Deadline: 21-Apr-23
The Third Wave Fund is accepting applications for the Own Our Power Fund to make one and two-year capacity-building grants for projects that seek to increase the agency that communities have over their organizations by supporting leadership, sustainability, and self-representation.
Third Wave Fund learned from their grantees and community partners that social movements are strongest when communities – rather than donors and foundations – are able to retain ownership over the vision, values, and strategies that guide their organizing and engagement.
The Own Our Power Fund seeks to increase the agency that communities have over their organizations. Young people bring critical analysis to movements for reproductive and gender justice, especially when youth-led organizations have the resources to support their self-determination and leadership. Third Wave Fund has seen firsthand that organizations flourish when their members, leaders, and communities feel true ownership over their futures. The fund supports community-led organizations to invest in key areas that define the level of ownership groups have over their leadership, finances, and experiences. While this fund welcomes creative approaches to their three focus areas, here are some ideas of work that would be a good fit:
- Leadership: Executive leadership transitions that intentionally shift leadership to a member(s) of the community and support for new leaders to receive coaching, skills-building, or training
- Financial Sustainability: Exploration of new organizational models and mergers that encourage collaborative sustainability and development of grassroots fundraising capacity
- Self-Representation: Participatory Action Research and Empowerment Evaluation projects that train and empower community members to develop and conduct their own research within their communities and projects that allow community members to harness the power of storytelling
- Communications: Development of strategic communications strategies that help an organization better align their mission, vision, values, and ongoing work with their leadership and communities.
Funding Information
- They anticipate making 10-12 grants of $25,000 per year for two-year capacity building proposals.
- Organizations with an annual budget of up to $500,000 USD are eligible to apply, with a priority on groups located in regions or focused on issues that are philanthropically under-resourced.
What does Gender Justice activism include?
- Third Wave defines gender justice as a movement to end patriarchy, transphobia, and homophobia and to create a world free from misogyny. It is a movement that connects gender oppression to classism, racism, ageism, ableism and all other forms of oppression.
- Gender Justice includes a range of issues that cut across many movements. It often orients the work of movements that have fought for gender and sexuality rights such as movements for feminism, LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, sex worker organizing, and HIV/AIDS activism around the needs of folks who experience multiple forms of oppression. It might also be work that brings gender and sexuality into focus in movements that center economic justice, immigration reform, and civil rights but haven’t historically centered the leadership of women, trans, intersex, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people of color.
- Examples of gender justice activism might include:
- Racial and/or economic justice that acknowledges how white supremacy, criminalization, incarceration, and capitalism negatively impact women and trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming people of color
- Immigration justice with a focus on how women and LGBTQI people of color are criminalized as immigrants and/or within immigration systems, such as through deportation and detention
- Reproductive justice and HIV/AIDS justice examining how racism, homophobia, ableism, stigma, and shame keep women and trans, intersex, gender non-conforming, and non-binary people of color from being able to make fully informed decisions about their bodies, health, families, safety, and sexuality
- Trans, intersex, gender non-conforming, and queer justice rooted in ending misogyny, patriarchy, and sexism against trans, intersex, gender non-conforming, and queer people
- Disability justice focused on ending cultural ableism and rooted in the particular ways that ableism affects women, queer, trans, gender non-conforming and intersex folks.
- Anti-violence work aimed at ending interpersonal and state violence (including criminalization, surveillance, policing, and prisons) and cognizant of how violence impacts women of color, LGBTQ people, disabled people, sex workers, drug users and low-income communities.
Eligibility Criteria
- Youth Leadership: Young women of color, trans, gender non-conforming, intersex activists, and/or queer youth under 35 are a core part of planning and decision-making processes. Organizations are led by and are accountable to the communities they serve and work to grow new leadership from within those communities.
- Gender Justice Focus: Applicants specifically work toward gender justice and recognize that gender justice will only be achieved by also addressing racial, economic, and disability justice. This gender focus shows up in both political analysis and in programming. A deeper definition is in the box.
- Strategies and Activities: Applicants provide a clear plan for their capacity-building project(s) and are able to articulate how their proposed activities increase community members’ ownership over their work, organization, and social movements.
- Potential for Impact and Growth: Applicants’ growth individually and within the gender justice movement will particularly benefit from capacity building support from Third Wave. Applicants want to expand and deepen their impact and are committed to increasing resilience and sustainability.
For more information, visit Own Our Power Fund.