Our Commitment to Reproductive Justice

Today the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and we are overwhelmed with feelings of anger, frustration, and determination to fight. Thirteen states have trigger laws making abortion immediately illegal and we know there are more to come. We are inspired by the immediate wave of organizing against these laws and for systems to help birthing people access safe, affordable abortion. The resistance we have seen is only possible by long-term investment into the ecosystem of organizations leading this work. Reproductive justice is intersectional work. It is essential for Black liberation, economic justice, trans liberation, and so many of the movements that Solidaire members are devoted to.

There is hardly any more fundamental human right than the ability to control what happens to our bodies. This is why we say: reproductive justice is central to Black liberation. —Paris Hatcher, Black Feminist Future

We are steadfast in our commitment to abortion access and body autonomy. We know that reproductive justice is essential for our collective liberation and that it requires both full abortion access and gender-affirming health services. Denying these rights disproportionately impacts Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and working-class birthing people. Now more than ever we need to uplift the work of our movement partners leading in this field.

Groundswell Fund is a fund dedicated to intersectional grassroots organizing for reproductive justice that we contribute to through our Social Justice Fund portfolio. Please sign the pledge from our coalition of philanthropists committed to reproductive justice and learn about the powerful organizations we are able to support through our partnership with Groundswell. Our movement partner Feminist Women’s Health Center provides safe, affordable abortion in Georgia. Also in our Black Liberation Pooled Fund are SisterSong, the largest national multi-ethnic Reproductive Justice collective, SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW fighting for reproductive justice across the South, and Sister Reach reproductive advocates in Tennessee.

Our current movement partners fighting for reproductive justice and body autonomy include:

• Black Women’s Blueprint
• Feminist Women’s Health Center
• Official Black Lives Matter Memphis Chapter
• SisterReach
• SisterSong
• SpiritHouse NC
• SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW
• Hmong American Women’s Association
• Monsoon Asian and Pacific Islanders in Solidarity
• Native Women’s Society of the Great Plains
• Groundswell Fund
• Third Wave Fund

Our movement partner Black Feminist Future launched their Abortion is Freedom campaign to mobilize Black-led actions across the country. We want to highlight our movement partner the Movement for Black Lives recommendations for how to support local abortion funds and abortion access hotlines.

Our members have been educating themselves about the urgency of this movement using tools like our Reproductive Justice Reader and Black Feminist Future’s Abortion is Freedom Action Toolkit

We will continue to flank reproductive justice and trans liberation and prioritize the work of those most impacted. As Paris Hatcher from Black Feminist Future wrote in her timely op-ed today, “There is hardly any more fundamental human right than the ability to control what happens to our bodies. This is why we say: reproductive justice is central to Black liberation.”

Trends in 2021 Grantmaking: An Update from Solidaire

 

In Fiscal Year 2021 (July 2020 – June 2021), we continued our movement philanthropy by moving $14 million to social movements. We were able to do this by taking lessons from our first seven years, best practices from the field, and innovative ideas to help build a new process to support learning from our relaunched programmatic areas via the Black Liberation Pooled Fund, Movement Infrastructure Fund and limited-time Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund.

 

Some important trends to highlight:

 

• Continuing commitment to funding the south: Solidaire’s commitment to funding the South means we understand the need to fund historically under-resourced geographies. We fund at an ecosystem level to demonstrate how funding must support community-driven efforts. Communities are creative, responsive and deep in their power-building approaches. Our funding supported several anchor organizations of the Southern Power Fund, a key movement-led formation that organized to move millions to the south in the past two years.

 

• Undergirding national and local movement infrastructure: Solidaire’s grantmaking bolsters local and national movement infrastructure. Solidaire’s grantmaking bolsters local, regional and national movement infrastructure. We define movement infrastructure as aligned resource providers, networks and alliances, political homes, and self-determined movement entities that strengthen grassroots organizing in the long term.

 

• Expanding investment in land-based organizing and infrastructure: Land Justice is the largest area we fund via grantmaking to groups protecting farmland, organizing tenants, fighting for climate justice with frontline communities, cultivating safe land spaces for targeted communities, and nurturing and growing land cooperatives.

 

• Moving grants at larger sizes: We gave larger grants to fewer groups to ensure that the grants can help respond to the threats movements are facing, meet their needs, and help them emerge from current crises stronger. $25K (previous average) ^ $67K (2021 average)

 

• Supporting Black and Indigenous leaders: Virtually all of the organizations we fund are led by Black, Brown, and Indigenous people with intersecting identities working to advance a vision for multiracial, pluralistic democracy of the future. This has long been a mandate of Solidaire’s and continues to be.

 

• Centering healing and protection in a multiplicity of ways: All our pooled fund vehicles work to advance organizational strengthening, healing justice, safety, and protection of community organizers.

 

 “If you were engaging in Black liberation because it was a hot item, don’t stop now. That creates more harm. We need long-term support and investment in our communities because there have been 400 years of oppression and disinvestment.” – Black Liberation Pool Fund Grantee Partner

 

We’re proud to report that in FY2021, we have moved $14 million through 157 multi-year partnerships, in addition to 86 one-time grants through the Movement Protection Fund.

 

 

Here’s what we’re focused on in FY2023 (July 2022 – June 2023):

1. Expand grantmaking at an ecosystem level
2. Move and organize more money to meet movements’ stated and evolving needs
3. Keep innovating in our grantmaking via our liberatory learning and evaluation process
4. Organize philanthropy, then keep organizing to move more money, more justly
5. Develop a set of accompaniment & capacity building efforts for current grantee partners
6. Launch the Social Justice Funds Portfolio with 9 additional multi-year grantee partners

 

“The whole experience was a learning experience because we were presented with an opportunity we never considered before. Helped recognize all the ways we were vulnerable—in digital, event and physical security. We just accepted it in the past as part of the work.” – Movement Infrastructure Fund Grantee Partner

Supporting the Future of Frontline Organizations: $7 Million Toward Social Movement Infrastructure

 

Solidaire’s new Movement Infrastructure Fund awarded $7,340,000 to 55 groups as its inaugural cohort. The goal of this pooled fund is to support the long-term capacity of movement organizations and formations to build power and transform what is possible.

“Social movements need philanthropy to take their needs and visions seriously,” said Ada Smith, Solidaire Network’s movement partnership and grantmaking practitioner. “Our application process underscored that transforming oppressive systems is generational work, so we responded with multi-year grants. Donors and grantmakers must do more to protect and flank this work over time.”

The Movement Infrastructure Fund is informed by the experiences of movement partners who want relationships with funders who believe in their vision. Trusting BIPOC organizers who are directly impacted and on the frontlines looks like funding their capacity and sustainability. Through multi-year, general operating grants, the Movement Infrastructure Fund contributes to resistance by helping to scaffold systems and tools, as well as transformative futures through agency and scale.

“We are living in a time of powerful organizing and this list of grantees reflects the complexity of the movement infrastructure needed to keep winning and win bigger,” said Janis Rosheuvel, director of movement partnerships and grantmaking at Solidaire. “From efforts to recover and steward land in collective and Indigenous ways, to the creation of grassroots media that combat dangerous narratives, these partners represent a wide range of groups that are meeting the challenges of organizing in a moment of great opportunity and risk. We must keep funding a variety of strategies, especially groups and in regions that are often overlooked and underfunded.”

Solidaire received over 1,100 applications, showing the array of grassroots genius, innovation and agency. It was clear through the process that Indigenous communities, AAPI leaders, rural organizers, farmworkers and service workers are demanding systemic-level change, and need investment in the long-term infrastructure that can power victories. The Movement Infrastructure Fund’s Advisory Team offered insights and strategy on the role of infrastructure to build durable, resilient movements. From electoral strategies to affordable housing, from legal support to digital security the 55 grantees selected represent vital back-end services, networks and alliances, as well as political homes-all essential infrastructure for social movements to sustain and grow.

“We are honored to concretely express our solidarity through unrestricted funding partnerships with movement formations leading the necessary work of social transformation,” said Rajasvini Bhansali, executive director of the Solidaire Network. “This is just the beginning. Grassroots organizers and movement leaders have long sounded the alarm on the urgent need for long-term investment in movement infrastructure.”

Since 2013, Solidaire has provided an opportunity for its membership to pool financial resources and act together. Solidaire has distributed over $3 million to ensure security and protection of social justice leaders through the Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund. In May, through the Black Liberation Pooled Fund (BLPF), Solidaire awarded $14 million over two years to 102 organizations in the movement for Black freedom. The Movement Infrastructure Fund, along with the Black Liberation Pooled Fund, further demonstrate Solidaire’s commitment to the value of long term resourcing of movements.

Stay connected to Solidaire via its website to learn more about what the network is learning about partnership, grantmaking and solidarity.

 

 

 

At a Glance: The Impact of Solidaire’s Movement Protection Fund

 

In September 2020, Solidaire launched the Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund in direct response to listening to our movement partners tell us about the urgent and immediate needs of movement leaders who were facing heightened risks, threats of violence and increased dangers due to the U.S. political climate in 2020. The fund was closed in December 2020 and reactivated in January 2021 in response to the rise in hate crimes following the insurrection in the U.S. Capitol before closing again.

As of March 31, 2021, we have moved over $3 million to 86 grantees with an average grant size of $37,000 through the Movement Protection Fund. Over 140 organizations and individuals applied for funding.

We think it is critical to share the results and lessons learned from the grantmaking process. Below, you can read some highlights from what our fund has accomplished and learn more about why it’s so necessary to fund this work year round and protect our movement organizers on the ground.

 

Seeding by Ceding – Mackenzie Scott’s Gift to Solidaire Network

 

“Generosity is generative, sharing makes more.”

These words in MacKenzie Scott’s Medium post resonate with all of us at Solidaire. In this blog “Seeding by Ceding,” MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett made public their gift to Solidaire Network amongst 285 others in the ecosystem of social change. They lift up our cherished principles and practices of grounding in radical giving, of abundance, and trusting the leadership of movements. As MacKenzie says, “we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”

Announced today, this one-time, unrestricted, not time bound gift of $10 million emboldens us to keep working towards realizing our Theory of Liberation, leading by example with boldness and courage. We could not be more thrilled and grateful to have our collective work for the past eight years endorsed and celebrated in this way.  Funding social movements while transforming our own relationship to wealth is clearly the way to go for philanthropy!  MacKenzie’s generous, no-strings-attached gift honors our bold ambitions for our collective work.

The timing of this gift could also not be better suited to meet the moment. We have just deployed our first series of multi-year unrestricted grants of $14 million through our Black Liberation Pooled Fund, $3.3  million through Movement Protection Fund, and another $3.7 million in Movement Infrastructure Fund grants are about to be announced. This pooled fund giving does not even begin to cover the 2000+ applications our team received and vetted and the many many thoughtful requests that keep coming our way. As we boldly make multi-year and unrestricted commitments to our movement partners, we have longed and wished for an abundance of resources to enact our solidarity for years to come. This year, we moved a fraction of what these groups need to keep growing their impactful work. There is no dearth of imaginative, brilliant, game-changing work being done by grassroots organizers and movement builders around the world.  We know that our members will continue to answer the call to organize and share.

Thank you to our movement partners for fighting for our collective liberation.  Thank you to our hard-working staff for getting us to this point. You demonstrate every day what moving in deep alignment with movement means. To our founders, thank you. Look at what your vision continues to make happen. To Solidaire members who are sharing your abundance with oppressed and exploited people, many spending down “fortunes enabled by systems in deep need of change,” you demonstrate the generative generosity exemplified by this announcement.

Solidaire Grants $14 Million in Multi-Year Grants to Groups in Black Liberation Movement 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 28, 2021

Media Contact: 
Bilen Mesfin Packwood, [email protected]

Solidaire Grants $14 Million in Multi-Year Grants to Groups in Black Liberation Movement 

May 28, 2021 – In its first round of grantmaking from the Black Liberation Pooled Fund (BLPF), Solidaire Network is awarding $14 million over two years to 102 organizations in the movement for Black freedom. Through multi-year, general operating support grants, the Black Liberation Pooled Fund is fortifying Black resistance organizing, emboldening the imagination and creation of liberatory Black futures, and investing in the development of Black movement infrastructure.

“These movement partners are doing some of the most innovative work anywhere to advance Black freedom,” said Janis Rosheuvel, Solidaire Network’s director of movement partnerships and grantmaking. “This cohort of grantees are youth and elders. They are Queer. They are in large and small cities and rural places. They are immigrants, land stewards, artists, and healers. They are fighting to protect the vote and to defund jails and prisons. They are working to mitigate the climate crisis and build grassroots power.  We hope our commitment answers the call of the Black liberation movement to fund in deeper and longer term ways and helps to mobilize even greater resources to these efforts.”

By funding these groups, Solidaire Network is expanding on its founding commitment to stand in solidarity with Black and multi-racial movements for social change over the long haul and for a generation. During the Black Liberation Pooled Fund grant cycle, Solidaire received over 800 applications. What emerged from these submissions was a partial survey of today’s Black freedom struggle. The groups that are being funded through this process are immersed in powerful work across all geographic regions in the U.S. and Puerto Rico on a range of deeply intersectional issues including:  land, housing and climate justice, abolition and decarceration, electoral justice, media and narrative shift, Trans justice, leadership development and building and sustaining movement infrastructure.

“I am honored, humbled, and awestruck by the dynamic work we have encountered through this application review process,” said Leigh Gaymon-Jones, Solidaire Network’s movement partnerships and grantmaking practitioner. “Ultimately, I am inspired and motivated to work even harder to channel more resources with no strings attached into this work.”

Since 2013, Solidaire Network members have moved over $7 million through Solidaire and over $20 million in aligned giving to the Black-led social change ecosystem. Solidaire launched the Black Liberation Pooled Fund in 2020 to pool more resources that can be allocated to the powerful ecosystem of Black-led social change organizations around the country. In 2020, Solidaire also granted more than $3.3 million through the Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund, a subset of the Black Liberation Pooled Fund, to meet immediate needs of personal security and protection for movement leaders and organizers.

Solidaire Network conducted a year-long assessment of its legacy aligned giving strategy and funding to the Black liberation ecosystem in the process of formulating the Black Liberation Pooled Fund. The Movement Oversight Committee guides the fund, providing regular assessments on the state of Black organizing and directing Solidaire’s grantmaking strategy.

“We believe that Black-led social change is about justice for Black communities and broad and deep societal transformation for all,” said Rajasvini Bhansali, Solidaire Network’s executive director. “We know that accountability to movements is essential in the ongoing practice of solidarity. At Solidaire, we are ready to liberate wealth and forge partnerships in new ways to demonstrate our deepest solidarity with the Black liberation movement ecosystem.”

Stay connected to Solidaire via its website to learn more about what the network is learning about partnership, grantmaking and solidarity throughout the Black Liberation Pooled Fund.

 

About the Solidaire Network:

Since 2011, inspired by the progression of movement moments from anti-austerity, to the Arab Spring and Occupy, Solidaire Network has worked to create a more radical model and vision for giving. As a community of donor organizers, the network supports social movements and grassroots efforts led by Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and other marginalized communities. Through its donor organizing and grantmaking, Solidaire Network aims to build a fair and just society and a healthy, thriving planet where all people flourish and have the power to shape the decisions that affect their lives. Learn more at https://solidairenetwork.org/.

 

Solidaire Network Announces Reactivation of the Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund

As of January 6, 2021, Solidaire Network is reactivating the Janisha R. Gabriel Movement Protection Fund in response to the increased threats movements for liberation face resulting from white supremacist violence.  The tactics utilized by the far-right at the United States Capitol on this day is only one manifestation of their attempt to instill terror.  What is not often seen are the ways in which those with the same ideology target, harass and harm Black organizers and activists working towards systemic change and in defense of Black lives.

While we chose to close the fund in December due to decreased requests for urgent protection funding, with today’s events continuing to unfold, we anticipate a need for this fund in the coming days.  We are dedicated to our people and are determined to move resources with the same urgency that this moment requires.

The criteria for the Movement Protection Fund are:

– Furtherance of Solidaire’s charitable purposes of serving and protecting social movements and their leaders.

– Funds to be utilized within the next 1-3 months towards the security and protection needs of movement organizations and their leaders.

– Funds to be utilized especially by grassroots organizers and movement organizations within the movement ecosystem targeted by threats and acts of violence and intimidation.

APPLY HERE THROUGH A SECURE APPLICATION

Please ONLY apply for urgent protection funding here. All applications for longer-term movement building and infrastructure needs should be made through our other grantmaking vehicles: the Movement Infrastructure Fund and the Black Liberation Pooled Fund.

Solidaire Network Names New Executive Director Rajasvini Bhansali to Lead Growing Network of Social Movement Donors