WHO DOES THE CATALYST FUND SUPPORT?

The Catalyst Fund supports organizations that are using grassroots organizing to advance reproductive justice policy and systems change. It centers efforts led by women of color while also supporting work led by low-income white women and transgender people, who together make up the constituencies who experience the greatest reproductive health disparities and the largest barriers to reproductive freedom in the U.S.

Catalyst awards grants directly to grassroots organizations, including matching grants designed to bolster organizations’ efforts to raise new money from other sources. Particular attention is paid to organizations building cross-movement alliances between reproductive justice efforts and other social justice organizations, including labor, environmental and economic justice. Catalyst also awards matching grants to public foundations and women’s funds who make grants to organizations led by women of color and transgender people of color. Catalyst grantees are the main participants in Groundswell’s two flagship capacity building programs aimed at boosting the grassroots power of the field: the Integrated Voter Engagement Program and the Grassroots Organizing Institute. Catalyst has a strong track record of galvanizing new money for RJ from foundations and individual donors. Since Groundswell’s first RJ grants were made in 2008, grantmaking partners and grassroots organizations receiving matching grants have catalyzed $41 million into primarily women of color-led RJ work. The Catalyst partners referred to here include: Grantmaking Partners (public foundations and women’s funds that receive matching grants from Catalyst, fundraise from donors to raise the match, and then re-grant dollars to women of color-led RJ organizations) and direct matching grantees (grassroots organizations who receive matching grants directly from Catalyst and raise a dollar for dollar match).

When identifying groups to support through the Catalyst Fund, Groundswell looks for organizations with:

• A highly engaged and growing membership/constituent base comprised of people directly impacted by the conditions that they seek to transform;
• Organizational leadership that reflects the diversity of this base;
• Clear mechanisms for leadership development;
• The ability to mobilize a base to win concrete policy changes;
• A strategic direction with clear goals and objectives that are driven by the membership/constituency;
• Ability to forge inter- and cross-movement alliances and to work well in coalition;
• Innovation in framing and thought leadership;
• A clear timeline for achieving goals and objectives and organizational capacity to achieve these;
• An integrated racial, gender, and economic justice analysis;
• Connections to intermediary support organizations that build the capacity and collective power of the RJ movement;
• A strong track record of policy wins or strong strategy towards future wins; and
• System for measuring the impact of the work, including clearly defined benchmarks for success.