Rapid Response Movement Grant

Rapid Response Movement Grant is sponsored by Emergent Fund. Rolling monthly rapid response grants for organizations responding to urgent, unanticipated crises or opportunities, particularly grassroots and frontline groups. Supports emergency needs aligned with equity and movement building.

Emergent Fund is a queer women of color-led, movement-aligned participatory grantmaker with intersectional, collective liberation values. We fund rapid response and emergent organizing led by frontline Black, Indigenous, and organizers of color with trust-based, no-string-attached grants. Movements have long relied on creative collective responses to crises as strategic opportunities for visionary organizing.

All rapid response work we typically fund is explicitly grounded in movement values, power-building and organizing and represent meaningful investments in movement infrastructure. A nationally recognized philanthropy culture disruptor and praxis leader, Emergent Fund challenges power in who we fund as well as with how we fund.

Our 100% people of color and Indigenous decision-making Advisory Council and our grantees all come from directly impacted communities committed to building movement and transforming crisis into change. Emergent Fund supports the work of communities under threat to build their own reality: the one that would emerge on the other side of crisis with a powerful new vision for what comes next.

**_**To learn more about our criteria, please view the Emergent Fund FAQs). **_** **Emergent Fund Rapid Response Organizing Grants Support…** * Organizing that supports emergent strategies that help communities respond to time-sensitive, rapidly changing conditions.

This includes resisting new or amplified threats, building power to move a proactive agenda, and creating communities and cultures of care * Organizing that leverages “moveable” or “pivotable” moments to disrupt, heal, and build towards long-term social justice and economic justice in a political and social climate that seeks to dismantle such efforts.

* Organizing that explicitly seeks to dismantle, abolish, and replace systems of oppression and harm, driven by a clear intersectional power analysis and vision for collective liberation **Emergent Fund Rapid Response Grants Are Not Designed for…** * Work outside of time-sensitive and urgent rapid response & emergent organizing in direct response to a specific event, catalyst, crisis, or opportunity * Broad General Operating Support or Budget Shortfalls (including back-to-back, repeated proposals) * Government or State Agencies, Universities * Charity, Direct Services/Community Programming without an organizing foundation * Religious institutions and affiliated programs * International work or work based outside of the United States and U.S. Occupied Territories * For-profit Business, Social Enterprise, Start-Up Costs, Capital-Raising campaigns * Individuals (activists, consultants) * Work or entities that promote or collude with systems of oppression and harm, that lack sound power analysis or understanding of collective liberation _**Advisory Council Considerations During Grant-Making**_ * **Emergent, Trusted Organizing** New solutions responding to rapidly changing conditions in the current political environment; Proposals can be ideas, collaborations, campaigns, or organizations, whether or not they are fully formed.

We prioritize organizing led by those trusted and in direct, loving, accountable community with those they build alongside.

We see everyday how powerful organizing work speaks for itself and we center trust and relationships over “perfectly framed or comprehensively written” proposals * **Specific Context and Time-Sensitive** Concretely urgent and timely liberation work that supports the agency and power of communities responding under threat of a specific event or catalysis to build their own reality, emerging on the other side of crisis with a powerful new vision for what comes next * **Visionary Power-Building** Seeks transformational systemic changes rooted in social and economic justice.

Develops community power through organizing and/or leadership development (including through new tools), direct action, and/or cultural work * **Directly-Impacted Leadership** Nothing about us, without us.

* **Intersectional Analysis** Engages multiple identities and multi-racial alliance building as core to theory of change; organizing and structures embodies the values and vision for liberation we are working towards * **Trusted Movement Relationships**Most grantees learn about us by word of mouth or are recommended or endorsed by other grantees, the organizers on our Nominations Network, or Advisory Council * **Access to Resources** Holding space for communities who struggle to access resources for grassroots organizing, direct action, and power-building based on who they are and the type of high-risk issues and movement work they take on.

Most Emergent Fund grantees are new to philanthropy and often operate with less than $100,000. Large organizations with more than $1 Million dollar budgets and significant development infrastructure may be considered on a case-by-base basis.

_**Examples of Past Grantees’ Rapid Response Organizing Strategies and Campaigns**_ * **Coalitions/Alliances*** Multi-issue, multi-constituent alliances of social change groups led by and organized in communities of color * **Mobilization** Groups mobilizing people for protest and resistance * **Organizing Integrating Base-Building, Direct Action, and Advocacy** Groups engaged in diverse and creative organizing and advocacy strategies to demand funding for our communities and the life-affirming public programs and services, creation of policies that protect (or defend) our communities so that we may thrive * **Healing Justice and Liberation** Visions for organizing that center our humanity in this challenging work and bring people of color together for the type of individual and intra-communal level work that sustains people’s spirit in our ongoing struggle for a just world * **Cultural and Digital Organizing**Ancestral wisdom, Media, Narrative, Communication and Digital tools to build collective resilience, create the cultural landscape for our organizing, and foster conditions that allow more people to recognize and tap into their own power and our collective power We recommend organizers apply by naming the need for their specific rapid response campaign or movement project needs.

Our grants have varied historically but due to an all time high demand and volume, the advisory council has leaned towards funding more projects but at a average maximum grant size of $10K. A sign that the Emergent Fund rapid response fund is not a fit for you is if you apply and indicate your whole organizational budget as your total grant request or if you apply back-to-back on a monthly or annual basis.

We recommend applying to the other values-aligned funders who have deeper capacity and broader capacity for your annual, general, ongoing capacity needs. 11/16/2023 5:00 PM PST / 8:00 PM EST Decisions Expected to be Announced: Before you get started, learn more about how the JustFund Common Application™ works. Please ensure that all fields in your profile are up to date.

As part of your application, your profile information will also be submitted and dated at time of submission.

### Application Specific Questions * Tell us about the specific time-sensitive, catalytic moment/crisis/opportunity you are organizing in response to and how your work mobilizes impacted communities to build power for long term social change and grow social justice movements [2-4 SHORT SENTENCES] ------------ > Emergent Fund's core criteria is funding time-urgent rapid response and emergent movement organizing and direct actions in response to a specific event, crisis, or opportunity.

We are NOT a general supplemental pool of funding to apply to every year for your organization's broad revenue or ongoing organizational capacity needs. Learn more here: https://www. emergentfund.

net/faqs* * * How is your organization led by and for majority Black, Indigenous, People of Color communities and reflect the type of people power we are trying to build in this world? See Emergent Fund FAQs https://www. emergentfund.

net/faqs) for how we define BIPOC-led. * * * What is your total organizational budget (as a whole, not just the organizing arm of your work or budget specific to this project) and what does the funding landscape look like right now for your organizing (i.e. do you rely on small donations, large institutional foundations, major government contracts, no funding/all volunteer-led, corporate donors, etc)? * *