Never Backing Down: Funding and Supporting Trans, Intersex, and GNC Leadership

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Our 2020 rapid response fund, Mobilize Power Fund, has been busy this year! We’re breaking our own records by double, and getting ready for an important transition after the September cycle!

As of April, we began to receive an unprecedented amount of applications to the Mobilize Power Fund, reflecting the urgency and need experienced by young queer and trans BIPOC organizers and their communities in response to COVID-19, and the movements to end all forms of anti-Black violence. We saw and felt the need to be deeply responsive to the moment and spent down our entire year's rapid response budget just within the month of April and May.

With care, communication, and cross-organization support, we were able to continue to meet both the growing needs and dreams of BIPOC communities - centering those who are youth, trans, disabled, sex workers, incarcerated, undocumented, and unhoused- visioning towards community care, abolition, and collective liberation. As a result, so far this year we have given out over $720,000 in rapid response funds to over 70 different grantees from all across the country and U.S territories. This was a huge jump from 2019, when we gave out over $366,000 through 43 grantees, which at the time, was the highest amount of funding we've given out through the Mobilize Power Fund since its inception in 2015. As a public foundation who raises every dollar we make in grantmaking, this year has been huge!

We want to fully recognize and celebrate the amount of record-breaking resources we have been able to mobilize to our communities in such a short amount of time! We also need  to make sure our capacity and practices are sustainable for what's needed up ahead. In order to do both, we are closing the Mobilize Power Fund for October, November, and December of this year in order to rest, reflect, and revise.

‍September 8th is our last deadline of 2020 before the Mobilize Power Fund closes for the year. The Mobilize Power Fund will re-open in early 2021 and will be more ready and well-rested to resource the rapid response needs of our movements in real-time. In Solidarity, Third Wave Fund Programs Staff