2017 NCRP Impact Award Winners

“SMASHING SILOS” AWARD FOR INTERSECTIONAL GRANTMAKING: GROUNDSWELL FUND

www.groundswellfund.org

Vanessa Daniel, Executive Director, Groundswell Fund

For over a decade, we’ve committed to resourcing the leadership and the organizations closest to the systemic social, economic and environmental challenges our movements for justice and liberation are trying to solve.

Our work centers those who are organizing and advocating on the front lines: women of color, low-income women and transgender people. We do this even when it isn’t a popular strategy in philanthropy, because we believe in grassroots power to win meaningful changes now and long into the future.

We invest in grassroots organizing that advances policy and systems change; that cuts across race, class, gender and sexuality; and that uses brave and innovative strategies informed from the ground up by communities directly impacted. This multi-issue, multi-identity solidarity approach has always been critical but is even more so now amidst a political terrain where millions of newly activated people are looking to plug-in to organizations to make a change.

We believe that our role, and the role of our philanthropic partners, includes steady and substantial funding so that these organizations can build even more capacity to help develop these new leaders into life-long champions, advocates and organizers for our causes.

This moment is critical for philanthropy and there is a historic opportunity before us to support local, state and national efforts that are building power by interweaving strategies to build the capacity of individuals, communities and organization to achieve short-term wins, lay the groundwork to act on future opportunities and achieve victories in the longer term.

Children and caregivers in the Cabrini Green Legal Aid Reunification Ride Program after a trip to visit their incarcerated mothers at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois. Photo Courtesy Cabrini Green Legal Aid

Organizations we support like the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC) the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), Black Women for Wellness, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Tewa Women United and Trans Queer Pueblo link together the movements for reproductive justice, civil rights, racial justice, criminal justice, immigrant justice and LGBTQ rights.

Our grantees are building impact, power and sustainability for our movements by leading legislative and organizing efforts to increase access to reproductive health and gender-affirming health care, to restrict the shackling of pregnant women in prisons, to reform chemical policy, to reduce infant and maternal mortality in indigenous communities, and to shut down trans “pods” in immigrant detention centers. Across the country, this work shows both the fortitude and the rising tide of resistance these organizations sustain and build.

We unite with our grantees to build a movement that is bold enough to challenge power, broad enough to leave no one behind and strong enough to win.

We hope our partners and colleagues in this work will join us in this moment to support the movement and power-building strategies and organizations that are leading us bravely through these difficult times.