SnapCo. Forever Paradise Gala Unveils Providential Paradise, a Historic $5 Million Campaign for Black Trans Futures

At its 13th anniversary gala in Atlanta, Solutions Not Punishments Collaborative unveiled Providential Paradise, an 11.2-acre permanent home and $5 million campaign designed to deepen Black trans organizing, cultural power and collective care.

For 13 years, Solutions Not Punishments Collaborative, widely known as SnapCo., has built safety, community and political power for Black trans people in Atlanta’s borrowed rooms, the churches, classrooms, community centers, conference spaces and city halls.

On Aug. 8, the Black trans-led organization gathered community members, artists, advocates, elected officials and movement partners for its biennial Forever Paradise Gala, transforming a milestone celebration into a declaration of permanence.

The gala marked SnapCo.’s 13th anniversary and the public unveiling of Providential Paradise. This planned 11.2-acre campus will serve as a permanent home for Black trans organizing, collective care and cultural work. The organization also launched a $5 million public capital campaign for the project after securing $2 million in private and foundation support, including a major contribution from the Kataly Foundation.

For an organization that has spent more than six years expanding its work without a permanent headquarters, the announcement carried the weight of both history and possibility.

“Black trans communities have spent generations creating safety in spaces that were never built for us,” Toni-Michelle Williams, SnapCo.’s executive director and co-founder, said in a statement. “Providential Paradise is our declaration that we deserve more than borrowed space. We deserve permanence.”

SnapCo. has long positioned itself at the intersection of abolitionist organizing, mutual aid, civic advocacy and Black trans liberation. Its work includes housing support, direct financial assistance, passport and expungement clinics, leadership development, advocacy campaigns and cultural programming.

The organization’s Forever Paradise Gala honored that legacy while calling forward a future shaped by the people who have sustained the movement through vision, labor, and care. The gala’s theme, “Paradise,” reflected a central truth of SnapCo.’s work; paradise is not simply a destination or a building. It is what Black trans and queer communities create for one another in the face of systems designed to deny their safety and humanity.

“We are responding directly to a political climate, society and deeper moment where Black trans lives continue to be at the center of harm,” Williams said. “When they build a Cop City, we respond by building and defining a providential paradise for us, by us.”

Providential Paradise is expected to become the first project of its kind led by a Black trans organization, according to SnapCo. The planned site is intended to be more than an office or meeting space. It represents infrastructure for a movement, a place where community members can organize, heal, create, access support, and imagine futures beyond survival.

The project’s visioning process has been led by Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, ENIBAS Consulting, and Moody Nolan, an architecture and design firm. SnapCo. is also inviting artists, environmental experts, accessibility leaders, cultural workers, and community members to help shape the development through membership and participation.

At a moment when transgender people, particularly Black trans women and femmes,  continue to face political attacks, violence, displacement and over-policing, SnapCo.’s announcement offered a different kind of response which centered on ownership, land and a future built on collective self-determination.

Providential Paradise is an investment in the right of Black trans people to remain, thrive, and leave behind an inheritance of safety and belonging.

For SnapCo., the Forever Paradise Gala showed that the community has spent years building paradise in temporary places. Now, it is building a place that can hold the movement for generations.

Solutions Not Punishments Collaborative, known as SnapCo., is an Atlanta-based, Black trans-led organization advancing safety, self-determination and collective liberation through organizing, direct support, leadership development, advocacy and cultural programming. Rooted in the belief that Black trans people deserve safety, permanence and the resources to shape their own futures, SnapCo. builds power across the South and beyond while creating practical systems of care for its community. To learn more about SnapCo., Providential Paradise and ways to support the organization’s work, visit snap4freedom.org.