We’re clear eyed about the seriousness of these ongoing disruptions: both the suffering they cause and the opportunities for larger system change they uncover. Your investment will both fund the needs that exist now and build toward a common vision that values justice, environmental sustainability, health, and safety for all.
From Our Board President and Executive Director: Grassroots organizers around New England have trusted the Grassroots Fund for 23 years to provide resources and support for their projects. However, the mounting challenges we face – environmental, social, and political - require that we re-imagine not only the what, but the how, of our work.
This summer, fellow Faizah Barlas is creating the Toolkit Report, which will function as a resource for grassroots organizations to understand Grassroots Funds’ Guiding Values and provide examples of grassroots organizations and projects that successfully embody those values. The report will explain two of Grassroots Funds’ core values: Just Transition and Shifting Power. Read more about Faizah's process to unpack these terms:
This June, the Grassroots Fund, in deep collaboration with volunteer grant reviewers, distributed $374,099 to 121 grassroots groups throughout New England. Of those groups, 29 were awarded Young Leader grants, and - count ‘em - 92 were awarded Grow grants. All told, this was the Grassroots Fund’s biggest grant round ever.
Migrant Justice was started in early 2009 after the death of a young farmworker, José Obeth Santiz Cruz, who was pulled into a mechanized gutter scraper and was strangled to death on the farm he used to work. This was an accident that could have been prevented if the right equipment was in use.
If you believe in the unifying power of civic engagement...
If you believe in reserving seats at the table – or building a new table – for those who are underrepresented, marginalized, or who don’t have a voice at all...
If you believe in changemaking that depends on the solidarity of the many rather than the generosity of the few...
...please, join our Spring Appeal and consider becoming a sustaining donor today.
When communities have agency, they are more likely to resist injustice and create lasting environmental change. Working from that assumption, we are supporting communities in cultivating agency, often through civic engagement, volunteerism, and by supporting emerging leaders in networked initiatives.
In the Spring of 2018, Quatia Osorio made a big decision: she was going back to school. The Providence, Rhode Island, resident had decided to enroll in a Midwife program, to build upon the work she had been doing as a maternal health worker and doula in her community. Then came the question of what her absence would mean.
This month, we received over 110 Grow Grants and over 50 Young Leader Letters of Interest - our most grant requests in a single round ever. Our offices were bustling with calls, and Program Manager Laura Flagg and I spent a lot of time preparing for our participatory review process, which starts when our applications are submitted and will conclude this June after our in-person Grantmaking Committee retreat. In the name of transparency with our applicants, partners, and funders, we decided to take you “inside” the Grassroots Fund via a Skype conversation we had on the date that Grow grant applications were due.
