Building an Organized Grassroots Base of Support for Reproductive Justice: Catalyst Fund Update

Advancing reproductive justice demands grassroots organizing.

Groundswell Fund, founded in 2013, launched the Catalyst Fund to empower the nation’s strongest reproductive justice organizing led by women of color, low-income women, and transgender and gender-expansive people of color.

The Catalyst Fund focuses on grassroots organizing to drive policy and systems change. While the fund may center the leadership of women of color, it also supports initiatives led by low-income white women and transgender individuals—constituencies facing the most significant reproductive health disparities and barriers to reproductive freedom in the United States.

Throughout 2023, Catalyst Fund grantee partners took bold action to defend and advance reproductive justice, particularly across frontline regions in the South, Southwest, and Midwest. In an increasingly restrictive environment of governmental policing targeting Black and Brown women, transgender, and gender-expansive people, these efforts were critical in preparation for the pivotal 2024 election.

Catalyst Fund awarded $4.7 million to 63 grantees in 2023, surpassing our $4.5 million 2025 goal set in the 2020–2025 Blueprint.

The November 2024 election results mark a turning point in our nation’s history. The most marginalized communities—those at the crosshairs of race, class, and gender—will be hit the hardest.

Supporting the Catalyst Fund in empowering bold grassroots leaders on the frontlines of reproductive justice will ensure robust funding of grassroots movements that fight for the rights, safety, and dignity of all. Your donation expands critical resources for communities most impacted by systemic barriers, driving lasting change where needed most.

Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE) 

Building power and sustaining a young people’s movement for reproductive justice 

In 2023, Groundswell’s Catalyst Fund grantee URGE supported youth of color and LGBTQ youth organizing around the Ohio ballot initiative to restore and preserve abortion access. URGE collected signatures and co-led the campaign to get abortion on the ballot last November.

URGE, in partnership with the Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, filed over 700,000 signatures and succeeded in placing The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety Amendment on the 2023 General Election ballot.

Ohio was the only state to include abortion on the ballot for November 2023. Ohio voters approved the measure by a margin of 56.6% to 43.4%, marking the first time a Republican-controlled state has affirmed the right to abortion in its state constitution.

“Young people will be a crucial voting bloc heading into 2024, with tens of millions of new eligible voters since the 2016 election holding power that can shape the outcome of federal, state and local races.”

— URGE

 SOURCE: gswell.info/URGEquote

Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR)

Working to enable Latinx individuals and their families to lead safe, healthy, self-determined lives

In 2023, Catalyst Fund grantee COLOR, in partnership with New Era Colorado, organized heavily around SB23-190, making Colorado the first state to regulate abortion pill reversal, an unproven and experimental practice offered by anti-abortion centers that target youth and communities of color across Colorado.

The passage of SB23-190 helps ensure that abortion is legal and that all reproductive care offered in Colorado is safe and transparent. In coalition with other reproductive health and justice organizations, COLOR also filed language for a groundbreaking 2024 ballot measure that will enshrine the right to abortion care into the state constitution and ensure every Colorado person can exercise that right regardless of the source of their insurance coverage.