Muste Institute’s Social Justice Fund: Supporting Grassroots Activist Projects

Deadline: 4 March 2019

The A.J. Muste Memorial Institute is seeking applications for its Social Justice Fund to support grassroots activist projects in the US and around the world, giving priority to those with small budgets and little access to more mainstream funding sources.

Priority Areas

The Social Justice Fund’s priority is to support:

direct grassroots activism and organizing
groups with diverse, representative and democratic leadership structures
groups which have or can obtain sufficient economic and in-kind support
from a diversity of sources to carry out their regular work, but need additional support to carry out a project or build capacity

Eligibility Criteria

The Muste Institute’s Social Justice Fund considers proposals:

for new projects or campaigns, or efforts to expand existing work
for ongoing projects or campaigns
for capacity building, leadership development, and resource sustainability
for projects with expense budgets under $50,000
for projects which are local, regional, national or global in scope
from groups located anywhere in the world
from grassroots organizations with annual expenses of less than $500,000
from groups with limited access to more mainstream funding sources
from groups that may be unincorporated or incorporated
from groups with or without 501(c)3 status or a fiscal sponsor
from groups which have not received Social Justice Fund grants at least two years

Ineligible

They do not consider grant proposals for the following:

general support of ongoing operatons
individual eforts or scholarships
schools or universitess academic or research projects
organizatons with access to government, corporate or mainstream charitable funding
art, theater, ilm or video projects that are not directly ted to actvism or organizing
economic development projects
capital campaigns or expenses
direct social services
legal defense or litgaton
lobbying or electoral campaigns
projects geared toward partcipantss personal improvement or business success
conflict resoluton or violence reducton projects, unless they directly promote actvism
projects that will have already taken place by the time the grant is received