BLMF GRANTEE PARTNER, DREAM DEFENDERS
BLMF GRANTEE PARTNER, SOLUTIONS NOT PUNISHMENT COLLABORATIVE (SNAP CO)
The Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF) supports the Movement for Black Lives and other values-aligned organizations to better shape policy agendas for Black communities, create alternatives to institutions that have been harmful to Black people, and build local Black community power.
The BLMF exists to ensure that progressive, Black-led movement organizations have the resources, visibility, infrastructure and leadership capacity to sustain their day-to-day work. This includes the organizing, advocacy and collective care needed to combat anti-Black racism, ableism, cis-heteropatriarchy, and state violence in their communities and achieve transformational and lasting change.
The BLMF was launched in 2016 and has since moved more than $36 million in 461 grants to Black-led organizations!
BLMF GRANTEE PARTNER, ACTION STL
The Latest from the BLMF
The BLMF prioritizes funding for:
- Groups centering the leadership of Black women/femmes, girls, as well as queer and trans people.
- Groups building local power, particularly in the South and Midwest, where funding opportunities for Black-led organizing are more often scarce.
- Groups experimenting with new approaches to community safety or other strategic experiments that are less likely to be funded by institutional philanthropy.
- Groups that have an intersectional connection to other issues and movements, such as climate justice, food and land justice, im/migration, reproductive justice, prison industrial complex abolition, disability justice, gender justice, and economic justice.
- Groups working within the M4BL ecosystem, or within other movement ecosystems that are politically aligned with the M4BL Values.
- Community organizing, advocacy, and/or policy work, or other work that moves ideas and practices of disability inclusion and disability justice forward.
The BLMF’s Grantmaking Process
In 2023, the BLMF transitioned to a fully participatory grantmaking process. This approach allows us to include more voices in the decision-making process, democratizing how funding is allocated to our community while offering greater transparency in our grantmaking. A committee of 10 individuals, representing communities, groups, and networks within or politically aligned with the Movement for Black Lives, now makes funding decisions for multi-year grants from the BLMF.
Current Funding Opportunities
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Donor Benefits
As a donor collaborative, the BLMF offers funders:
- Deep knowledge and insight about Black-led movement strategy and tactics
- Relationships with expert staff who are connected to local Black-led movement organizations in every region
- Knowledge exchange with allied funders
- Giving that is aligned with the movement’s needs
- Capacity building add-ons for individual groups and the M4BL ecosystem
- Deepening existing social justice commitments to include and center disability justice through trust and relationship building.