ANNOUNCEMENT

NOVEMBER GRANT CYCLE WILL BE THE LAST OF THE 2023 FISCAL YEAR.

The Emergent Fund concludes our 2023 fiscal year in November. We will resume in the new year with a joint December/January 2024 Grant Cycle due Jan. 18th.

To learn more about the work we fund, please check out our Frequently Asked Questions page!

MONTHLY GRANT CRITERIA FOR EMERGENT RAPID RESPONSE ORGANIZING

GRANT DEADLINE: EVERY 3RD THURSDAY EACH MONTH AT 5:00 P.M. PST / 8:00 P.M. EST.

Emergent Fund is a rolling, monthly rapid response and emergent organizing grant for movement and frontline communities responding to urgent and specific unanticipated crises or opportunities to build power.

*Organizations must have 501c3 or 501c4 tax status, or a fiscal sponsor in order to be eligible.

 

Is your organizing at the intersection of rapid response and movement building? We’re here when movement needs us. Movements have long relied on creative collective responses to crises as strategic opportunities for visionary organizing. All rapid response work we typically fund is explicitly grounded in movement values, power-building and organizing and represent meaningful investments in movement infrastructure.

Emergent Fund Rapid Response Rolling, Monthly Grants Support…

  • Organizing that supports emergent strategies that help communities respond to time-sensitive, rapidly changing conditions. This includes resisting new or amplified threats, building power to move a proactive agenda, and creating communities and cultures of care

  • Organizing that leverages “moveable” or “pivotable” moments to disrupt, heal, and build towards long-term social justice and economic justice in a political and social climate that seeks to dismantle such efforts.

  • Organizing that explicitly seeks to dismantle, abolish, and replace systems of oppression and harm, driven by a clear intersectional power analysis and vision for collective liberation

Emergent Fund Rapid Response Grants Are Not Designed for…

  • Applying on an annual or monthly basis for ongoing general operating support or supplemental funding to address budget shortfalls (including back-to-back, repeated proposals)

  • Government or State Agencies, Universities

  • Charity, Direct Services/Community Programming without an organizing foundation

  • Religious institutions and affiliated programs

  • International work or work based outside of the United States and U.S. Occupied “Territories”

  • For-profit Business, Social Enterprise, Start-Up Costs, Capital-Raising campaigns

  • Individuals (activists, consultants)

  • Work or entities that promote or collude with systems of oppression and harm, that lack sound power analysis or understanding of collective liberation

Advisory Council Considerations During Grant-Making

  • Emergent, Trusted Organizing New solutions responding to rapidly changing conditions in the current political environment; Proposals can be ideas, collaborations, campaigns, or organizations, whether or not they are fully formed. We prioritize organizing led by those trusted and in direct, loving, accountable community with those they build alongside. We see everyday how powerful organizing work speaks for itself and we center trust and relationships over “perfectly framed or comprehensively written” proposals

  • Time-Sensitive Concretely urgent and timely liberation work that supports the agency and power of communities responding under threat of a specific event or catalysis to build their own reality, emerging on the other side of crisis with a powerful new vision for what comes next

  • Visionary Power-Building Seeks transformational systemic changes rooted in social and economic justice. Develops community power through organizing and/or leadership development (including through new tools), direct action, and/or cultural work

  • Directly-Impacted Leadership Nothing about us, without us.

  • Intersectional Analysis Engages multiple identities and multi-racial alliance building as core to theory of change; organizing and structures embodies the values and vision for liberation we are working towards

  • Trusted Movement Relationships Most grantees learn about us by word of mouth or are recommended or endorsed by other grantees, the organizers on our Nominations Network, or Advisory Council

  • Access to Resources Holding space for communities who struggle to access resources for grassroots organizing, direct action, and power-building based on who they are and the type of high-risk issues and movement work they take on. Most Emergent Fund grantees are new to philanthropy and often operate with less than $100,000. Large organizations with more than $1 Million dollar budgets and significant development infrastructure may be considered on a case-by-base basis.

Examples of Past Grantees’ Rapid Response Organizing Strategies and Campaigns

  • Coalitions/Alliances* Multi-issue, multi-constituent alliances of social change groups led by and organized in communities of color

  • Mobilization Groups mobilizing people for protest and resistance

  • Organizing Integrating Base-Building, Direct Action, and Advocacy Groups engaged in diverse and creative organizing and advocacy strategies to demand funding for our communities and the life-affirming public programs and services, creation of policies that protect (or defend) our communities so that we may thrive

  • Healing Justice and Liberation Visions for organizing that center our humanity in this challenging work and bring people of color together for the type of individual and intra-communal level work that sustains people’s spirit in our ongoing struggle for a just world

  • Cultural and Digital Organizing Ancestral wisdom, Media, Narrative, Communication and Digital tools to build collective resilience, create the cultural landscape for our organizing, and foster conditions that allow more people to recognize and tap into their own power and our collective power



HOW TO APPLY

The Emergent Fund accepts proposals on JustFund, an innovative grants platform that connects funders and grassroots organizations:

  • Visit www.justfund.us to log in or register for an account.

  • Please note that registrations require 48 business hours for approval. We encourage applicants to register as early as possible.

For questions about how to submit your proposal, please refer to JustFund’s Help Center or contact info@justfund.us.