Collective Future Fund was named as one of the organizations selected by Melinda French Gates to receive a grant as part of the next chapter of her philanthropic giving.
Reflecting on 2023
2023 Wrapped!
Since the start of 2024, we at CFF have taken some time to reflect on a few moments from 2023, and what they mean in context to what’s ahead for CFF and our partners in the coming year.
As we move into our fifth year as a collaborative fund, we’re reflecting on how CFF was born at the height of the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements and just before the onset of the global COVID pandemic. In just a few years, we’ve witnessed the escalation of violence against Black and brown gendered bodies, attacks on bodily autonomy, and threats to democracy deepen — only further amplifying the demands and visibility of our movements.
Last spring, we journeyed to Oxford, UK for the Skoll World Forum where we sparked conversation about the dire lack of funding to end gender-based violence. We also joined our policy colleagues, grantee partners, and co-conspirators in Washington DC to discuss gendered violence with the White House Gender Policy Council, and marked the launch of the White House’s first-ever U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence. Our team attended the 22nd Century Initiative Conference in Minneapolis where we moderated a session titled Reimagining Safety: Centering Survival and Thriving in a Pluralist Democracy, featuring some grantee partner leaders.
Last fall, CFF co-sponsored the Women’s Funding Network’s Feminist Funded Conference in Washington, DC and joined the Ford Foundation’s Free Future 2023 Forum on Preventing Gender-Based Violence. And as some of the most exciting milestones of 2023, CFF announced a pilot of transnational grantmaking totaling $500,000 to 9 organizations, before hosting a powerful funders briefing at the Ford Foundation in New York City, where we discussed our collective work toward a future of safety and democracy.
We grew our team, deepened our impact, and expanded our vision of safety for all. Yet survivor-centered work to end gendered, racialized, and sexualized violence continues to be critically under-resourced, even as women and gender-expansive people of color are powerfully situated as agents of change both within the U.S. and also in solidarity and collaboration with feminist struggles transnationally.
With a lot at stake in 2024 here in the US and globally, we’re ready to go even further to invest in sustainability for survivor leaders and their communities who are meeting these crises head on. We hope you’ll continue on with us in this journey.
Collective Future Fund Deepens Transnational Grantmaking with Additional $500,000 Investment
Funding for transnational solidarity is more important than ever
In CFF’s inaugural round of grantmaking in 2019-20, we asked grantees to share about work they were doing outside the US or transnationally. We were encouraged to learn that many groups already had a growing body of work to build solidarity with movements addressing gendered, sexualized, and racialized violence across borders, with a focus on relationships with movement leaders, organizations, and networks in the Global South.
This kind of connection across contexts is more important than ever. We are living in an era of ultraviolence that links many forms of legislative and physical violence against Black and brown gendered bodies. This moment is shaped by global phenomena, including a rise in white nationalism, militarization, attacks on bodily autonomy, ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws and prohibitions on teaching critical race theory. These phenomena are based on interests seeking to consolidate power across political, policy, and cultural contexts.For CFF, transnational means operating across national borders. CFF’s grantmaking prioritizes transnational feminist networking, organizing, and solidarity because the structural causes of oppression and injustice that lead to gendered, sexualized, and racialized violence exist across borders.
As billions of dollars flow from far-right organizations in the US to fund “anti-gender” initiatives abroad, it is critical to make visible the linkages between efforts that attack bodily autonomy, curtail the human right to reproductive and gender-affirming care, and escalate systemic violence against Black and brown gendered bodies. Now is the time to resource the survivors and their communities working to end all forms of violence. These leaders include women and gender-expansive people of color who have long been at the frontlines, building democracy by standing up for rights and justice as they work to turn the tide toward care-centered systems and policies here in the US.
As we consider their work, we cannot afford to overlook the interdependence of our global context, especially in the wake of a pandemic that laid bare widespread violence as a symptom of vast inequity. These lessons remain, along with the interconnected work of the #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, climate justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, and other pro-liberation, anti-authoritarian movements.
Why collective safety depends on movement building across borders
CFF seeks to end all forms of violence by specifically working at the intersection of gendered, sexualized, and racialized violence. While the particular aspects of gender, sexuality, race, class, caste, religion, disability, and other dimensions of politicized identity present themselves differently in various contexts, the systems of oppression that underpin them are part of our global operating system.
This requires feminist organizations, networks, intermediaries, and funders that are working for collective safety to be creative, to learn from one another, and to collectively target not only specific actors, but also systems perpetrating violence through actively practicing solidarity locally, regionally, and transnationally.
CFF has observed that our partners are stronger and more resilient because of their transnational work. Unleashing the power of transnational organizing also requires a greater investment in building solidarity and connection across movements. This involves developing organizing capacity, sharing experiences, and ensuring the sustainability of activists’ work.
Over time, we will continue to build within a transnational ecosystem on particular issues that are ripe for collaboration. We will emphasize learning from and co-creating with grantee partners around how to resource opportunities and spaces for transnational exchange and solidarity-building. Additionally, as a fund that is still just four years old, we will be assessing the organizational development and infrastructure that CFF will need to develop in order to do intentional, trust-based grantmaking to locally-based groups in the Global South.
CFF is committed to playing a role in building these bridges and acting as a catalyst for breaking down barriers to transnational organizing.
2023 TRANSNATIONAL GRANTEES:
An Asian labor-led global labor and social alliance across garment-producing countries (such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and consumer regions (USA and Europe) for addressing poverty-level wages, gendered violence, and freedom of association in global garment production networks.
A survivor-led civil and human rights organization that works to build a powerful community of solidarity through direct action and advocacy, including opening a safe house for LGBTQ people in Ghana, and developing formal relationships and shared resources with a matriarchal village near Nairobi, Kenya, and with a traditional healers collective in Johannesburg, South Africa.
An anchor in the Border Butterflies Project, co-anchored by Transgender Law Center and Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, with participation of other US and Mexican partners working to to support LGBTQ asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border with legal, humanitarian, and post-detention support and organizing. BLMP also hosts a transnational exchange with LGBTQIA+ Garífuna people living in Central America, to connect Black, gender justice movement-building in the US to power-building in Honduras.
A survivor-led Dalit civil rights and power-building organization. They work at the intersections of advocacy, research, and digital security to end caste apartheid, gender-based violence, Islamophobia, and religious intolerance. Their multi-pronged strategy aims to create a comprehensive survivors’ political platform and pathways for Dalit feminist leadership toward safety, healing, and systemic policy change, both in the US and South Asia
A feminist movement-support organization anchored in the Global South that has grown a transnational web of multiple organizations, partners, and allies in many countries and regions with a focus on Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa. JASS is developing feminist leaders, fostering cross-pollination and movement learning, and amplifying stories of grassroots feminist human rights defenders working on gendered violence and other issues affecting their communities.
An advocacy, education, and power-building organization focused on migrant and farmworker women. Justice for Migrant Women partners with an organization based in South Africa on organizing, power-building, and systemic change through the multi-year Bandana Connect Retreat project to support migrant women facing sexual violence as they cross international borders.
An advocacy and survivor-support organization that works at the intersection between anti-violence and immigrant rights. Tahirih Justice Center centers women and girls in danger of sexual violence at the US border, and is advocating for US asylum law to formally name gender and gender-based violence as a ground for asylum.
An initiative that draws on in-depth research and narrative work at intersections of gender and violence for marginalized women around the world to inform activist organizing, policy debates, and art. PSVI believes that the Global South exists in Harlem, Markham, St. Thomas, in dense pockets animated by the legacies of violence “back home.” PSVI leads the Eelam Writer’s Resistance Workshop, which has grown to over 12 countries, to support young women and queer folks’, former combatants’, and emerging activists’ poetry, nonfiction, and polemics.
A project of Corporación Centro de Estudios de Derecho Justicia y Sociedad (DeJusticia), Colombia-based research and advocacy organization, Visión Afro 2025 is an inter-institutional, transnational platform for strengthening North-South multicultural dialogues that bring together North American and Latin American organizations working with Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities on gender and sexuality within the African diaspora, particularly in Colombia.
Collective Future Fund Expands Multi-Year Grantmaking with Additional $3.4M Investment
Funding awarded to 29 grassroots organizations will advance survivor-led movements working to build power and end violence in all its forms
NEW YORK—Today, the Collective Future Fund (CFF) announced funding for 29 survivor-based organizations in the next phase of its multi-year grantmaking, totaling $3.4M over two years. The grants will support the healing and leadership of women and gender expansive people of color as they protect communities against an onslaught of attacks on human and civil rights, while advancing a new vision of safety and liberation through organizing, advocacy, and policy change.
“In the face of escalating and pervasive violence, survivors are developing new ways of resistance and leading us to a future grounded in safety, abundance, and dignity for everyone. It is their work that is dismantling interconnected systems of oppression and creating the transformative change required in this moment of political, social, and economic upheaval,” said Aleyamma Mathew, Director of the Collective Future Fund. “The solutions to the immense challenges we face will not be fully realized in a matter of a few years, but instead require time and resources to build. We urge philanthropy to better recognize this fact and to make investments in women and gender expansive people of color that reflect the power they have clearly demonstrated. Our collective future depends on it.”
Last year, after disbursing rapid response grants, CFF launched its first multi-year grantmaking effort to sustain survivor-leaders responding to multiple crises exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding came as many intersectional anti-violence organizations navigated dwindling philanthropic investment in the face of heightened need–an issue that long preceded 2020 and only continues to grow. The expanded docket announced today will provide these organizations with general operating support to plan beyond the most immediate crises, to align day-to-day work with their vision for the future, and to deepen relationships in the field that ultimately strengthen the movement to end patriarchal violence.
Today’s announcement follows the five year anniversary of the viral hashtag #MeToo, which ignited a historic conversation on the world stage about sexual violence and led to the creation of the Collective Future Fund as part of philanthropy’s response to this massive milestone. Since then, survivor-leaders have continued to demonstrate their power and centrality to other social justice movements, working in solidarity across communities and issue areas. Despite this, philanthropic investments remain stagnant, and CFF is now one of the only existing funds focused on ending gender-based violence in the United States.
Central to CFF’s strategy is the recognition that all forms of violence are persistent, interconnected, and mutually reinforcing – whether systemic or interpersonal. All grantees in this docket, of whom 22 are previous recipients, are advancing a new vision of radical safety and liberation through strategies that confront state violence, workplace violence, and violence in specific communities.
Among the awardees is Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, the first national women farmworkers’ organization in the United States created by current and former women farmworkers, along with women who hail from farmworker families. Alianza is composed of 15 member organizations in 20 states that are playing a leadership role in helping to end all forms of exploitation and abuse perpetrated against campesinas, most of whom are immigrants, guestworkers, or refugees. Another, Reclaiming Our Own Transcendence (RooT), is a Black and Brown, queer, grassroots-led initiative that offers transformative, collective healing and growth accountability spaces and workshops to address cycles of harm and violence.
Grantees include:
Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom
Alianza Nacional de Campesinas
Black Girls Restored
Black Transcendence
Coalition for Restaurant Safety and Health
Colectivo Ilé
Creative Interventions/STOP
El/La Para Translatinas
Fireweed Collective
Free Hearts
HEAL Project
HEART Women & Girls
Healing to Action
In Our Names Network
Jahajee Sisters
Matahari Women Workers Center
Mirror Memoirs
MO Ho Justice
Mother Nation
National Black Women’s Justice Institute
Reclaiming our Own Transcendance
Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples
South Asian SOAR
Trans Resilience Fund
Transforming Generations
Vida AfroLatina
Visioning B.E.A.R. Circle Intertribal Coalition
Waking Women Healing
Women on the Rise
“Resistance against patriarchal violence, and healing through reclaiming our Indigenous ways of being is an everyday act for us as Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit, that often goes unnoticed. To receive this funding through CFF means we are seen, heard, and valued. This funding is life saving, and ensures that we can continue to grow spaces of healing and resistance against sexual violence,” said Founder and Executive Director of Waking Women Healing Institute, Kristin Welch.
“CFF has been a pioneer in recognizing and alleviating funding barriers for BIPOC organizations that are doing the cultural work of ending sexual violence. This is long-term work requiring sustainable support, and CFF is modeling how it is done,” said Aredvi Azad, Co-Executive Director, The HEAL Project.
“CFF’s donation empowers Matahari to continue fighting for the rights of domestic and restaurant workers in Massachusetts through labor and community organizing. Workers in these sectors, particularly immigrant and women of color, have historically been left out of labor protections and subject to extreme forms of violence, exploitation, and oppression despite playing essentials roles in our society,” said the team at Matahari Women Workers Center.
“The survivors who called for an end to sexual violence in the wake of #MeToo are the very same leaders who are now protecting communities across the country from attacks on their fundamental human and civil rights,” said Jennifer Agmi, CFF Collaborative Partner and Senior Program Officer at The Libra Foundation. “We are proud to partner with the Collective Future Fund to resource this life-saving, transformative work.”
###
The Collective Future Fund brings together social justice movements, survivors, and donors to heal, resource, and mobilize towards a future free from all forms of patriarchal violence.
Our power comes from survivor-led movements
To our friends and supporters,
Collective Future Fund joins our community in grief and rage over the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade. Criminalizing abortion only widens the net that is used to enact violence against women and gender expansive people of color in this country, and this decision will be catastrophic for survivors.
It also comes on the heels of a month filled with horrific violence: Buffalo, Uvalde, organized right-wing attacks on Pride events, the passage of transphobic legislation, rampant misogyny in the Depp-Heard trial, and more.
We are angry. We are mourning. But we are not resigned.
These attacks are the expected backlash to the power that survivor-led movements have demonstrated. They are meant to demoralize and immobilize us. But just like those came before us, survivors are prepared for this moment. They are creating and leading movements rooted in community care, providing us with a pathway to a better future. Now, philanthropy must resource survivor-led movements at the level they deserve and require.
We cannot disconnect the ruling that overturned Roe from the dismantling of the democratic process, mass shootings, ending the Child Tax Credit and unemployment benefits, increased police budgets, or the January 6th insurrection. Multiple systems are working together to oppress women and gender expansive people of color, seeking to prevent a future of safety, abundance, and liberation for everyone. If we hope to meaningfully address the multiple and severe crises this country is facing, philanthropic institutions must contend with white supremacy and heteropatriarchy as our true antagonists.
That means de-centering narratives that depict survivor-leaders as marginal and instead recognizing them as central to every social movement. It means following the wisdom of those who have been deeply in the work of building power for freedom: survivors of gendered, sexualized, and racialized violence, who know all too well what it means to have their lives subjected to the will of those in traditional authority roles.
We at Collective Future Fund are committed to doing this work. We will continue to invest in survivors because we know that a future free from violence can only be achieved through the power of those who are transforming experiences and legacies of trauma into collective action.
We hope that you will join us.
In solidarity,
Aleyamma Mathew
VAWA Reauthorization is a Testament to the Power of Survivors
Partners & Friends,
After years of bold advocacy from diverse coalitions, yesterday President Biden signed an expanded version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) into law. This overdue renewal will provide funding for organizations offering lifesaving programs, services, and resources to survivors of gendered and sexualized violence, including expanded provisions for those who have long been invisibilized yet disproportionately impacted like Indigenous, immigrant, and trans women. These much needed funds will go a long way, and we have survivors from communities across the country to thank for it.
As we celebrate this victory, we cannot forget the fact that the original VAWA was passed under the premise that carceral responses to domestic violence keep us safe. Our grantee partners, many of whom are often the first line of defense in their communities, have made it clear: an increase in funds for policing is just further investment in a violent system that harms survivors, instead of supporting them. To end increasingly pervasive gendered and racialized violence, we must resource the community-rooted solutions that truly keep us safe.
Collective Future Fund calls on philanthropy to reject narratives that define violence narrowly as individual, interpersonal acts and instead recognize the scale and interconnectedness of violence as experienced by survivors. We cannot disconnect domestic and sexual violence from the overarching crises of state violence — mass incarceration, police brutality, family separation, the imprisonment of sexual assault survivors for acts of self-defense — that disproportionately harm survivors of color.
Philanthropic donors should fulfill their commitments to racial and gender justice and meet this historic moment by funding the organizations led by survivors, QTBIPOC women and gender expansive people that are cultivating community, building impactful movements, and sustaining transformational work.
We look forward to joining together with you in this work.
In community,
Aleyamma Mathew
Collective Future Fund Announces $1.2 Million ‘Future Is Now’ Grants to Strengthen Survivor-Led Safety Movements to End Gendered and Racialized Violence
The 19 grant recipients, all with budgets less than $1 million, are shaping the future of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, South Asian, Muslim, Arab, queer, trans, gender non conforming and non-binary survivor-led safety work
NEW YORK – Today, the Collective Future Fund (CFF) announced 19 grassroots organizations have received grants as part of their new $1.2 million Future Is Now grant-making effort. The grants invest in organizations with budgets under $1 million as they expand their culturally responsive programming to build power and address root causes of violence, with a strong focus on trans-led organizations and organizations building innovative healing and safety practices. The grantee partner organizations are Black, Indigenous, Latinx, South Asian, Muslim, Arab, queer, trans, gender non conforming and non-binary survivor-led, reflecting the Collective Future Fund’s commitment to supporting the leadership of these key communities who are most impacted by racialized, sexualized, and gendered violence and also powerfully leading some of the most significant issues of our times.
After announcing multi-year grants in March of this year totalling $11 million, the Collective Future Fund’s Future Is Now prioritized organizations that are creating innovative strategies to end violence with creativity, resistance, and resilience. Recognizing that the crises of the past 18 months will not easily subside, particularly as survivor-led movements experience repression after hard-fought wins, investment ahead of the new year is critical.
Violence Against Trans Communities Is at an All Time High.
This year has continuously undermined LGBTQ+ rights, with increased violence specifically targeting the trans community. 2021 is set to be the deadliest year yet for trans or gender non-conforming people, with the majority of those killed (60%) being Black trans women. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, twenty two percent of trans people who interacted with police reported being harassed due to bias—and when incarcerated, 40% of trans people experience sexual assault. Despite the growing violence against trans people, both racial justice and broad gender justice funders lack a firm commitment to providing resources to communities that are vulnerable to xenophobic and transphobic attacks. Even though the deadly outcomes of systemic racism were laid bare last year with the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, many Americans are still failing to see the connection between our country’s long-standing inequities and the conditions trans communities face today. In addition to the high rates of domestic and sexual violence, trans and non-binary people are also targets of extreme state violence. Preventing violence against these communities requires us to be groundbreaking and proactive with our approach and support of trans and non-binary people.
A central part of CFF’s strategy in supporting and growing this movement is investing in Black trans communities. The Future is Now Fund prioritizes Black trans-led organizations that are too often unseen and under-resourced by philanthropy by increasing the availability of life-changing resources.
Trans Led and Focused Organizations Are Ignored by Philanthropy
“To create a future free of violence we address the ways that transphobia and anti-blackness work within philanthropy, we have to do more than fund them, especially when we know that this lack of resourcing leads to continued violence,” said Aleyamma Mathew, Director of the Collective Future Fund. “We must strategically support organizations with smaller budgets that are expanding and examining solutions to racialized, sexualized, and gendered violence. The future will be – and already is – shaped by BIPOC trans survivor-leaders.”
As the country continues to reconcile the pandemic’s impact, and as survivor-led movements continue to take their fight to the forefront, philanthropic support is needed now more than ever. For every $100 awarded by the U.S. Foundations, less than 3 cents benefits trans communities, leaving organizations that focus on trans and gender expansive folks on their own. Black-led trans organizations are not only more proliferated and can help ground a movement, they are also some of the less resourced because of the ways that intersectional anti-blackness, transphobia and systemic discrimination collude to continue to strip power, resources and rights.
If we are to dismantle systems of violence, we need to reinvest energy into innovative ideas. The bold transformation we wish to see can be achieved by pushing trans and non-binary power from the margins to the mainstream.
CFF Is Reimagining Philanthropic Work
Collective Future Fund is innovating the field and building a new model for grant-making by supporting survivor led movements. In addition to funding trans-led organizations, CFF is working to ensure that the organizations who adapted and innovated healing and safety practices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are able to thrive and build for a sustained future.
“Building a future where all of our people can heal, grow, and thrive as their best and full selves is the reason why we do this work,” said Monica James, Executive Director from grantee partner Triumphant Together. “We’re building resources to support this transformation on a new blueprint that actually serves our community’s needs. We are so appreciative to have funders like the Collective Future Fund invest in this work and really stand beside us as allies and collaborators.”
“Our work is grounded in survivors – survivor leadership, survivor experiences, and survivor healing,” said Kristin Welch, Executive Director of Waking Women Healing. “As Indigenous women, girls, and two spirit people, we are reclaiming power over our futures and over self in mind and body, free from settler and gender-based violence, with access to healthy Waters and respectful connection to Mother Earth for all beings. We truly value the opportunity to do this work in community with Collective Future Fund and all their partners.”
Future Is Now Grant Recipients
For more information about the Collective Future Fund, visit their website at https://www.collectivefuturefund.org/
###
Collective Future Fund works with philanthropy and visionary changemakers to build a collective future where all women, girls, trans, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people and survivors of color are not only safe from state, workplace and interpersonal violence, but live in shared abundance, joy, and power.
This Juneteenth, we are centering a vision of liberation that includes Black people across the gender spectrum.
A year on from 2020’s world-renewing uprising for racial justice, we see today what has changed for Black people in America – and what has not. Much like the story of Juneteenth, where actualization of freedom from slavery came long after the declaration thereof, today we are living in a world where the actualization of our collective liberation from oppression is far from complete.
Collective Future Fund is committed to a vision of liberation that explicitly includes and centers Black people from across the expansive gender spectrum. We uplift, celebrate, and send our love to our trans, non-binary, and queer Black siblings, who have long been leaders in our movements for freedom, but have often been forced to forfeit safety from homophobic and transphobic violence in exchange for safety from racialized violence. We recognize and mourn for the lives lost at an appalling, heartbreakingly high rate the past year. We remember that Juneteenth falls in the month of Pride, and remember too that Pride was born from the actions of Black and brown Trans and LGTBQ+ survivors, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
As we celebrate Juneteenth and Pride this year, we are reminded that we must build a safe and abundant future for all of us. None of us are truly free until all of us are.
Collective Future Fund Statement Remembering George Floyd and Mourning Ma’Kiah Bryant
The following statement was issued by Aleyamma Mathew, Director of the Collective Future Fund, in response to the verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin and the death of 16 year old Ma’Kiah Bryant:
“The pain and trauma experienced by Black Americans and their allies in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd has proven to be a catalytic event for racial justice across the globe. At Collective Future Fund, we mourn, march, and mobilize in solidarity with all those demanding that Black lives be valued, cherished, and protected. Today, we remember and grieve for George Floyd alongside the ever expanding list of those murdered in similarly unjust circumstances: Breonna Taylor, Duante Wright, Toledo, Atatiana Jefferson, Brianna ‘BB’ Hill, and Tony McDade, and too many others.
Above all we hope that this guilty verdict provides some closure to the family and friends of George Floyd, and provides some relief to the Minneapolis community that has suffered so much as a result of Derek Chauvin’s heinous actions. This is not justice, only a modicum of accountability. We do not celebrate because true justice would have George here with us today. But we do share in the relief of so many at the unanimous, unambiguous decisions on all three counts from the jury.
This moment of accountability was brief and fleeting though, and does nothing to protect the lives of Black girls, boys, men, women and non-binary people whose lives continue to be threatened by the oppressive, racist, dangerous police. Within moments of the verdict being read, we were outraged and heartbroken that a 16 year old child, Ma’Kiah Bryant, was killed by police.
While we remain limited to carceral forms of justice in the present, we also strive for a future of liberation and justice where Black people can live their lives in peace, free from the threat of violence from the state.
No verdict could restore life. This guilty verdict cannot amend the ongoing, systemic violence of the system that brought about the murder of George Floyd in the first place. It was this system that led Derek Chauvin to believe he could murder George with impunity. It is this system that continues to steal resources, health and Black lives from our communities every single day. This violence is inextricable from the sexual and gendered violence we fight to erase, because it is all built upon the shared foundation of dehumanization, patriarchy, and white supremacy.
We must demand abolition. We must fight for meaningful accountability from everyone who upholds the systems that continue to inflict harm on Black communities. We must fight for Ma’Kiah as we fought for George. At Collective Future Fund, we will continue to place our resources and support with the survivors creating a future free from patriarchal violence, rooted in justice, healing and liberation.”
Collective Future Fund Announces $11 Million Multi-Year Investment in Survivor-led Movements to End Violence
Funding awarded to 25 grantee partners will provide long-term sustainability for transformational movements grounded in safety, power, and dignity
NEW YORK—Today, the Collective Future Fund (CFF) awarded grants to 25 organizations in its first multi-year grantmaking effort, totaling $11 million over the next three years. The grant recipients are working at the forefront of movements to end gender-based violence in all its forms, and are all led by BIPOC women, queer, transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary and im/migrant survivors of color.
Since March 2020, the Collective Future Fund has disbursed rapid response grants to groups addressing the immediate safety needs of survivors of violence and communities of color during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent economic crisis, and racial justice uprisings. The multi-year funding announced today will help sustain this work and provide reliable and flexible support to grantee partners as they lead and create community-driven solutions and shape policy through building power, strengthening the voices of survivors, and work in solidarity across communities. $8 million in payments of this funding will be dispersed in 2021, in response to the pressing needs facing organizations in the wake of 2020. Despite a long history of women of color, im/migrant, transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming people of color driving social change as movement leaders and visionaries, funding for these groups is scarce, with less than 0.5% of philanthropic dollars being directed to women and girls of color annually, with even less directed to transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming communities.
“2020 exemplified the resilience and dedication of BIPOC- and survivor-led organizations, with our communities facing cascading, interconnected, and ongoing pandemics — from escalating patriarchal violence, to economic uncertainty, to COVID-19. Our grantee partners faced these challenges head-on, proving again the importance of leadership rooted in lived experience and collective power,” said Aleyamma Mathew, Director of the Collective Future Fund. “It is critical that our support of these powerful movements does not stop with rapid response grants. We want to help sustain and grow the transformational work of building a world free from violence, and implore other funders to follow suit and provide the stable flow of resources that survivor- and women-of-color-led organizations need to make lasting change.”
“Our movement – to build safety and healing for our community – is so often asked to make magic happen with really limited resources. Knowing that support is guaranteed for a few years gives us the space to develop a more expansive vision of our work and to invest in longer term strategies that really address the root causes of violence and oppression,” said Toni-Michelle Williams, Executive Director of Solutions Not Punishment, a Black trans and queer led Atlanta-area organization that builds safety, collective embodied leadership, and political power.
“Too often, movements that center the leadership and experiences of survivors, women of color, transgender, and non-binary people of color are under-resourced and underestimated,” said Dr. Connie Wun, Co-Founder and Executive Director of AAPI Women Lead, an organization working to strengthen the progressive political and social platforms of Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the US through the leadership of self-identified AAPI women and girls in solidarity with other communities of color. “This underinvestment is rooted in white supremacist, patriarchal expectations of what a leader looks like – and we see over and over the violence that this ideology and viewpoint perpetuates. We must push back against these falsehoods and invest abundantly and enthusiastically in the work of those most impacted by race and gendered violence, including sexual violence.”
CFF’s grantee partners work across sectors and disciplines towards a violence-free future while uplifting long-ignored voices, utilizing a range of strategies domestically and transnationally –– from mutual aid and healing supports, to organizing campaigns and shifting narratives, to policy and legal advocacy. Among the recipients of Collective Future Fund’s multi-year grants is A Long Walk Home, an organization supporting Black girls to use their voices through art, organizing, and campaigning. Another, the Sovereign Bodies Institute, generates new knowledge and understandings of how Indigenous nations and communities are impacted by gender and sexual violence, and how they may continue to work towards healing and freedom from such violence. Other multi-year grant awardees focus on community-wide movement building, such as EveryBlackGirl, a national campaign and program working to create a world where every Black girl thrives.
CFF hosted an open call for proposal submissions from December 2020 to February 2021 and prioritized strategies that build power, amplify survivors’ voices, and work in solidarity across movements and borders. Recipients include:
Black LGBTQIA + Migrant Project
Center for Women’s Global Leadership
“To achieve meaningful progress on issues of safety and gender justice, the philanthropic community must commit to resourcing groups at the scale they deserve and that this work requires,” said Ada Williams Prince of Pivotal Ventures, a Collective Future Fund Collaborative Donor. “Supporting CFF means grantee partners bring rich experiences and strategies to the collective work of building a future of safety, power, and voice for survivors everywhere. It’s up to us in philanthropy to invest in organizations/intermediaries such as the Collective Future Fund who make sure there is support for BIPOC women, queer, transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary and im/migrant survivors of color who are leading this incredible work.”
“The grantee partners chosen for these multi-year grants have gender and racial justice at their core, actively building a future of safety and liberation for all of us,” said Holly Bartling of the General Service Foundation, a Collective Future Fund Collaborative Donor. “The approach CFF has taken in this grantmaking – with a priority to build the voice and power of communities most impacted by injustice – has resulted in a diverse slate of partners who are creatively approaching issues of violence in their communities. These partners are taking an intersectional approach to both the work and the communities they support. We are thrilled that CFF can provide multi-year general operating support and we firmly believe that this support will contribute to the sustainability and growth of this critical movement ecosystem.”
View a list of Collective Future Fund’s Collaborative Donor Partners here.
###
Collective Future Fund works with philanthropy and visionary changemakers to build a collective future where all women, girls, trans, gender non-conforming, and nonbinary people and survivors of color are not only safe from state, workplace and interpersonal violence, but live in shared abundance, joy, and power.
