ARTICLE
Funding And Grant Resources For Nonprofits Serving The LGBTQ+ Community
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Pride Month is a great time to celebrate and reflect on the work activists and nonprofit organizations are doing to support the LGBTQ+ community. With that in mind, I wanted to share a list of funding and grant resources available for nonprofits serving that community.
Grant Research Tip: As you search for funding opportunities, keep an eye on the grant application deadlines. One way to track those is by setting up a grant calendar. At Grantli, I’ve created a Grant Tracking Template that will easily keep all of your grant deadlines in one place. Sign up for “The Grant Hunt Simplified” to learn the best way to search for grants and to receive this free template, as well as many others that are crucial to your grant research success.
Note: If your organization doesn’t work with this population, please check out the many other funder lists I’ve created.
Funding Priority: LGBTQ+
- MADRE
- Elton John AIDS Foundation
- Urgent Action Fund
- Visibility Impact Fund
- Groundswell Fund
- Mary’s Pence
- Third Wave Fund
- Point of Pride
- Prism Foundation
- Pride Foundation
- PFund Foundation
- Alliance for Full Acceptance
- Our Fund
- Horizons Foundation
- Vermont Women’s Fund
- The Vermont Community Foundation
- Seventh Generation Fund For Indigenous People
- The New York Women’s Foundation
- Stonewall Community Foundation
- New York Foundation
- Maine Community Foundation
- New Harvest Foundation
- Leeway Foundation
- Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan
MADRE
MADRE funds community-based women’s organizations to meet urgent needs and achieve their long-term goals. They focus their partnerships on women-led organizations that prioritize the leadership of young women and girls, Indigenous women, Afro-descendant women, LGBTIQ people, and people with disabilities. MADRE works in communities that war or disaster have rendered difficult to fund and challenging to reach.
Areas served: Worldwide
Elton John AIDS Foundation
As a leader in the global AIDS community, the Elton John AIDS Foundation is committed to overcome the stigma, discrimination, and neglect that keeps the world from ending AIDS. They welcome inquiries from organizations delivering HIV programs that have an immediate and lasting impact on the LGBTQ+ community.
Areas served: Worldwide
Urgent Action Fund
The Urgent Action Fund’s Rapid Response Grants resource the resilience of human rights and gender justice movements by supporting the security and advocacy interventions of activists when a swift response is needed. Specifically, Rapid Response Grants offer quick, flexible funding to respond to security threats or unexpected advocacy opportunities experienced by women, transgender, or gender non-conforming activists and human rights defenders.
Areas served: Canada, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Russia, The South Caucasus, Turkey, United States, and Western Europe
Visibility Impact Fund
The Visibility Impact Fund seeks to support and empower bi+ specific organizations, programming, and training to impact bi+ visibility and well-being. They will be interpreting the types of work and programs which fulfill this mission broadly and they will fund organizations that are not focused solely on the bi+ communities. However, grant funding must specifically serve the bi+ community.
Areas served: United States
Groundswell Fund (Black Trans Fund)
Launched in 2020, the Black Trans Fund (BTF) seeks to change culture by shifting the narrative about Black trans communities towards joy and resilience, and away from violence and despair. The Black Trans Fund is the first national fund in the country dedicated to uplifting, resourcing, and building the capacity of Black trans social justice leaders.
Areas served: United States
Mary’s Pence
Mary’s Pence funds grassroots organizations that are led by women and that are centered on issues women face or on gender justice issues, benefitting and primarily led by cis women, trans women, or non-binary people. Organizations must also be community centered, working to enact long-term sustainable change at the community level and focused on social justice actions.
Areas served: United States
Third Wave Fund (Mobilize Power Fund)
The Mobilize Power Fund is a rapid response fund that resources gender justice organizations to adapt or pivot their work when met with unanticipated, time-sensitive opportunities or threats to their movement-building work and organizing conditions. The Mobilize Power Fund prioritizes organizations that are led by young women of color (transgender and cisgender), and trans, queer, gender non conforming and intersex young people of color under 35, led by and for communities directly impacted by the issues they focus on, have an intersectional gender justice lens, and have a total organizational budget under $500k. Groups do not need 501(c)(3) of fiscal sponsor status to apply.
Areas served: United States
Point of Pride
Point of Pride provides financial aid and direct support to trans folks in need of health and wellness care. Most of their funding is for individuals and not for organizations.
Areas served: United States
Prism Foundation
The Prism Foundation empowers the Asian & Pacific Islander LGBTQ+ community by raising critical funds and mobilizing resources to build a more just and equitable society. The foundation provides grants for projects and nonprofits that are positively impacting the Asian & Pacific Islander LGBTQ+ communities.
Areas served: United States
Pride Foundation
Pride Foundation provides critical funding to the community organizations that are actively addressing the needs of and expanding opportunities for LGBTQ+ people in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. They offer grants through three areas of funding: Community Grants Program, Crisis Community Care Fund, and the Oregon Immigrant and Refugee Funders Collaborative.
Areas served: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington
PFund Foundation
PFund Foundation builds community and provides resources for LGBTQ+ individuals across the upper Midwest and the First Nations therein. PRISM (Promoting Rural Interconnections for Sexual Minorities) grants support to rural LGBTQ+ organizations from across PFund’s five-state service area. PRISM grants are a new initiative being piloted by PFund in 2022 and made possible in part due to funding from the Northwest Area Foundation.
Areas served: Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin
Alliance for Full Acceptance
The Alliance for Full Acceptance Small Grants Program funds programming, organization building, and/or support to nonprofit organizations addressing the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth. They seek to fund organizations working for fundamental social change and demonstrating practical alternatives to social justice for LGBTQ+ youth.
Areas served: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
Our Fund
Our Fund Foundation promotes a culture of responsible philanthropy by uniting donors with organizations supporting the LGBT community to make South Florida the most livable community in the country for LGBT people. Our Fund has redesigned its grant process to focus on three key areas with its discretionary grants: Health & Wellness, Social Justice & Equity, and Arts & Culture.
Areas served: Southern Florida
Horizons Foundation
Horizons Foundation seeks to support LGBTQ+ donor engagement opportunities of large LGBTQ+-primary organizations. The LGBTQ+ Donor Engagement Program exists to support annual fundraising events. Horizons will be accepting applications in June 2022 for donor engagement events taking place between July to December 2022.
Areas served: San Francisco Bay Area
Vermont Women’s Fund
The Vermont Women’s Fund, a component fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, was established in 1994 as an enduring resource for Vermont’s women and girls. Their definition of women and girls is inclusive of cis and trans women and girls, as well as non-binary people affected by gender oppression. The fund focuses their grantmaking on supporting women and girls on pathways to economic well-being, including career development.
Areas served: Vermont
The Vermont Community Foundation (Samara Fund)
The Vermont Community Foundation’s Samara Fund supports projects or organizations that serve Vermont’s LGBTQ+ communities or support HIV/AIDS services or prevention for LGBTQ+ Vermonters. Organizations that are not LGBTQ+ or HIV/AIDS focused may apply for support for projects that directly serve Vermont’s LGBTQ+ communities. Priority is given to projects that collaborate with and center LGBTQ+ voices and communities.
Areas served: Vermont
Seventh Generation Fund For Indigenous People (Thriving Women)
The Thriving Women funding initiative centers and uplifts Indigenous women’s leadership and strategies to reclaim traditional matrilineal lifeways that have sustained and built nations since time immemorial. The program supports grassroots, Indigenous women-led and women-serving initiatives to prevent and remedy gender oppression, including strategies addressing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two Spirit Relatives. Note: There are currently no open calls for applications.
Areas served: Native organizations
The New York Women’s Foundation
The New York Women’s Foundation provides funds to organizations and programs within the five boroughs of New York City that have community-led solutions to propel all women, girls, and gender non-conforming individuals living at/below the poverty level towards long-term economic security. The Foundation considers requests from organizations and programs that impact women’s lives in one or more of the following focus areas: Economic Justice, Anti-Violence and Safety, and Health, Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice.
Areas served: New York City
Stonewall Community Foundation
Stonewall Community Foundation invests in dynamic organizations, projects, and leaders that elevate LGBTQ people and their cultural contributions, advance their rights, and promote their wellness, safety, and liberation. Join the Stonewall Community Foundation mailing list to get notifications about future grant opportunities.
Areas served: New York City
New York Foundation
New York Foundation funds community organizing and grassroots advocacy led by and for people who live in New York City. They prioritize emerging organizations that center racial, economic, gender, disability, and climate justice, led by Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+ people, women, and people of color. They fund organizations who use community organizing and grassroots advocacy as primary strategies to address the root causes of oppression
Areas served: New York City
Maine Community Foundation (Equity Fund)
Maine Community Foundation works with donors and other partners to improve the quality of life for all Maine people. The Equity Fund’s mission is to strengthen lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) organizations in Maine and support community-based initiatives.
Areas served: Maine
New Harvest Foundation
New Harvest Foundation is the only foundation in Dane County that channels charitable contributions exclusively to organizations working to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights, services, culture, and community development.
Areas served: Wisconsin
Leeway Foundation
Leeway Foundation’s grantmaking programs fund women, trans, and gender nonconforming artists and cultural producers living in Greater Philadelphia who engage in art and social change work.
Areas served: Greater Philadelphia (Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties)
Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan (HOPE Fund)
The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s HOPE Fund (Helping Others through Partnerships and Education) was created to strengthen organizations and projects that support LGBTQ+ individuals and families through targeted grantmaking, projects, and technical assistance.
Areas served: Southeast Michigan
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Kristen Hay
Oliver Mulherin