Funding Priorities

We accept funding requests in race,
ethnicity, and gender equity.

The most successful applications are those that address our priority issues through one of our preferred approaches.

Within our emphasis on equity (race, ethnicity, and gender), we prefer to fund in the following areas:

Women’s Issues and Economic Empowerment

• Proposals focused on under-resourced and marginalized communities

• Strategies that simplify and streamline women’s access to support services

• Initiatives to coordinate duplicative service delivery among domestic violence programs

• Protecting a women’s right to choose

• Training, education and coaching to accelerate economic empowerment, including women who have been recently incarcerated

• Two-generational approaches that support parents and their young children

  Opportunities for Youth of Color and LGBTQ+ Youth

• Proposals focused on youth ages (9-21) are preferred

• Youth mentoring programs

• Youth engagement initiatives that organize and empower youth of color at the grassroots level

• Alternatives to juvenile detention and strategies to reduce incarceration

• Support for racial justice and equitable policing

• Anti-bias/anti-racism training for middle and high school teachers in racially diverse schools

• Advocacy efforts that increase public funding for children in foster care and youth in under-resourced areas

  Early Childhood Education (0-8)

• Proposals focused on under-resourced and marginalized communities

• Collaborative initiatives to expand access to high quality early childhood education

• Advocacy efforts to increase support for child care subsidies, medicaid, early childhood education, early childhood home visiting, and public schools

• Anti-bias/Anti-racism training for early childhood teachers, caregivers, and parents

• Two-generational approaches that support parents and their young children

• Evidence-based early childhood home visitation programs serving vulnerable families.

• Evidence-based instructional practices for improving children's literacy skills.
  

We prefer proposals that use early, catalytic, upstream, or movement-building approaches.

Early

• Funding an organization, initiative, or collaborative during the start-up phase, including planning grants for emerging ideas

• Funding requests for emerging ideas should be grounded in research and include a detailed plan

  Catalytic

• Strategies that rely on networks and alliances rather than a single organization

• Initiatives that transcend individual organizations and ignite collaborative change

• Proposals that exhibit a strong potential for accelerated progress on a complex issue

• Strategies that engage multiple organizations across sectors (nonprofit, academic, government, business)

  Upstream

• Initiatives that address problems at their source or address underlying factors that contribute to inequality and oppression

• Innovative primary or secondary prevention programs

• Research, public education, legal action, and advocacy initiatives that address race/ethnicity and gender equity

  Movement Building

• Support for progressive social movements that have equity at their core

• Initiatives that are identified and led by grassroots, community-based members who are impacted by inequalities

• Strategies that rely on networks and alliances rather than a single organization