UpTogether (formerly FII National)

About Us

UpTogether is a national organization of individuals across the country with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and identities who share a passion for social justice and racial equity.  Our mission is to recognize, highlight and invest in the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of people in undervalued communities and partner with government and philanthropy to do the same.

After working with thousands of families since our founding in 2001, at UpTogether, we are certain people don’t live in poverty because they are lazy, uneducated, or mismanage money, as stereotypes would indicate. Instead, the poverty cycle, which disproportionately impacts Black and Latinx communities, can be traced to well-intentioned but inadequate governmental and charitable policies and practices that rely on a traditional top-down approach. 

Our pillars include:

1. Community: We center our work around the strengths and initiatives of people living in undervalued communities and promote the role social networks within these communities play in helping people accomplish their goals and achieve long-term

socioeconomic mobility.

1. Capital: We invest in our members with unrestricted cash in recognition of the initiatives they are taking to improve their lives.
2. Choice: We trust that people in undervalued communities know what’s best and are capable of making decisions for themselves and their families.

UpTogether reveals and accelerates the initiative people are taking to improve their lives.

As a community, a movement, and a platform, we use the power of information—compelling insights and personal success stories—to transform stereotypes, beliefs, practices, and policies. Together with our members, we are championing a community-led movement to boost economic and social mobility in communities that have been undervalued and underinvested in for far too long.

At UpTogether, we work towards these values:

• Community: We honor the strengths and initiatives of people living in undervalued communities and promote the role social networks within these communities play in helping people accomplish their goals and achieve long-term socioeconomic mobility.
• Impact: We test and scale strategies for systems adoption of a strength-based approach to accelerate socioeconomic mobility for people living at or below the poverty line in the U.S.
• Collaboration: We center the lived experiences of families in undervalued communities and engage the knowledge, experience, and perspectives of our board, partners, and staff to build and grow a strength-based approach to end poverty. 
• Racial Equity: We are committed to being an anti-racist organization, and we promote anti-racist policies that eliminate the racial wealth divide. 
• Leadership: We acknowledge that leadership is not based on a title and honor the many forms in which it appears. We celebrate leadership that embodies all of our organizational values, driving us to act against the dominating deficit-based approach to fighting poverty. 

Choice: We trust that people living at or below the poverty line know what’s best and are capable of making decisions for themselves and their families.