Who We Are

History

It’s about our collective liberation

For the past two decades, Groundswell has moved more than $100 million in grants and capacity-building support to nearly 300 organizations across 49 states and territories.

We have also increased the giving of dozens of national and local foundations and helped bring thousands of new individual investors to support intersectional organizing and reproductive justice.

Today, Groundswell is one of the largest funders of the Reproductive Justice movement, and a leading funder of intersectional organizing across nearly every major social change movement.

 

Black Mamas Matter Alliance

Centering Reproductive Justice

While our work has expanded, Reproductive Justice (RJ) remains the heart and soul of our work. Groundswell is also the only foundation in the country with a fund dedicated to making midwifery and doula care and training accessible to women of color, low-income women, and transgender people — a proven path to reducing racial disparities in infant and maternal health outcomes in the most vulnerable communities. Check out an impact story from BJF Grantee Black Mamas Matter Alliance.

Meet Black Mamas Matter Alliance

Black Women for Wellness

Image courtesy of Black Women for Wellness, Capacity Building grantee

Prioritizing Capacity Building

Groundswell’s agile general operating support has and continues to work to remove the greatest barriers facing the success of grassroots power-building for RJ organizations: inadequate funding and lack of access to the tools and technologies needed to “skill and scale”.

TransLatin@ Coalition
Image courtesy of TransLatin@ Coalition

We work with grantees to move Integrated Voter Engagement and Grassroots Organizing campaigns forward.

Our grantees have moved from trepidation about the public policy process to enthusiasm, organizing, and successful impact.

They have been instrumental in the passage of more than 345 progressive policies and in blocking many regressive policies, and have seen exponential growth in the number of people and voters they are engaging and mobilizing.

blueprint-infographic-1-1024x648

An Essential Irrigation System for Movements

For nearly 20 years, Groundswell Fund, our 501(c)(3), has been building an irrigation system to resource social justice movements – a channel into which individual donors and foundations can pour resources to reach vital work at the grassroots. During that time, we have become one of the largest funders of women of color-led organizing in the United States and the Reproductive Justice Movement.

Designed by women of color and trans and gender-expansive people of color – including many of the most prominent grassroots movement leaders of our time – Groundswell’s approach is thoughtful, sound, and well-aimed at the most promising and impactful organizations.

We are living proof that when a foundation is run by women of color and transgender people of color who come out of grassroots organizing, the giving looks different.

Groundswell models a remarkable kind of philanthropy – proving that building solidarity and beloved community across lines of race, class, and gender is possible.