Future Is Now Grants

Collective Future Fund Announces $1.2 Million ‘Future Is Now’ Grants to Strengthen Survivor-Led Safety Movements to End Gendered and Racialized Violence

by Press ReleasesUpdates

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

Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples

Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom

The HEAL Project

Revista Etnica

Colectivo Ilé

Reclaiming Our Own Transcendence

Organizacion Latina Trans en Texas

Mirror Memoirs

El/La Para TransLatinas

Vida AfroLatina

HEART Women and Girls

Healing to Action

Triumphant Together

Mo HO Justice

Black Girls Restored

Coalition for Restaurant Safety and Health

National LGBTQ Worker Center

Trans Resilience Fund

Waking Women Healing

For more information about the Collective Future Fund, visit their website at https://www.collectivefuturefund.org/ 

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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.

Yellow background with green highlights and black writing reading: This Juneteenth, we are centering a vision of liberation that includes Black people across the gender spectrum.

This Juneteenth, we are centering a vision of liberation that includes Black people across the gender spectrum.

by Updates

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

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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.”

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Collective Future Fund Announces $11 Million Multi-Year Investment in Survivor-led Movements to End Violence

by Press ReleasesUpdates

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: 

A Long Walk Home

AAPI Women Lead

African American Policy Forum

Black LGBTQIA + Migrant Project

Black Women’s Blueprint

Center for Women’s Global Leadership

Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women

EveryBlackGirl, Inc.

Freedom Inc

Fund for Trans Generations

Girls for Gender Equity, Inc.

In Our Names Network

Justice for Migrant Women 

National Women’s Law Center

Me Too International Inc.

Miami Workers Center

One Fair Wage

Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative

Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative (SNaP Co)

S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective, Inc.

Sovereign Bodies Institute 

StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP)

Tahirih Justice Center

Transforming Generations

“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. 

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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.

Collective Future Fund Statement on Georgia Attacks March 2021

by Updates

The following statement was issued by Aleyamma Mathew, Director of the Collective Future Fund, in response to the murder of eight people in Atlanta on March 16th, six of whom were Asian women.

“We grieve today for the lives tragically lost in Georgia: Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun and Paul Andre Michels, and we send our support to their loved ones and communities. After a year of rising anti-Asian violence as a result of racist comments by the former President, his political allies, and media personalities, too many of us knew that a moment of abhorrent violence like this was on the horizon. 

This violence is not new, and we cannot ignore the fact that it is rooted in white supremacy and misogyny. The fetishization and dehumanizing sexualization of Asian women – and these workers in particular – makes this an undeniable case of sexualized violence based on race. 

In addition to grieving this appalling loss of life, the AAPI community and survivors of gendered, racist violence are also facing another layer of trauma and pain. Even in the face of such clear racist and sexist violence, it is not being named as such. We are seeing the violent impact that the erasure of the experiences of AAPI women has in the narratives coming out of this tragedy. We see the humanity of the perpetrator prioritized over the humanity of his victims. We see media and leaders struggle to articulate and understand the intersecting, interwoven oppressions that made this white man choose to attack these women, in these workplaces. And we see that the carceral systems, supposedly intended to deliver ‘justice’, will continue to criminalize and ostracize the very communities that are hurting the most in the wake of this violence. 

We stand in solidarity with all those who face continued xenophobia, racism, and white supremacist violence. We stand in solidarity with survivors of gender-based and sexual violence. And we commit to continue supporting the visionary leaders working to build a collective future where all survivors live free from all forms of racist, patriarchal violence, in shared abundance, safety, dignity, and power.”

Please find below a list of organizations we have partnered with at the Collective Future Fund, who are working on the ground across the country to support AAPI women, queer, trans*, and non-binary people, and survivors. 

Please consider supporting their work if you have the means to do so.

Our collective future depends on the safety and liberation of Black people

by Updates

Black Women’s Lives Matter. Black Girls’ Lives Matter. Black Trans Lives Matter. 

The Collective Future Fund stands in solidarity with movements calling for a future of justice and liberation, where all Black lives are valued. Alongside all those who have taken to the streets, we declare our ever-deepening commitment to challenging white supremacy and anti-blackness in all its forms. 

Our grantee partners, which are Black-, Indigenous-, LGBTQ- and women-of-color-led organizations, have been mobilizing people to raise their voices and put their bodies on the line in the streets, in addition to providing direct relief and organizing support to frontline workers and survivors of all forms of violence during the pandemic. 

As we mourn and mobilize for George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, we also say the names of Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, Brianna ‘BB’ Hill, and Tony McDade, among so many others who have lost their lives to racist violence. We cannot ignore the fundamental underlying connections between the state violence that has been perpetrated against Black people for centuries, the pervasive harassment and violence that Black women and girls experience in their homes, workplaces and schools, and the tragically high rates of Black maternal mortality. We cannot ignore the connections between the extreme violence against Black trans women and the sweeping criminalization and incarceration of Black communities. 

And this targeting, undervaluing, and underprotection of Black lives is evidenced within so many systems in our society. When COVID-19 hit, it began taking the lives of Black people at three times the rate of white people, and brought an economic recession that has left 30 million people unemployed with Black workers impacted the most. The police’s militarized response to protests, coupled with vigilantism, has traumatized communities further. This leaves communities confronting multiple crises of safety and survival at once. 

As we witness this unfold in the United States, we also see expressions of solidarity around the world, pointing to the fact that anti-black racism is a problem globally, and solidarity efforts are required with other oppressed groups to address it. In the US and globally, women, queer, and trans people of color are holding down the resistance at the same time that they are reimagining systems and showing us what a world free from violence could look like. Collective Future Fund’s grantees are leading the way with fierce, strategic, and compassionate efforts to end gender-based violence.

The Collective Future Fund is committed to continuing the work of healing, resourcing, and mobilizing together. We must ensure that Black and Indigenous women, survivors, and their communities have support to process the violence and racism inflicted on them, while facilitating processes of truth and reconciliation. 

We are whole-heartedly committed to longer term work around the actions this week as driven by the Movement for Black Lives: we stand in solidarity with protestors around the world, and we are committed to strategies for divesting from police and prisons and investing in communities. We are dedicated to advancing immediate relief for Black communities, building community control, and ending the war on Black people once and for all. 

We will deepen our efforts within the philanthropic sector to challenge white supremacy, grow resources for movements to end gender-based violence, and shift cultures and systems in support of girls and women of color.

Together, we must build a future that protects and honors Black and Indigenous lives, because our collective liberation depends on it. 

We’re committed to a collective future shaped by women and girls

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As the pandemic continues to unfold, fissures in the systems that are at the core of how this country operates have been magnified. These systems are failing women of color and their communities. 

Women of color and survivors of violence are facing amplified risks as a direct result of the pandemic. We know that there is a surge in domestic violence and child abuse, racialized violence, and state violence against migrants and people in prison and detention. Women make up two-thirds of the roughly 24 million workers in the 40 lowest-paying jobs in America, many of which are deemed essential in this crisis. We know that over 30 million people continue to access unemployment, and with states reopening across the U.S. there is still the threat of another wave of COVID-19 outbreaks. And we know that this crisis is making billionaires out of millionaires through the stimulus package and other supports that prop up large multinational corporations while small businesses and community groups continue to struggle.  

We are writing to reaffirm our commitment to support women of color survivors through this crisis and into the future, as well as to mobilize new philanthropic resources to this end. While survivors, women of color, gender non conforming and trans people of color will suffer at a disproportionate rate from the lasting effects of the public health and economic crises, they will also be the ones to build power and lead with creativity, brilliance, and interdependence. 

For far too long, philanthropy has under-resourced women-of-color-led organizations, especially Black- and trans-led organizations, with only 0.6% going to efforts led by women of color. As Vanessa Daniels, Executive Director of Groundswell Fund, wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “Our misdirected philanthropy is costing us beyond measure. A mountain of evidence shows progressive victories are surging up from groups led by women of color, particularly black women, that build power on the ground — not trickling down from large Beltway organizations headed by white men.”

Yet there are some encouraging signs. During this period of COVID-19, we have seen philanthropy respond in exemplary ways: initiating rapid response funding, simplifying grantmaking processes, eliminating reporting requirements, and offering more multi-year support. We are excited to see these efforts, and hope that funding institutions will continue these practices to create a “new normal” within philanthropy. It’s a critical time for funders to step up — both in how we fund and how much we fund — if we want to ensure that lasting change can emerge from this crisis. 

That’s why the Collective Future Fund continues to uphold our existing funding commitments and partnerships, and why we’re ever more committed to being nimble in our grantmaking. We will continue funding as a response to the ongoing crises, while also moving towards multi-year grants to help stabilize organizations that are led by survivors of violence and women of color. 

As we navigate these perilous times, we hope the philanthropic community can come together to reimagine what is possible. We hope we can join together as philanthropy, survivors, and social movements to heal, resource, and mobilize toward creative, transformative solutions that prioritize and value the women of color and survivors who are leading the way to a collective future. 

Female doctor working in hospital, holding intravenous drip, accuracy, protection, care

Announcing Survivor Safety and Support Fund

by In The NewsPress ReleasesUncategorizedUpdates

COVID-19 is exposing long-standing disparities and inequities created by unjust policies and systems that have left communities vulnerable, in spite of powerful mobilizations by grassroots movements. Millions of people who work in essential care and service industries including homecare workers and house cleaners, restaurant, grocery, and delivery workers, and health and child care providers, are facing risks to their own health, emotional stress, and the economic insecurity that comes with the evolving landscape of managing the coronavirus outbreak. 

Queer, trans, and cis women of color, Indigenous, and immigrant women and girls in particular make up a significant proportion of the essential workers in our communities showing up day after day to mitigate the transmission and impact of the virus. Even prior to this crisis, they faced widespread discrimination, harassment, and violence in the workplace and have been further marginalized by lack of health benefits or paid sick days, low wages, and job insecurity. 

In the United States, which has now become the epicenter of the pandemic, we anticipate that precarity will only deepen, and a lack of safety at home, in the workplace, and in institutional settings will expand. From the intimate space of the home where people are isolated from broader networks of support, to workplaces, to prisons and detention centers, survivors of gender-based violence are facing even more complex challenges. 

Evidence from other crises, including Hurricane Katrina and outbreaks such as Ebola, suggests that violence against women and girls increases during these emergencies. Moreover, women are the first to respond to the emergency and the last to be resourced, despite the undeniably central role they play in fortifying communities in a crisis.

Yet even as these women and girls are experiencing great vulnerability, they continue to be the powerful healers, protectors, visionaries, strategists, and leaders that are rising to meet this moment.  

As a funding collaborative, the Collective Future Fund has the ability to fuel coordination and collective action by supporting healing and mobilization efforts to ensure the safety of women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic. A value core to our work is the conviction that resourcing women of color survivors and movement advocates can transform the future for everyone. That’s why we’re launching a $2 Million Survivor Safety and Support Fund to support survivors of gender-based violence. 

This rapid response fund, which will be implemented in phases over the course of 2020, will give increased funding support to our existing grantees, contribute to several other pooled rapid response funds that are resourcing immediate organizing and financial support for survivors and low-wage women of color and immigrant workers, and provide additional support to other critical efforts to advance safety and support the queer, trans, and cis women of color, Indigenous, and immigrant women survivors who are on the front lines of this crisis.     

Here’s what else we’re doing in this moment:

  • Entering into ongoing dialogue with colleagues in philanthropy about how to be responsive, responsible, and strategic in this unprecedented moment for our communities.
  • Engaging in a phased process over the course of 2020 to adapt its support to the field in consideration of a changing landscape and a new period of economic downturn.
  • Maintaining our funding to existing grantees even as they adjust their 2020 plans, activities, and timelines.
  • Moving forward later this year to provide multi-year general operating grants to additional women of color and survivor-centered organizations later this year.

While we are in the midst of this crisis, the Collective Future Fund understands that how we recover from COVID-19 will be dependent on how we respond at this moment. We know that every person is being affected by this situation at a personal level in different ways that might destabilize their health, mental and emotional wellbeing, physical safety, economic security, housing, or other aspects of their lives. We affirm that human lives and the well-being of our communities are of the greatest importance at this time, and we will only be able to meet the challenges ahead by caring for each other, calling upon our ancestral wisdom about survival and healing, and offering mutual aid and support to one another. 

Now more than ever, it is clear that our collective future is interdependent, and it is our choice how we turn the many challenges we are facing into an opportunity to transform our future together.

*Please note: The Survivor Safety and Support Fund will be implemented in phases over the course of 2020, and is not currently accepting applications for funding. We are currently prioritizing commitments to our existing grantees: women-of-color-led organizations that are working to meet the immediate needs of survivors and front-line workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

For updates and announcements about future grant opportunities, please sign up using the form below. We are unable to respond to every inquiry because of the volume of requests.