Giving Projects
What is a Giving Project?
Giving Projects are a unique, participatory model of funding that provides significant financial resources to grassroots organizing for long-term progressive social change. Giving Projects bring together a diverse group of people of varied class identities who are passionate about social change and want to strengthen their skills in fundraising, grantmaking, and community building. Participants work together to deepen their understanding of social justice principles and engage in collective giving and fundraising to support grassroots organizations.
The Giving Project is a process. It requires a commitment of your time, energy, and resources over a period of six months. The basic Giving Project structure is:
- A cross-class, multiracial group of 15-20 people commits to gathering for a series of workshops over the course of 6 months.
- Through workshops, the group develops a shared understanding of racism, classism, and power in society and in the Giving Project.
- Each person makes a meaningful financial gift — whatever that means for you.
- Each person commits to fundraising from their friends, family and community move money to grassroots organizing through grants. Social Justice Fund’s staff will train you in grassroots fundraising and support you along the way.
- Participants will be trained in Social Justice Fund’s democratic grantmaking process. You will read and score proposals, participate in site visits, make collective decisions, and grant money to some of the most inspiring, effective social change work in the Northwest.
All Giving Projects will follow roughly the same process:
- Community building, including personal storytelling and setting personal & collective goals.
- Political education about racism, classism, Black liberation, and the grantmaking issue area for the Project.
- Grantmaking training about social justice philanthropy, SJF’s grantmaking criteria, and decision-making processes.
- Fundraising training focused on grassroots fundraising skills and learning how to make an ask.
- Ongoing fundraising with support from SJF staff and other Giving Project members.
- Reading and scoring grant applications.
- Screening meeting to decide, as a group, which applicants will get site visits.
- Site visits to meet with finalist organizations and learn about their work directly from them.
- Final decision meeting to review site visit reports and decide together which organizations will receive grants.
- Celebrate our successes and evaluate the process so the next giving project will be even better.
The Giving Project participants will use Social Justice Fund’s grantmaking criteria to select grantees. We fund grassroots community organizing led by the people most impacted by injustice and working for systemic change.
More specifically, we give grants to groups that:
- Are led by the people most directly affected by the issues the organization is working on
- Continually build leadership from within their own membership, base, or community
- Work to understand and address the root causes of the issues, not just the symptoms
- Bring people together to build power they wouldn’t have individually
- Use that power to create systemic change, which includes altering unjust power relations
- See themselves as part of a larger movement for social change, and works towards strengthening that movement
Giving Projects fund organizations throughout SJF’s funding region: Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
To learn more about apply for a Giving Project grant, please refer to our Grants Page.
- People who are committed to Black liberation (even if you’re still figuring out what that looks like in practice)
- People of any class identity, with or without access to wealth
- People ready to fully commit to the entire Giving Project process
- You do not have to be an SJF member prior to joining a Giving Project
- You do not have to know anything about non-profits, philanthropy, fundraising or the giving focus of the project
- You do not have to donate any particular amount of money; there is no minimum or maximum amount
Do apply to join a Giving Project if you…
- Want to work as a collective to move money to powerful grassroots organizing in the Northwest
- Want to learn how to ask people for money, even if it scares you
- Want to build community with a group of people committed to hard conversations, taking responsibility for any harm caused, and growing together
- Have the space to take on a challenging and transformative experience for the next 6 months
Yes! One of SJF’s core values is that leadership comes from the people most affected. We strive to incorporate that value not just in our grantmaking decisions, but in all our work. We want people involved with grantee organizations to be involved in Giving Projects, and use this process to inform and influence grantmaking. We have a simple conflict-of-interest policy to ensure that anyone closely involved with an applicant organization does not participate in decision-making for their own organization.
Frankly, most people don’t like asking for money. Most of us feel intensely uncomfortable and avoid doing it even in support of really important work! There are a lot of reasons for that, which your Giving Project will explore in workshops. We will help you learn how to ask for money effectively, and support each other through the fears. We will get clear about why we do it, and you will become a donor organizer capable of engaging with others in your life to move resources to movement work. We ask every Giving Project participant to challenge themselves, which will mean different things for different people. And you’ll have lots of support along the way!
With the arrival of the Covid pandemic in 2020 SJF moved to doing all Giving Projects online. That allowed us to include participants outside of Seattle and Portland.
A big part of what makes these projects successful is the community building that happens in and out of our workshops. We can sometimes make accommodations for people who need to travel from farther distances. Please contact us to discuss how we can help you participate in a Giving Project.
Social Justice Fund is proud to collaborate with other community foundations and justice funders in the national development of the Giving Project model. The following funds offer Giving Projects in their respective cities:
- Bread & Roses Community Fund – Philadelphia, PA
- Chinook Fund – Denver, CO
- Crossroads Fund – Chicago, IL
- Grassroots International – Boston, MA and around the U.S.
- Headwaters Foundation for Justice – Minneapolis, MN
- North Star Fund – New York, NY
- Tell others about SJF’s Giving Projects! Help get the word out.
- Provide us with outreach opportunities. Can we speak to your organizing home, faith community, professional association, student group, etc? Please let us know.
- Donate. In order to make Giving Projects work, we need financial support from people who love the idea and the work but can’t be involved themselves. You can choose to donate to any of our active Giving Projects or to the SJF annual fund.
- Get involved by attending upcoming events and activities
For more information on how to get connected to SJF’s upcoming events and activities, contact Aisha, Donor Organizing Manager.
How to Participate
If you’re interested in being a part of this innovative new model of funding social change, community building, and leadership development, apply below. Looking for more information?
If you are interested in applying for funding, please visit our grantee information page.
