The Giving Project
The Giving Project Fund for Community Organizing
The Giving Project Fund for Community Organizing is a participatory grantmaking program that provides unrestricted, general operating support to community organizing groups advancing justice (economic, environmental, racial, and social) and tribal sovereignty in Maine, unceded Wabanaki Territory.
Fundraising and grantmaking is made by a donor organizing cohort, a cross-class, multiracial, multigenerational group of approximately 20 people who commit to a 6-month program to deepen their political understanding, build relationships, gain fundraising and mutual aid experience, and resource vital community organizing efforts across our state.
Grantees
Purpose
We believe in self-resourcing, community-led movements to build power.
The purpose of the Giving Project Fund for Community Organizing is to resource social change movements and organizing efforts by shifting money to community organizing groups advancing social, economic, environmental, and racial justice & tribal sovereignty in Maine, unceded Wabanaki Territory.
We focus on community organizing because we believe that lasting change comes from the bottom up, affecting not just political and economic systems but also the culture of communities. Community organizing involves the most people, allowing for the greatest diversity and number of perspectives to be expressed. Community organizing is the exercise of democracy in action.
We need to build our skills and infrastructure to fund our own movements.
Through the Giving Project, a cross-class, multi-racial, multi-generational cohort of community members convene regularly over six months for engaged learning and training to collectively mobilize resources to support community organizing. These donor-organizers raise funds through their networks for the Giving Project Fund and then make the grant award decisions.
The national Giving Project Network includes the Bread and Roses Community Fund in Philadelphia, the Chinook Fund in Denver, the Crossroads Fund in Chicago, Hawaii People’s Fund in Honolulu, Headwaters Foundation for Justice in Minneapolis, and the North Star Fund in New York City.