Deadline: 15-Apr-22
Ms. Foundation for Women has launched the applications first national, open call request for proposals for Birth Justice Initiative to support Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities in addressing racial based health disparities in birth experiences and birth outcomes.
In spite of the many threats, Black and Indigenous women are leading thriving, resistant, and vibrant social justice movements at local, state, and national levels, and are driving change where it’s needed the most. Women of color have led nearly every impactful grassroots movement in United States history and their vision and leadership are invaluable in achieving birth justice and ensuring access to safe, affirming, and culturally competent anti-racist health care, policies, and systems, across the spectrum of experiences including: abortion care, fertility, prenatal care, birth, postpartum care, grief and loss, and parenting.
Goals
Ms. Foundation’s Birth Justice Initiative will build upon their decades of experience supporting grassroots leaders fighting for reproductive justice. The overall goals of their initiative are to:
- Build power within the birth justice movement by investing in leaders and mobilizing resources to grassroots organizations led by Black, Indigenous, and WGOC, those most impacted by birth injustice in order to strengthen their capacity, organizational infrastructure, and financial sustainability.
- Increase connectivity and collaboration between birth justice organizations and movement leaders.
- Provide philanthropic advocacy, thought partnership, and thought leadership, to influence the movement of more resources to the birth justice movement.
Funding Strategies
- Ms. Foundation for Women’s Birth Justice Initiative aims to mobilize financial and capacity building resources to organizations who take action using one or more strategies rooted in Movement Building and Organizing, Innovation and Creativity, and Expansion and Inclusion.
- Movement Building and Organizing: They understand that grassroots organizations have a variety of ways in which they implement movement building and organizing strategies. They make space for how organizations have chosen to show up to this work, while also being open to exploring the role that organizations whose primary activities are direct service organizations play in movement building and organizing.
- Innovation and Creativity: They plan to fund a wide variety of approaches and strategies. They invite organizations to dream into birth justice with them. They celebrate innovation. They also welcome organizations rooted in the reclamation of old wisdom and organizations working to bring ancestral and indigenous practices into the movement.
- Expansion and Inclusion: They will fund expansive and inclusive approaches to birth justice that allows birth justice to be as expansive as it needs to be and brings birth justice into the intersections while paying close attention to often invisible issues and identities. They specifically want to amplify projects centering Black and Indigenous birthing people of all genders, disability justice, pregnant and parenting youth, incarceration, infertility, and grief and loss.
Funding Information
- The Ms. Foundation for Women welcomes requests for general operating support from groups working in the U.S. on birth justice strategies. Organizations are invited to apply for grants ranging from $25,000 – $50,000 per year for grant terms up to two years.
- Please note that submitting an application does not guarantee funding and does not guarantee multiple years of funding. Those that are funded may not be funded at requested levels. Please be assured that every request will be given full consideration. They will consider requests for funding greater than $50,000.00 per year on a case by case basis.
Eligibility Criteria
- Organizations led by Black, Indigenous, and women of color (at least 50% of financial decision makers are Black, Indigenous, and/or women of color)
- Organizations working to examine and challenge the underlying causes of birth injustice affecting birthing people of color, and who seek to change policies and systems that impact birth outcomes.
- Organizations whose primary mission centers Black, Indigenous and birthing people of color and works to involve the people who are directly affected by birth injustice at various levels of the organization to build leadership within grassroots communities.
- Organizations with operating budgets up to $1,500,000.00
- Organizations operating in the U.S. or U.S. territories, with a focus on state or local movements and campaigns.
- Organizations must be a 501(c)(3) organization or fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) organization.
- Organizations implementing strategies that are rooted in Movement Building and Organizing, Innovation and Creativity and/or Expansion and Inclusion.
For more information, visit https://forwomen.org/grants-2/apply-for-a-grant/birth-justice-initiative/