Fall Grantees Focus on Grassroots Work to Lift LGBTQ Voices, Emphasizing Transgender Leadership

Many of the grantees for the fall funding cycle are focused on lifting and amplifying the work of grassroots organizations that advocate for LGBTQ rights and justice, particularly those by and for the transgender community.

Borealis Philanthropy is using its grant to support the Fund for Trans Generations, a collaborative that supports trans communities throughout the United States through direct grants, organizational development support, and peer learning. The Fund provides resources to over 50 trans-led, U.S.-based organizations to increase safety and security for trans people. It also engages trans leaders in grantmaking advisory roles that provide opportunities to inform the grantmaking process, while ensuring that trans issues gain visibility beyond the LGBTQ philanthropic community.

Support to the Transgender Law Center will focus on work in the Southeastern United States, where its grant will continue grassroots efforts to maintain and expand social and economic protections for the transgender community, as well as continue litigation work addressing employment, education, public accommodation, and prisons. The Trans Justice Funding Project will work with grassroots, trans-led justice groups through a community-led grantmaking process administered by the Tides Foundation.

The Other Foundation will use its funding to support LGTBQ grantmaking and movement-building in Southern Africa by contributing to the strengthening of local groups and networks, knowledge generation, and media engagement. Meanwhile, the Third Wave Fund (administered through the Proteus Fund) will help build the capacity of various trans-movement organizations that forge partnerships to advance social change and gender justice. The Fund also focuses on capacity-building programs for organizations led by LGBTQ people of color.

Several organizations this funding cycle will use their grants to focus on LGTBQ youth. California Rural Legal Assistance is working to advance protections for low-income LGBTQ youth, immigrants, and transgender people. The Dolores C. Huerta Foundation will direct funds to its Youth Leadership Program, which focuses on LGBTQ youth and family leadership. Meanwhile, GLSEN is working to advance safety, protections, and inclusion and acceptance for LGBTQ youth in K-12 schools nationwide.

Our Fund will use its support for the Contigo Fund, a participatory philanthropic model to support the recovery and long-term empowerment of those impacted by the June 2016 Pulse tragedy to build infrastructure and help find solutions to the disparities found in Central Florida communities. The Contigo Fund is community-driven and has emerged as a replicable local philanthropy model that encourages self-determination.

Also receiving grants this funding cycle are: Malawi Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS (MANERELA+), Soulforce; Forward Together; Gender Diversity; National Transgender Bar Association (Trans United); Union Theological Seminary; American Psychological Association; Cornell University; European Region of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association; Human Rights Watch; International Service for Human Rights; ORAM – Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration; OutRight Action International; and Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.