Capacity Building

Groundswell is not funding new organizations in 2025.

Due to restructuring, our team is determining the best way to approach Groundswell’s next phase of grantmaking, and we appreciate your patience as we finalize the details.

We hope to share updates later in the year for the Groundswell of 2026 and beyond, including funding availability, application timelines, and eligibility criteria.

In 2024, we dispersed $4M to Capacity Building grantees.

Of that $4M, $2.9M was moved to Integrated Voter Engagement program grantees, while $1.1M was moved to Grassroots Organizing Institute grantees. We also provided $3M in technical assistance support to all capacity-building grantees.

360˚ Vision is Required

Too often, philanthropy asks for strict, flat, and isolated outcomes while missing the bigger picture.

We believe that a key strength of intersectional organizing is 360˚ vision. With a wide angle, Groundswell Fund sights capture the overlapping dimensions of identity, historical context, and power dynamics in order to develop stronger, smarter communities. By resourcing the grassroots, we support those closest to the communities and issues at hand.

The Groundswell Fund’s approach supports movement and the communities backing it in process and outcome.

Groundswell’s general operating funds help social movement organizations maintain a vibrant and organized grassroots base with the power to defend key victories and win again, year after year.

Aligned with Groundswell’s Blueprint, our Capacity Building Program sharpens our shared vision, strategies, and tactics in the areas of race, class, gender, and decolonization lenses.

Our Capacity Building Program is oriented around three key areas:

Political Education: Groundswell Fund activates our theory-to-action continuum in practice with our grantee partners. By supporting access to the theories, texts, and leaders that help bridge issue-specific causes with shared understanding.
Infrastructure & Internal Systems: We plan to work with a movement-trusted organizational development provider in order to build out the infrastructure of their internal systems.
Whole-Person, Whole-Organization: We believe in whole-person, whole-organization leadership, and power-building. In addition to supporting access to safer strategy workshop space for RJ executive-level staff, we’re also connecting skill-building opportunities for mid-level management staff. By making space for healing justice in this work, like the Windcall Institute, and thereby increase the capacity of movement leadership.

Read more about our current Blueprint based on grantee feedback and the input of national, local, and global leaders in social and reproductive justice.

Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR)

Groundswell offers capacity-building support to our grantees with a focus on grassroots power building

COLOR and other allies’ organizing efforts led to the defeat of Colorado Proposition 115, a 22-week abortion ban measure, with 59% of voters opposing the proposition.

Capacity-Building's Impact

Asked and Answered. Capacity Building Creates a New Set Point.

Groundswell Fund moves from the underlying principle grassroots power is built and maintained through strong organizations with the infrastructure and the agility to deliver real change in the lives of people in their communities.

When we asked our grantee partners how we could support them in leaning into an opportunity to skill and scale their grassroots power…they responded.

Groundswell Fund answered with the Grassroots Organizing Institute (GOI) and an Integrated Voter Engagement (IVE) program.

Our programs are opt-in, and participation is not required to receive grant funding. Some examples of our capacity-building offers include:

Tools and technology to assess and scale impact
Coaching to foster peer learning and support among grantee organizations. Our coaches are some of the most seasoned people of color, women of color, transgender and gender-expansive grassroots and electoral organizing expert practitioners from across the country
Training on cutting-edge techniques for voter engagement and grassroots power-building
Funding to support the staffing and infrastructure needed for organizations to increase their impact
Political education to deepen the race, class, gender, and decolonization analysis of organizations

Mind-body modalities to support the health and sustainability of leaders and organizations.