GRANTMAKING APPROACH AND EVOLUTION
We stand with movements working to build a world where gender, economic, and racial justice are realized for all.
Current and past grantees work at the intersections of reproductive health, birth justice, workplace equity, and corporate engagement.
As we transition from active grantmaking, this work lives primarily through our anchor organizations, which will carry forward our commitment to gender, economic, and racial justice long after we close our doors.
Our Approach
Deepening relationships with our partners taught us that our approach matters as much as our focus areas. Through our journey toward relationship-centered philanthropy, a set of guiding principles emerged for HOW we fund. As we conclude our active grantmaking, these principles continue to shape our philanthropic organizing work:
Centering BIPOC Leadership
We now prioritize funding Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-led organizations, recognizing their expertise and leadership as essential to achieving lasting change.
Addressing Root Causes
We focus on initiatives that tackle systemic racism and other forms of oppression as fundamental drivers of inequity.
Building
Power
We support efforts that build economic and political power within marginalized communities, rather than reinforcing dependency.
Cross-Movement Collaboration
We encourage work that bridges traditional movement silos, recognizing that the most effective solutions emerge at these intersections.
Trust-Based Philanthropy
We provide flexible, unrestricted funding that trusts leaders to determine how resources can best advance their mission.
Our Evolution
Traditional philanthropy operates from a fundamental power imbalance: those with wealth decide which organizations deserve funding and how that money should be used.
This setup, no matter how well-intentioned, reinforces the same systems of concentrated power that stand in the way of shared abundance and collective thriving.
As we deepened our commitment to racial equity, our approach transformed: we shifted grantmaking power from board to staff working alongside community advisors, embraced participatory decision-making, and adopted trust-based funding practices.
Our transformation from traditional, transactional, top-down grantmaking to a relationship-centered approach has been humbling, messy, and ongoing. We've made plenty of mistakes along the way: clinging to control when we should have let go, moving with urgency when care and intention was needed, centering our pursuit of "goodness" over the needs of our partners.
But the struggle has proven itself worthwhile. We share our story as part of an honest conversation about what transformation requires.
WHAT WE’RE LEARNING: Abundance requires democratizing power and resources, justice demands redistribution, and transformation comes through authentic relationships.
IN PRACTICE
The Abortion Movement Fund
When the Dobbs decision leaked in 2022, we knew traditional philanthropy couldn't move fast enough to meet the moment.
Leveraging donor-advised fund infrastructure, we created the Abortion Movement Fund as a rapid response vehicle to deploy charitable dollars to grassroots abortion funds and practical support organizations, bypassing the slow, bureaucratic processes that can delay people's ability to access care.
Resources are deployed by and for the organizations providing practical support—no applications, no reports, no foundation oversight. Since seeding with $500,000, we've facilitated contributions of almost 4 million dollars to practical support organizations in the US.