Announcing Our New Executive Director, charles long

Building on Our Legacy, Stepping Fully Into Our Purpose

We are thrilled to announce that charles long has been selected as the incoming Executive Director of Common Counsel Foundation. charles brings more than twenty years of philanthropic and social justice leadership to this role, and a track record that is specific, substantial, and deeply movement-rooted.

For nearly forty years, Common Counsel Foundation has served as a trusted bridge between frontline communities, movement builders, and values-driven donors. This specific moment requires us to fully embrace that historical legacy, while we step forward into our next chapter.

Our new leadership signals a fuller expression of clarity, courage, and conviction in our values and fully claiming what our organization was built to do: align resources and relationships to grow the power of social justice movements. In this critical moment, the call for us to be all-in has never been more urgent, or more possible.

We have done honest work to arrive at this moment, focused on what Common Counsel Foundation is here to do. We are stepping forward even more boldly as a force for change, and we are meeting this moment with a leader who embodies the experience and approach this work demands. ”

– Common Counsel Foundation Board Chair Chandra Alexandre

charles is known throughout movement and philanthropy spaces as a trusted connector, a deep listener, and a principled partner. For the last decade, he served in senior fund strategy leadership with the Movement for Black Lives, one of the most important racial justice formations of our lifetime. In that role, he helped design and implement movement-governed investment and redistribution strategies that secured and deployed millions of dollars directly to Black-led organizations and formations. Across his career, he has helped mobilize and redistribute more than $100 million to movement-based and Black-led organizations in the United States and globally. 

He has a deep commitment and connection to land and environmental justice, having been politicized inside campaigns with groups like Housing Works and VOCAL-NY and in his work with Greenpeace US’s training team helping to create broad multiracial, multi-issue learning cohorts. He has helped implement reparations as a reframe for giving and repair through his work with the Solidaire Network and Resource Generation and has helped to anchor national coalitions using new economy work to bridge the space between movement and capital via the Movement Finance Forum. charles brings a longstanding dedication to tenants’ rights and housing justice coupled with vision and experience aligning resources for this work, backing CCF’s belief that community ownership, power building, and movement-led solutions, are essential to a just future.

As an institution, we are eager to welcome a leader with charles’ traits of both disciplined execution and a genuine belief that how we are together matters as much as what we achieve. For an organization whose power comes from the quality of its partnerships and the trust it holds with communities, that combination of rigor and relational depth is essential.

I take this assignment very seriously, and arrive at Common Counsel Foundation on-mission and in-purpose. Across the field of philanthropy there are those of us who are hungry for change, who want to deal with the contradictions of the sector directly and step into the future we know is possible. Through this role and with CCF’s amazing staff, I am excited to create a purposeful home for those who want to bravely innovate what’s next with us. 

Common Counsel Foundation’s deeply held values, relationships and work underway indicated to me that this is a foundation that is creative and unafraid, where we can continue to build what is necessary, together. I couldn’t be happier to heed the call to lead such a focused institution. I am looking forward to that work of weaving connections, demonstrating community care, protection and bravery. Creating a place of partnership, allyship and expertise.

– charles long, incoming executive director, Common Counsel Foundation  

CCF was built to be a bold, creative partner for those seeking to build a just world. To help movement-aligned donors, foundations, and movement partners deploy resources with integrity and impact. To stand with frontline communities rather than above them. To refuse the drift toward caution and convention when the moment calls for courage. charles’s career reflects that same orientation. His appointment signals that CCF is prepared to build on its legacy, and step even more fully into that purpose.

charles joins Common Counsel Foundation formally in mid-August. In the months that follow, there will be opportunities for you to meet charles, hear about his background and vision, and connect with him directly, and we know that we will want to hear and learn about you as well. 

We are grateful to be stepping into this next chapter together, and for your continued partnership, your trust, and your commitment to this work. 

About charles long

As incoming executive director of Common Counsel Foundation, charles long brings more than two decades of movement-rooted philanthropic leadership to Common Counsel Foundation.

For the past ten years, charles served as Deputy Director of Fund Strategy for the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), where he was one of the founding architects of the organization’s strategy, structure, and culture. In that role, he led the design and implementation of a movement-governed investment and redistribution strategy, securing more than $50 million in philanthropic support, with $45 million committed for long-term deployment,

and developing redistribution frameworks that moved $25 million directly to Black-led organizations and formations. Over the course of his career, charles has helped mobilize and redistribute more than $100 million to Black-led and movement-based organizations across the United States and globally.

charles is a recognized connector and relationship builder who has spent 20 years working across organizations, sectors, and geographies in deep collaboration with directly impacted communities. He has advised hundreds of movement leaders and organizations on philanthropic strategy, theories of change, and funder engagement. He is known for moving at the speed of relationships, holding tension constructively, and building systems that are both operationally rigorous and grounded in Black queer feminist values of accountability, care, and non-erasure.

Prior to M4BL, charles held leadership and development roles at Greenpeace US, Ruckus Society, the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, VOCAL-NY, and Housing Works. With roots in movement for Black liberation, charles is a trusted advisor and leader in philanthropic spaces and in developing strategic initiatives, and donor collaboratives, including serving as board member to Borealis Philanthropy, EDGE Funders, and Resource Generation.

At a time when many institutions are retreating from their commitments to racial justice, he believes the philanthropic sector needs leaders willing to take principled risks, build durable infrastructure, and stand firmly alongside movements working to shift power.

He is known for disciplined execution, deep relational intelligence, and a genuine belief that how we work together shapes what we can build. In addition to his career, charles is an accomplished artist who lives and builds community in Chicago, he enjoys scuba diving and record shopping.

He joins Common Counsel Foundation in mid-August 2026.