A calendar of grants, resources, and funding opportunities listed by application or inquiry due date and tagged in various categories. For more information about grant, foundation, and other resources contact Laura Hennighausen at lhennighausen@purposepossible.com.
Womens Sports Foundation: Sports4Life
The Women’s Sports Foundation advances the lives of women and girls in the United States through sports and physical activity. The Foundation’s Sports 4 Life program seeks to increase the participation and retention of girls of color in sports. Funded programs must serve predominantly Black, African American, Hispanic, and Native American girls (representing more than 70% of the enrolled program participants) and deliver structured, developmental sports programming to girls ages 11 to 18 through experienced and committed leadership. In general, applicants should be nonprofit schools, parks and recreation departments, nonprofit organizations, or amateur sports leagues. Funding can be used for coaching, curriculum, equipment, uniforms, transportation, facility rental, tournaments, and team-building activities.
Grant amount: $10,000
Ribbons of Hope—Invest in Women
Ribbons of Hope—Invest in Women is dedicated to making a positive impact on the lives of women and children. Each year Ribbons of Hope awards one $100,000 grant to a nonprofit organization in Georgia that promotes education, health, economic independence, social well-being, or human rights for women or their children. The grant may be used for special projects or capital improvements that can be sustained by the organization after the grant allocation. Applying organizations must have been in operation for at least three years with a consistent operating budget of $500,000 or more annually.
Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium: Black Girls Dream Fund
Application deadline: The 2024 cycle is open through December 4, 2023, and several grantseeker workshops will be offered from November 14 through November 28, 2023.
Geographic scope: AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, East TX, WV, and VA
Grant amount: The average grant is $35,000.
The Black Girls Dream Fund, an initiative of the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium, seeks to channel greater resources toward organizations that are intentionally supporting and empowering Black girls and women in the South.
For 2024, the Fund is providing general operating grants to support the capacity of organizations that care for Black girls. Black women-led and girl-led nonprofit organizations and fiscally sponsored projects within Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, East Texas, West Virginia, and Virginia are eligible to apply. Support is provided in five categories: education, health and wellness, economic opportunity, social justice, and leadership and empowerment.
American Association of University Women: Community Action Grants
Geographic scope: United States, including U.S. territories
Grant amount: $3,000 to $10,000
The American Association of University Women's Community Action Grants provide funding for programs that promote education and equity for women and girls in the United States. Project support is available to nonprofit organizations and universities, AAUW branches or AAUW state organizations, and individuals.
General operating support is available to nonprofit organizations. Supported organizations and proposed activities must promote education and equity for women and girls.
Community Action Grants
Funding: $3,000 - $10,000
Community Action Grants provide funding to individuals, AAUW branches and AAUW state organizations as well as community-based nonprofits for general operating support and innovative projects that promote education and equity for women and girls. Since 1972, AAUW has provided support to hundreds of communities across the United States.
Aura Cacia Positive Change Project
Aura Cacia provides meaningful financial support to organizations committed to helping women and girls facing difficult life situations make transformational improvements in their lives. Founded in 2016, the Positive Change Project works to equip women and girls with the resources necessary to further their commitment to live more purposeful lives.
Applications will be accepted online through our grant application page July 17 – August 31, 2023.
Please be sure to check out the grant guidelines for this year! The Aura Cacia Positive Change Project has made some adjustments to our granting programs, including moving to a two-year funding cycle. Applicants will be expected to propose work and impact estimates for a two-year period. Funding in Year 2 will be contingent upon the receipt of a mid-term evaluation in January 2025.
Mama Cash Funding from the Resilience Fund
Mama Cash supports ambitious feminist and women’s, girl’s, and trans people's and intersex people’s rights organisations and initiatives led by and for women, girls, and trans people and intersex people from anywhere in the world. During the Resilience Fund LOI window, we will be open to all applications from self-led feminist organisations and initiatives - without thematic or geographic restrictions.
Mama Cash supports groups and initiatives that:
1. Work from a feminist, women's, girl’s, trans and/or intersex rights perspective;
2. Are self-led by the women, girls, trans people and/or intersex people they serve;
3. Have the promotion of women’s, girls’, trans people's and/or intersex people’s human rights as their primary mission, and not just as the focus of part of their programmes;
4. Push for structural and fundamental change;
5. Focus on issues that are under-addressed and/or contested
Third Wave Fund Mobilize Power Fund
Third Wave Fund's Mobilize Power Fund is a rapid response fund that resources gender justice organizations in the U.S. and U.S. territories to adapt or pivot their work when met with unanticipated, time-sensitive opportunities or threats to their movement building work and organizing conditions. Supported efforts can include community organizing and mobilization, healing justice work, conflict resolution, community accountability, transformative and restorative justice work, direct action, and more. Support is provided to organizations that are led by young women of color and trans, queer, gender non conforming, and intersex young people of color under 35. Organizations must demonstrate how the issues they are responding to are connected to patriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, gender inequity, or gender-based violence; be led by and for communities directly impacted by the issues they focus on; and have a total organizational budget under $500,000. Click here for more.
American Association of University Women: Community Action Grants
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) works to advance gender equity for women and girls. The AAUW Community Action Grants program provides funding ranging from $3,000 to $10,000 for innovative programs throughout the United States that promote education and equity for women and girls. Eligible applicants include individuals and AAUW organizations as well as local community-based nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions. The application deadline is December 1, 2022. Visit the AAUW website to submit an online application.
Public Welfare Foundation (Rolling)
The Public Welfare Foundation supports efforts to advance justice and opportunity for people in need. The Foundation's grants support nonprofits in the United States that are advancing a new, transformative system of justice with the core values of racial equity, economic well-being, and fundamental fairness for all. Current focus areas include 1) developing innovative, transformative approaches to youth and adult criminal justice reform in the states of Oklahoma, Michigan, Georgia, Colorado, and Louisiana, the cities of Jackson, MS, and Milwaukee, WI, and the district of Washington, DC; 2) community-based solutions that reduce the over-reliance on mass incarceration; and 3) reframing the narrative and fostering greater transparency and urgency around the U.S. criminal justice system through storytelling, journalism, and other targeted efforts. For Fiscal Year 2023, the Foundation is also exploring investments focused on dismantling the incarceration of women and women-aligned people, reducing harm and violence using community-centered interventions, and supporting the development of formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted leaders in the field. Letters of inquiry are accepted on a rolling basis from nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status. Guidelines for submitting the online letter of inquiry are available on the Foundation's website.
LOIs are accepted on a rolling basis.