
The Mahogany Project
Houston, TX
Applications are closed until April 3rd when our new grant management software launches.
The Rapid Response Fund provides the philanthropic community with a vehicle for deploying resources quickly and strategically to Reproductive Justice and social justice organizations during unexpected and critical campaign fights and key opportunities.
*We encourage applicants to submit requests in advance of the deadline as intake call spots can be filled up quickly.
Groundswell’s Rapid Response Fund (RRF) provides fast funding to grassroots organizations led by women of color, trans people of color, and low-income women and trans people in critical, but unexpected fights to protect and advance reproductive and social justice.
Meet Rapid Response Fund Grantees
We also celebrated the Fund’s five-year anniversary and completed an impact evaluation examining the Fund’s success and key learnings. Through examples and longer case studies in the report, we illustrate how the RRF upends the traditional experience of women of color- and gender-expansive of color-led organizations that regularly find it difficult to access the kind of philanthropic support that larger, well-resourced, mainstream, and white-led organizations do.
RRF is a multi-issue fund for the frontlines. Defending the most vulnerable communities with timely, flexible grants, RRF moves resources with an emphasis on funding in states and communities where women of color, transgender people of color, low-income women, and trans-people-led organizing is under-resourced.
Photo courtesy of Khmer Girls in Action
There is a range. The Rapid Response Fund has supported organizations doing work around activating and mobilizing their base for direct action, key campaigns, organizing opportunities, and building up coalitions and alliances. The Fund is a multi-issue Fund and has resourced work around reproductive justice, abortion care and support, trans justice, criminal legal reform and abolition work, environmental justice, healing justice, building communities and systems of care, among other critical issues of our time.
The Rapid Response Fund also collaborated with the Black Trans Fund to grant $200,000 specifically to Black trans-led organizations. In addition to the $1.1 million, RRF moved $150,000 in one-time rapid response support grants to existing Birth Justice Fund grantees.
The request is responding to an unanticipated event, political moment, and/or requires urgent or timely action. It is a new/unexpected critical opportunity or threat.
Definition of Women of Color and/or Trans and Gender Expansive (TGE) Led:
For birth justice groups, using a reproductive justice and community-centric frame to provide a spectrum of support which includes abortion services, birth, and postpartum care that is urgent and responsive to a specific event.
Building new systems and imagining new ways of care for directly impacted people outside of existing systems which may include mutual aid and food sovereignty. This must be tied to organizing and not direct service provision.
If the organization is an existing Groundswell Fund grantee, the RRF request must fall outside their existing scope of work.
We are particularly interested in supporting the following issues in response to this political moment that meets other funding criteria and addresses the following community care needs:
Groundswell Fund has made a commitment to movement to specifically increase grantmaking to Black women, Indigenous women, trans women of color, and TGE people broadly. In addition to those communities, Groundswell is also prioritizing Southern, Midwest, and rural communities. Please see Groundswell’s 2020-2025 Blueprint for details.
If you received a RRF grant in 2021 and are looking to submit another RRF request in 2022, please keep in mind:
The Rapid Response Fund does not fund:
Groundswell’s grantmaking staff reviews the requests and may seek input from trusted stakeholders familiar with the region or issue. Please take the self-assessment to see if your organization qualifies for RRF. If your organization does, you will be provided with a link to schedule an intake call at the end of the survey.
For security purposes, you must log into Gmail to complete this assessment.
Application Deadlines
Applications are closed until April 3rd when our new grant management software launches.
Please email rapidresponse@groundswell.org with any questions.