Today, the Disability Inclusion Fund is thrilled to announce its inaugural round of grants to 22 disability inclusion, rights, and justice organizations. The Disability Inclusion Fund at Borealis Philanthropy is a $10M, 5-year Fund that supports U.S. groups run by and for people with disabilities to lead transformational change.
The grantee cohort is made up of artists, advocates, and organizers. Their work is critical, and—together—underscores a critical fact: To live with a disability is not to be defined through one single prism. Our grantees work on a range of issues affecting the lives of people with disabilities. They represent communities fighting for racial justice; they include arts organizations; they are mutual aid groups. They include communities that are underrepresented and under-resourced.
They are powerful, and together, they are all building a future that is inclusive of people with disabilities.
The 22 organizations are:
- ADA 25 Advancing Leadership
- Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network
- Center for Self Advocacy
- Center for Sustainable Journalism
- Chainless Change
- Citizen Advocacy of Atlanta & DeKalb
- Detroit Disability Power
- Disability Dance Works
- Disability Voices United
- Disability Justice Culture Club
- Health Justice Commons
- The Keri Gray Group
- Living Hope Wheelchair Association
- People First Wisconsin
- Project LETS
- Rusted Spoke Productions
- San Francisco Senior and Disability Action
- Sins Invalid
- Sound Theatre
- United Hmong With Disabilities
- Visionaries of the Creative Arts
- Women Enabled International
As we shared earlier this year, the DIF takes a participatory approach to grantmaking. We do this because it matters who is at the decision-making table. Because of their lived experiences as people with disabilities who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, our grantmaking advocates understand that there are many ways to support disability justice, and that we need leaders who live those connections to lead the way. “Our grantmaking advocates brought invaluable perspectives, and the highest level of care to this process,” shared Nikki Brown-Booker, program officer for DIF. “For them, this was not an exercise in hypothetical thinking—this was about the issues and values they’ve been fighting for in their lives and over their careers.”
“People with disabilities bring unique perspectives to tackling injustice and inequality, particularly disabled women, Black, indigenous, queer, and gender-nonconforming leaders,” says Ford Foundation President Darren Walker. “The work toward a just and more equitable world requires intersectional solutions. The key to beginning a path forward is putting people with disabilities and those most impacted by inequality at the forefront of these solutions. With this inaugural round of grants from the Disability Inclusion Fund, foundations have centered the experiences of community advocates and recognized that they hold the knowledge and solutions for what it takes to build truly inclusive societies. We welcome other funders to join us in moving this kind of support from the exception to the norm.”
The new DIF grantees are visionary together, and also individually. Yet some in the cohort have gone under the radar, without prior acknowledgement or support from philanthropy for their critical work. “This is an incredibly impressive group of grantees, and our hope is that leaders across philanthropy will take the time to get to know their work,” said Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “For example, Project LETS, a grassroots organization of and for people with lived experiences of mental illness, disability, trauma, and neurodivergence, will develop a youth-focused mental health advocacy program. Another grantee, Visionaries of the Creative Arts, a newly-formed performing arts organization of artists who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, will showcase artists’ culturally-distinct work exploring issues of social justice. These grants and the entire cohort exemplify the guiding values of the DIF.”
The Disability Inclusion Fund is a donor collaborative housed at Borealis Philanthropy. Current donors include the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The California Endowment, The California Wellness Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, The New York Women’s Foundation, NoVo Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Ruderman Family Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, WITH Foundation, and anonymous donors.