Open Society Foundations commit $50M to women and youth groups' work on democracy
NEW YORK — Open Society Foundations, the leading philanthropy now led by Alex Soros, said Tuesday it will commit $50 million to increase civic engagement among women and youth over the next three years as part of its strategy to strengthen democracy in the US. to support.
Alex Soros, chairman of the Open Society Foundations and son of its founder, billionaire investor George Soros, said advocacy for women and younger generations is essential to halt the progress of authoritarianism.
“In the early stages of the Trump administration, philanthropic support increased for organizations seeking to protect and defend progressive policy victories and counter democratic efforts to suppress,” Alex Soros said in a statement. “But groups dedicated to women and youth civic engagement did not see a similar increase in levels of support.”
The new Open Society commitment will support nonprofits working on a wide range of issues impacting these groups, including reproductive justice, climate change, voting and gun safety.
Such support is needed, says Shawnda Chapman, director of innovative grants and research for the Ms. Foundation for Women, adding that foundations that want to support social justice should fund nonprofits in the movement as if they want them to win. The Ms. Foundation last week published a study calling for increased financial support for women and gender-nonconforming people of color who lead nonprofits on the front lines of social justice issues.
In the second edition of their report, “Living With Pocket Change: What It Means To Do More With Less,” leaders of these groups are interviewed about how they are trying to stretch support from philanthropic foundations as far as possible.
“Right now, when women, women's bodies and gender non-conforming people are being attacked on a daily basis, are they willing to transfer 10% to us?” Teresa Younger, president and CEO of Ms. Foundation, said of other foundations. “Are the bodies of Black and brown women and gender non-conforming people valuable enough to continue to feel uncomfortable about the dollars in their donations and move those dollars into the field?”
OSF says the new funding will complement previous commitments it has made to U.S.-based organizations since 2020, such as $220 million for Black-led organizations working for racial justice, $100 million for Latino organizations to supporting civic engagement and immigrant rights and $52.6. million for organizations working in indigenous and Asian communities.
The new funding is explicitly not timed to influence the 2024 presidential election, said Laleh Ispahani, executive director of Open Society-US, emphasizing that the funding is nonpartisan.
“We want them to be at the forefront of informing a new agenda for any government,” she said of the beneficiaries. “We want them to be there if there is resistance again. They are important anyway.”
Grantees include Planned Parenthood, the National Women's Law Center, the Alliance for Youth Action, Run for Something and Power Rising, a member of the Black Women's Leadership Collective, which led a campaign in support of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination to The United States. Supreme Court last year.
“The fact that they would take this opportunity, make this investment to groups that are on the ground and actually doing work on a shoestring budget, was really gratifying and really just a vote of confidence for our work, for our methodology, for our strategies . said the Rev. Leah D. Daughtry, founder and co-founder of Power Rising, about the new support from OSF.
The Ms. Foundation found that many frontline organizations, like Power Rising, are working across issue areas, often with other groups and in response to evolving events. Her organization advises foundations to build on trust-based giving, support self-directed capacity building for these organizations, and reduce grantmaking tied to specific issue areas.
The report includes testimonials from leaders of color that reveal how stretched and overstretched they are, but Younger with Ms. Foundation said this should not be read as a criticism of trust-based philanthropy, which it said is highly valued. It's a reminder that more is needed.
OSF said the funds will be awarded between 2024 and 2026 and will include a mix of funding for nonprofits and advocacy groups, which have different tax status and are allowed to do more work directly campaigning on issues. Ispahani said funding for that kind of advocacy can be very valuable.
In June, OSF announced that Alex Soros had been elected head of OSF's board of directors and that the company would implement an internal organizational overhaul, laying off at least 40% of its workforce worldwide. OSF President Mark Malloch-Brown told grantees in October that the work of the U.S. program would not change until after the 2024 presidential election.
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