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Sex Worker Giving Circle Fellowship Program 2025

Deadline: 27-Mar-25

The Third Wave Fund has launched the Sex Worker Giving Circle Fellowship Program.

The SWGC was created because sex workers are best positioned to confront and transform the oppressive conditions of their own lives. However, movements led by sex workers and people with experience in the sex trade are critically under-resourced despite increasing political attacks. The SWGC is a giving circle made up of individuals with current or past experience in the sex trade.

Funding Information
  • This year’s 2025 Fellows are planning to distribute $795,000 to new and returning SWGC grantees from across the U.S.
  • All Fellows will receive a $5,000 stipend in recognition of the labor and time that goes into participating in the program.
  • Fellows may also receive tech support and childcare reimbursements when requested.
Duration
  • The giving circle requires a commitment of about 15-20 hours per month over three months (typically April–June). This includes attendance of at least 17 virtual meetings and trainings, each 2 hours in length; multiple applicant interviews; plus independent work in between meetings.
What will Fellows do?
  • Fellows accepted into the SWGC will receive a Statement of Expectations to read and sign, outlining the full context, scope of work, deliverables, and stipends during the duration of the Fellowship. Highlights of the SWGC Fellowship include:
    • Training: A key part of the giving circle is collective study. Fellows will learn together and from movement leaders about topics like mainstream philanthropy, grantmaking, and more as they prepare to raise money and distribute it to sex worker-led projects across the U.S.
    • Grantmaking: Fellows will receive training to support the grantmaking process, including application review and collective decision-making about who receives funding.
    • Philanthropic Advocacy: Fellows will have opportunities to engage with the broader philanthropic field and create guidelines and principles for funders with the goal of shifting how they engage with sex workers and sex trade issues.
    • Build Community: Fellows will have space to build relationships with other current and former sex workers, share stories and knowledge, break bread together, and learn and grow within community.
Geographic Focus
  • Participation in the Fellowship is open to people living everywhere in the United States and its territories, including American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Who can apply?
  • Current or former sex workers: Participation in the SWGC Fellowship is limited to people with current or former experience with the sex trade and/or sex work. This means trading sex or sexual services for money, shelter, or anything else of value. This can also include escorting/full-service sex work, sugaring, stripping/erotic dancing/go-go dancing, porn star/cam work, fetish work, dom/domme work, etc. They also welcome participation from people with experiences of coercion. Experience with sex worker organizing and activism is not required, but those interested must be committed to moving resources and supporting sex worker-led organizing work.
  • People with various class backgrounds: They welcome participation from people of all class backgrounds and income levels. You do not have to be wealthy or have savings to join. They center participation from working class and low-income people as an essential part of this giving circle.
  • People of all genders: They recognize that people of all genders participate in the sex trade and are sex workers. For that reason, they encourage trans and cis women, trans and cis men, and non-binary, genderqueer, and/or gender non-conforming people to participate.
  • ‍People most impacted by oppression: They strongly encourage applications from Black people, Indigenous people, and/or people of color; young people, older people and elders; LGBQ+ people, trans and gender non-conforming people; immigrants, including people who are undocumented; people with HIV/AIDS; people with experience with substance use; people with experience with the criminal legal system; and disabled and/or chronically ill people.

For more information, visit Third Wave Fund.