Sources of Rapid Response Funding for Social Justice Organizations
With the increased challenges presented by this Administration, many philanthropic funds and foundations have ramped up "Rapid Response Funds," which are smaller amounts of grant money that can be provided to nonprofit organizations outside of the regular grant cycles and generally within a few weeks.
Below is a list of current sources of Rapid Response funding - your organizations should review the criteria for each to determine your eligibility. The list is not meant to be exhaustive, and will be updated periodically.
Emergent Fund: The Emergent Fund, a joint effort of Solidaire and Women's Donor Network, grants funding for efforts that support emergent strategies that help communities respond to rapidly changing conditions. This includes (1) Resisting new or amplified threats and building power to move a proactive agenda, and (2) Efforts seeking long-term social justice and economic justice in a political and social climate that seeks to dismantle such efforts.
Groundswell Rapid Response Fund: Groundswell Fund launched its Rapid Response Fund in January 2016. Dedicated to moving resources quickly and strategically, the Fund seeks to meet unforeseen needs and opportunities in the struggle to advance and defend social and reproductive justice organizing by women of color and trans people of color.
Urgent Action Fund Rapid Response Grants: Urgent Action Fund’s Rapid Response Grants support the resilience of women’s and trans* movements by providing flexible and responsive support to women’s and trans* human rights defenders who face immediate threats and by supporting advocacy when unanticipated opportunities emerge to set new legal or policy precedents.
Security and Rights Collaborative Rapid Response Grants: Supports work with Muslim, Arab, and South Asian (MASA) communities in the U.S., including intersectional work with allied communities, such as racial justice or immigrant rights communities.
Defending the Dream Fund: The Hill-Snowdon Foundation, General Service Foundation, Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation, and the Whitman Institute and other partners support organizing to address deleterious policies and institutional practices that are either the direct result of or that have been emboldened, aided and abetted by the policies and positions of the new federal administration. In particular, the Fund seeks to support: (1) Community Organizing & Power Building (2) Multiple Issues, Immediate, Mid and Long-term & Intersectional Work, and (3) State and Local level organizing.
Fighter Fund: The Fighter Fund, though the Solutions Project, supports climate justice work with an intersectional approach to other social justice issues. Resources are designed to support movement moments through organizing and direct action, communications that build public will and cultural power, convenings, and coalition building. Specific areas of interest include 100% clean energy for 100% of the people policy efforts, resistant to fossil fuel infrastructure, indigenous leadership and organizing, democratizing rural electric cooperative, and community owned solar demonstration projects in need of grant capital.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me at brenda@bridgestrategiesllc.com.