolutionary Etiquette of Crowdfunding” (March-April 2014).
Working with the Lafayette Practice, Nepon has co-written the 2014 report “Who Decides: How Participatory Grantmaking Benefits Donors, Communities and Movements” and the 2015 report “Funding Free Knowledge The Wiki Way: Wikimedia Foundation’s Participatory Grantmaking.”
Author of the book Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue: A History of New Jewish Agenda (Thread Makes Blanket Press/AK Press 2012), Nepon holds an MA degree from Goddard College with a concentration in Transformative Language Arts, and is a recipient of the 2014 Leeway Transformation Award.