Arch Community Fund

Arch Community Fund is a Delaware-based, limited-life family foundation established in 2017 by siblings Alan, Leslie, and Dean Preston, descendants of Holocaust survivors who founded Arch explicitly to resist authoritarianism and fund transformative, power-building organizing. Unlike traditional program-area funders, Arch deliberately does not prioritize by issue — its 113 tracked grants span policing/abolition (Anti Police-Terror Project, Critical Resistance), immigrant rights (Dream Action Oklahoma, African Communities Together), reproductive justice (National Network of Abortion Funds), Asian American organizing (Chinese for Affirmative Action, API Equality), housing, labor, and Indigenous justice. What unifies grantees is organizing strategy, not sector: visionary, intersectional, community-led groups building durable power. First-time applicants should know Arch runs almost entirely through a single annual open call on the JustFund Portal rather than direct outreach or LOI cultivation — with 582 applications for 13 slots in 2026 (~2% acceptance), this is a competitive cold-application process, not a relationship-built pipeline. There is no site-visit or multi-stage courtship process described; award or decline follows directly from the portal submission and review. The fund explicitly excludes networks, coalitions, and alliances, and caps eligibility at organizations with budgets of $1M or less, positioning Arch squarely as an early/mid-stage grassroots funder rather than a backer of large intermediaries. Two structural facts should shape strategy: first, Arch is spending down a fixed, non-market-invested endowment ("every expenditure draws down the endowment... until we have exhausted it"), so the funding pool is finite and shrinking, not renewable — apply while the window is open. Second, a minority of past grantees receive multi-year renewal commitments (a 2nd round was announced July 2024) roughly every third year, so continued funding is possible but not guaranteed and is not something a new applicant can request directly. Newer tracks — the Leslie Preston Healing Justice Award and the 2025-launched Independent Media Awards ($310,000 to 8 outlets) — show the fund is willing to open small, thematically distinct side-calls; watch archcommunityfund.org/updates for these rather than assuming only the core Transformative Organizing call applies.

Across the 113 tracked grants in the data set, the average grant size is $23,584 and total tracked giving is $2,665,000, closely matching Arch's own stated typical grant size of $25,000 (min $25,000, max $25,000, median $25,000 across 15 recently sampled grants) and the 2026 award range of $20,000-$30,000 per organization. Public 990 financials show total giving of $855,826 in FY2023, $809,100 in FY2022, $529,018 in FY2021, $870,788 in FY2020, and $625,117 in FY2019 — giving has generally run $500K-$870K annually, with grants paid (a related but distinct 990 line) of $690,000 (2023), $645,000 (2022), $375,000 (2021), and $685,000 (2020). Total assets have declined steadily from $8.32M (2021) to $6.43M (2024), consistent with the fund's stated spend-down posture. Geographically, the top-50 grantee list skews heavily to California (34 of 113 grants), followed by Georgia (11), Illinois (10), New York (10), Washington (9), DC (7), Oregon (7), Colorado (3), Louisiana (3), and Montana (3) — despite Arch listing only CA and NY as its formal "geographic focus," actual giving reaches at least 10 states plus DC, confirming the fund is not geographically restrictive in practice. By purpose, the overwhelming majority of grants (roughly 35 of the top 50) are coded "General & Unrestricted," underscoring Arch's core commitment to unrestricted general operating support rather than project or program grants; the remainder fund named campaigns or funds (e.g., "Justice Teams Network," "Vigilant Love," "Freedom to Thrive"). The largest cumulative recipients are Anti Police-Terror Project ($125,000 across 5 grants), Critical Resistance ($105,000/4 grants), and Chinese for Affirmative Action ($100,000/4 grants for API Equality - Northern California), illustrating that repeat, multi-year support to a stable core of grantees coexists with a wide annual cohort of new $20K-$30K single-year awards. New program tracks (Independent Media, $310,000 to 8 outlets in 2025, averaging ~$38,750/grant) run somewhat larger than the core organizing grants.

Arch operates in the trust-based, grassroots social-justice funding space alongside other small, spend-down or intermediary-style funders that route through participatory portals like JustFund rather than direct solicitation.

Arch is materially smaller in both assets and annual giving than most of its social-justice-funder peer set, and — unlike invitation-only movement funders such as Libra — it runs a fully open, competitive annual application via JustFund rather than a relationship-gated pipeline. Its distinguishing traits are an explicit no-issue-preference stance, a hard $1M applicant-budget ceiling that keeps it focused on small grassroots groups, and a finite, non-renewing endowment that peers with ongoing revenue streams do not share.

Arch's most recent action was the August 3, 2026 announcement of its 2026 Transformative Organizing Awards: $300,000 in one-year, $20,000-$30,000 grants to 13 organizations — ACT 4 SA, Colectiva Feminista en Construcción, DecARcerate Inc., Healthcare Reparations Cooperative, Huntsville Bail Fund, La ColectiVA, La Resistencia, Pa La Gente :: For the People, Project Hajra, Restore Oakland, Youth Alliance for Housing, Tsuru for Solidarity, and Voices of Florida Fund — selected from 582 applications, with Arch publicly noting "we could not meet the overwhelming need." On December 3, 2025, Arch signed the Level Up Pledge, a philanthropic accountability commitment tied to trust-based grantmaking practices. On August 6, 2025, Arch announced its first-ever Independent Media Awards, $310,000 across 8 outlets (Democracy Now!, The Real News Network, Truthout, TransLash Media, Prism, More Perfect Union, Unicorn Riot, Rural News Network) — a new grantmaking track launched specifically in response to press-freedom threats. On January 20, 2025, Arch joined the Solidaire Network / Neighborhood Funders Group Investment Praxis Community, reinforcing its values-aligned approach to investing (rather than maximizing return on) its remaining endowment assets. No leadership changes have surfaced in recent web research; co-presidents Alan Preston and Dean Preston (both uncompensated) continue to run the fund per the most recent 990 filings. The pattern across 2025-2026 shows a fund actively expanding its grantmaking surface area (new media track, healing justice award) even as it manages a shrinking, spend-down endowment — applicants should expect Arch to keep opening thematically distinct side-calls beyond the core organizing RFP.

Apply exclusively through the JustFund Portal (portal.justfund.us) during Arch's single annual open call for the Transformative Organizing program; the 2026 cycle deadline was February 26, 2026, with decisions in May and awards announced in June/July — expect the 2027 cycle to open on a similar late-year-to-February timeline, so mark early Q1 for portal registration. Registration itself takes up to 24 hours for portal-credential confirmation, so don't wait until the deadline week to create an account. Eligibility is a hard filter, not a preference: 501(c)(3) or fiscal sponsorship, U.S. headquarters, annual budget of $1,000,000 or less, and transformative organizing as the primary (not secondary) mission — networks, coalitions, and alliances are explicitly excluded, so a coalition-structured applicant should apply for a matching purpose using its most direct fiscal-sponsor entity or organizing arm's own single-org identity. Because Arch says it does not prioritize any specific issue, do not over-index proposal language on a single cause area (e.g., housing or immigration) — instead foreground organizing strategy: how the work builds durable community power, is intersectional across forms of oppression, and pairs immediate-need response with long-term structural-change goals, echoing Arch's own "resistance, community leadership, transformative solutions, intersectionality" framing from its About page. Given roughly a 2% acceptance rate in 2026 (13 of 582), budget realistically: this is a lottery-adjacent competitive call, and a single application cycle should not be a funding assumption. Ask for general operating/unrestricted support — the overwhelming majority of the top-50 grantee list is coded "General & Unrestricted," and project-restricted asks appear to be a minority pattern tied to named campaign funds. If declined, watch archcommunityfund.org/updates for Arch's smaller side-calls (the Leslie Preston Healing Justice Award for organizer care/healing-justice work, and the 2025-launched Independent Media Awards for journalism outlets) which may fit a subset of applicants better and draw far fewer submissions than the flagship round. A common mistake to avoid: applying as a coalition or network structure, or with a budget over $1M — both are automatic disqualifiers regardless of mission fit. Direct process questions to info@archcommunityfund.org and portal/technical questions to info@justfund.us — keep these separate, as Arch does not manage the JustFund platform itself.