Deadline: 15-Apr-23
The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice is now accepting applications to support initiatives/organizations working on climate justice, environmental racism, and weather and disaster resilience and adaptation with and on behalf of queer, trans, and intersex communities.
Astraea has been funding at the intersections of racial, gender, economic and reproductive justice movements, while centering the leadership of Queer and Trans people of color, for forty five years. Astraea’s US Fund centers the liberation of Queer, Trans, Two-Spirit, and Intersex people of color and challenges the criminalization of 2SLBTQI BIPOC, migrants, women of color, mothers, sex workers and youth, among other constituencies who experience high levels of violence and oppression. Astraea strengthens organizations and movements that acknowledge and fight these multiple barriers to self-determination.
Priorities
- With Astraea’s strong commitment to racial, gender, and economic justice, the evaluation of concepts will prioritize:
- Organizations/projects with leadership from within the society or community they seek to serve; and open consultation of and accountability to local queer, trans, or intersex communities, particularly Black communities, Indigenous communities, POC communities, trans/gender-diverse people, intersex people, LBQ women, refugees/migrants, people with disabilities
Scope
- Astraea is open to a wide range of projects and ways of working. They are less interested in setting parameters than in hearing about the work the community is interested in prioritizing and pursuing. The following guidelines are intended to give a wide range of possibilities and are not exhaustive. They are seeking proposals from groups that are working to:
- Mitigate the disproportionate impact of climate change on queer, trans and intersex communities through grassroots activism or direct services, such as providing disaster relief housing, access to clean water and food, providing disaster preparedness trainings or other services (direct or not) related to climate justice, disaster relief, and climate crisis resilience;
- Address environmental racism through grassroots activism or direct services, including but not limited to organizing campaigns to combat profit motivated environmental disasters, the use of toxic materials and waste dumping in communities, or organizing for relief and resilience strategies in the wake of environmental disasters; and that are,
- Explicitly anti-racist and anti-colonialist in their pursuits with special consideration given to QTBIPOC-led and community based efforts.
Funding Information
- Through this call for concepts, Astraea seeks to award up to 15 one or two year grants in October 2023, totaling approximately $250,000.
- Grant awards for applications focusing on core support for ongoing work on climate justice will range from $20,000 to $30,000; those for applications focusing on planning for future work on climate justice, either from existing or new groups, will range from $5,000-$10,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- Every concept will be evaluated by Astraea staff. Applicants should consider the following:
- Legal status: Applicants must be registered legal entities with a charitable purpose or be fiscally sponsored or willing to be fiscally sponsored with Astraea’s assistance.
- Location of applicants: Organizations must be based in and work on behalf of communities in the United States and its claimed territories.
- Structure: Work that is led by and centers queer, trans, or intersex communities with strong priority given to BIPOC led and focused organizations or groups.
- Focus: Have a demonstrable anti-racist focus and work to shift power to communities that have been historically and continually marginalized
- Priority: Your group focuses in whole or in part on climate justice, environmental racism, climate resilience, or disaster relief–this can include but is not limited to work that your organization has taken on by necessity that falls outside of your group’s core mission, such as rapid response disaster relief, in the face of increasing climate related injustice.
- Budget: Budget size of $500,000 or less annually
- Concepts must include the following
- Identification: Full name of the organization, including legal status.
- Purpose of funding concept: Describe the proposed work, articulate a main goal, desired outcomes, and how your proposed work fits into a larger struggle for liberation for queer, trans, and intersex communities. Successful concepts will clearly articulate how your proposed work relates to climate.
- Populations served: Explain the relevance of your proposed work to the communities with whom you work, and how racial and gender analyses inform the proposed work. In short, who are your communities, what is their relationship to climate, and how do you anticipate they will benefit from your proposed work?
- Organizational budget: for the most recently completed fiscal year.
- Amount requested; general operating support or planning support; geographic focus of the intended impact of the work.
- Organization background and history: describe the leadership of the organization or group and said leadership’s relationship to the communities your work serves
- Additional comments: Any additional relevant information the applicant would like Astraea to take into consideration.
For more information, visit Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.