Grants for Social Justice and Human Rights

Grants for Social Justice and Human Rights is sponsored by Open Society Foundations. Supports the use of documentary photography and art, including documentary films, to engage and mobilize people around issues of justice and human rights.

How We Fund - Open Society Foundations Every year the Open Society Foundations give grants to groups and individuals that work on the issues we care about: promoting democratic practice, advancing rights and human dignity, and working for equitable governance.

Grants awarded to organizations and individuals in 2023 Countries represented by grantees in 2023 Active impact investments as of December 2022 Building long-term relationships of trust with the entities we support, and understanding their health, effectiveness, strengths, and the challenges they face, is an integral part of the Open Society Foundations’ organization-centered approach to grant making.

The vast majority of our grants are awarded to organizations that we approach directly . The kind of grants any Open Society program makes depend on its strategy and its vision of how to use its budget most effectively. Search our database of awarded grants .

Open Society awards grants to organizations, which can include movements, coalitions, networks, collectives, and even informal groups. Guided mostly by our program staff, we support a wide range of activities—everything from discrete project grants to general operating support that cover the day-to-day costs of operations. In most cases, we will not provide more than one-third of any organization’s budget.

View grants and fellowships Open Society offers fellowships, reflecting the variety of our work—from human rights and social justice to climate change and inequality. We make private sector investments through our social impact investment arm, the Soros Economic Development Fund, to yield social impact.

Learn more about our strategic investments Our global grants seek to address intractable problems, often rooted in deep social and economic inequalities. Our funding, while considerable, is dwarfed by global financial flows of international aid and investment that may reinforce inequalities. We know that real change comes slowly, and strive to recognize both successes and failures.

A participant in the Open Society Institute's Roma Scholars Program speaks with members of the Roma community in Vanatori, Romania, on September 13, 2008. Pamela Chen/Open Society Foundations More than 20,000 people around the world have benefited directly from attending universities and colleges supported by scholarships from the Open Society Foundations.

In the 1990s, our giving directly helped citizens in the former countries of Central and Eastern Europe during the difficult transition from Communism. Today, our grants help sustain a vast array of human rights and civil society groups around the world.