Slant’d is a literary arts nonprofit that publishes magazines and books, and hosts creative programs that support inclusive storytelling. They are also the recipient of the Seed Grant from the Fall 2025 Mockingbird Nonprofit Incubator Program. Our team met with Krystie Yen, the Slant’d Founder and Executive Director, to discuss Slant’d’s roots and to talk about their experience participating in the Mockingbird Nonprofit Incubator Program.

From our Spring 2025 Nonprofit Incubator Program, we’re shining a spotlight on Samuel (Shmuel) Tamo, Founder & Executive Director of Indigenous Roots Productions. Indigenous Roots Productions (IRP) is a nonprofit organization that amplifies the self-empowerment of Indigenous communities around the world through collaborative oral history, research, filmmaking, and folkloric music production. IRP supports oral history and folkloric music, among the oldest shared cultural traditions, which offer a window into the values and worldviews of our ancestors. Film and music production provide avenues for Indigenous communities to teach others about their way of life while archiving their stories for preservation. IRP partners with Indigenous communities by facilitating the production and distribution of stories told by communities themselves. The research revealing these stories is supported by consistent, appropriate methodology and theory, producing a database of qualitative, diverse samples. Films and music produced by IRP and partner communities can help relieve these cultures from the obscurity that leads to marginalization.

For our next Incubator Program highlight, we’re shining a spotlight on Brittany Gail Thomas, Founder & CEO of The Color of Excellence®️! The Color of Excellence (COE®️) is a nonprofit membership organization that provides curated training and programming for both current and future attorneys of color to combat systematic oppression. COE®️ educates, enhances, and empowers both current and future attorneys of color to embrace their authenticity, advocate zealously, and overcome adversity both in and out of the courtroom. As the grant recipient from Mockingbird’s Incubator Program, we’re thrilled to share resources and further empower COE®️ to pursue their mission with success. Read below for the interview! 

The A&R Agency's objective is to elevate musical artists to the level of commercial success, through an array of independent artist development services offered a la carte. Each artist will receive an individualized success strategy, breaking down an artists’ most significant obstacles. Through this process, agency clients achieve specific goals such as an increase in listenership, fuller concert attendance, and creating a self-sustaining, lucrative career.

This past fall, Freebird MVMT received $3,000 in funding from our partners to further their work. Their mission is to create an unprecedented crowd resource and technology platform, to prevent and remedy wrongful incarcerations, while providing support for exonerees. They work to address the profound injustices and disparity with respect to impartiality throughout the criminal justice system and society.