Skip Shea

Our Commitment to Our Mission Moving Forward

After the recent presidential election, I want to revisit our "why"—who we are and where we stand. These can be challenging times. Especially for nonprofits.



 

On November 21, 2024 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act. The bill,  H.R. 9495, would empower the Treasury Secretary to unilaterally designate any nonprofit as a “terrorist-supporting organization” and revoke its tax-exempt status, most likely ending the existence of that organization. Critics say the proposal would give presidential administrations a tool to crack down on organizations for political or personal reasons. 



 

And President-Elect Donald Trump has already named publicly his enemy list. He ran a campaign based on retribution with speeches and social media posts calling for revenge on his political opponents, critics and members of the media saying they should be prosecuted, locked up, deported, and some even executed. H.R. 9495 can be viewed by all non-profits, large and small, as threatened compliance.



 

How does this affect the Shawna E. Shea Memorial Foundation, Inc moving forward?



 

This year, 2025, we celebrate our 10th anniversary as a tax exempt non-profit. But our organization has been in existence since 2001.

 



Our Mission


We believe the arts and education are essential to creating a vibrant, healthy community and world. 

The mission of the Shawna Foundation is to equitably promote and support students through scholarship and showcase artists in filmmaking, performance arts, poetry, and other creative endeavors with a focus on underrepresented communities.



 

The simple answer is we will continue to honor that mission. And now more than ever with a focus on underrepresented communities. That is how we started with our very first and only program at the time, the Shawna Shea Memorial Scholarship. We consider only students with average grades and take into consideration the family’s economic status. These two groups are rarely if ever considered for academic scholarships.



 

We extended that philosophy to all of our arts programs. Because of the difficulties and challenges for women in the film industry, in 2015 we established the Women in Film Fellowship in which we give money to first time women filmmakers and mentor them while they create their first short film.



 

We also take that philosophy into the programming of our three film festivals, The Shawna Shea Film Festival, the Mass Indie film Festival, and the Scandriglia Film Festival in Italy. Last year, 60 percent of the films screened at the Shawna Shea Film Festival were made by people from underrepresented communities be it race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or ethnicity.



 

That 60/40 ratio is a good goal to maintain because it is important not to be exclusive. We feel it is very important to show everyone’s stories together. Everyone. This sends a message: The more we watch and listen to each others stories the more we will find what we have in common.



 

Last year we showed a feature film, Like Ashes in Your Coffee by Yael Segal (Israel) with the short film Presence by Nasim Dehghan Nayeri (Iran), made by two amazing women filmmakers who by accident of birth were born in countries that are in conflict. The humanity in these films transcends that.



 

We’ve also shown films from countries like Russia and China, countries with authoritarian governments that have still produced artists who have been able to create authentic stories defying their situation. Individuals who have found autonomy through their art.



 

Sovereignty as individuals is the essence of freedom. And through the arts it is possible to achieve that under impossible circumstances.



 

And some of those circumstances may now be found in our own country when so many people in underrepresented communities are now targeted as The Other. Hated. Threatened by their simple existence. They are being stripped of their humanity and denied the Unalienable Rights, which by definition should be impossible.

 



And one way for that extreme philosophy to succeed is through compliance and silence.

 



Which brings us back to H.R. 9495. Will our support of people who belong to underrepresented communities based on economic status, race, sexual orientation, gender, religion, or ethnicity make us a terrorist organization? It’s an absurd question. But so was wanting Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.



 

So here we are. And here we will stay, continuing to honor our mission. We feel it is now more than ever critical to our very own collective existence that we continue this work. Especially in honor of Shawna. I can’t think of anyone I’ve known who represented individual sovereignty and autonomy more than she did.



 

We will not be silent.



 

Skip Shea


Executive Director of the Shawna Foundation