This year, the White House marked Sexual Assault Awareness Month in March with a proclamation that included a sobering statistic: 1 in 4 women have survived a rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes. And last month, it announced a national plan to address gender-based violence. Though it has been 20 years since Tarana Burke founded the ‘me too’ Movement to support survivors, and six years since #MeToo went viral and global, Sexual Assault Awareness Month received little public or donor attention earlier this spring.
A 2022 report by Inside Philanthropy reflects the dire state of funding for violence prevention. In large part, funding to address and prevent sexual violence is limited because it is often siloed within gender equity portfolios or cobbled together from a combination of criminal justice, LGBTQ+ and mental health portfolios that do not explicitly address gender-based violence. The majority of this existing funding goes to direct services, which are urgently needed. At the same time, we must think about routing resources to address systems that perpetuate violence and its ripple effects — to work toward equally needed long-term solutions.
Survivors of violence know better than anyone that violence touches every aspect of life, from housing to education and job prospects, from immigration status to reproductive and mental health. And yet, siloed funding strategies consistently fail to prioritize the wisdom and leadership of survivors. This results in chronic underfunding of work that meaningfully addresses the root causes of violence and brings about true freedom for survivors.
Given the “vanishingly small” amount of donor funding for organizations working on gender-based violence, and given the scale of the problem, funders can make a difference by committing to centering the leadership and experience of survivors in the work that we fund. We can do this by following the lead of the ‘me too’ Movement and its leaders, who have demonstrated how to advance justice for survivors by prioritizing holistic approaches that may not fit neatly into existing funding categories.
Prioritizing support to survivor-led work enables us to address challenges in the field of philanthropy, too. Sexual violence is usually racialized and/or gender-based; Black women and trans people are disproportionately the victims of sexual violence, but they are often at the forefront of solutions to address it, as well. Recognizing their leadership in this work, we have an opportunity to reverse our field’s documented pattern of awarding fewer and smaller grants to organizations led by women of color and trans people.
As funders seeking to disrupt cycles of violence, we look deeply at the way racial justice, economic equity, reproductive justice and gender justice are entwined with bodily autonomy, safety and security. So how do we begin to meaningfully address gender-based violence within and between other funding strategies that seek to advance justice and inclusion? Here, we offer several ways funders can begin to consider this in our collective work.
Be willing to fund work that crosses traditional funding categories. Consider the approach of El/La Para Translatinas, a holistic, community-based organization and Collective Future Fund grantee that serves the Bay Area’s TransLatinx community with housing, food, education and legal support as well as culturally competent medical and mental health services. Comprehensive programs like this, though hard to categorize, elevate a culture of care by bringing services to survivors rather than forcing them to navigate the labyrinth of social services alone.
Assume the presence of survivors in communities you support, and fund accordingly. The ‘me too’ Movement brought global attention to the prevalence of sexual violence and harassment in public and private life. Founder Tarana Burke has talked openly about the sexual violence that existed within the civil rights movement, the particular violence experienced by Black girls, and her own experience of rape at the age of seven by someone who went on to become a police officer. Donors can change the discourse by asking if and how survivors are considered and consulted in the development of grantee programs and strategies.
Look to movement-led organizations promoting survivor justice to inform and broaden funding strategies. Organizations like the Survivors Agenda have laid out a comprehensive policy agenda to build political power for survivors. They identify the policy issues relevant to supporting survivors, including recommendations around healthcare, education and the criminal legal system. And Justice for Migrant Women has made the enduring connection between immigration and migration, sexual violence and the workplace through their policy advocacy and organizing of migrant farmworkers.
Reassess status quo strategies in grantmaking to ensure the nuanced needs of survivors are being properly addressed. For example, Pivotal Ventures helped to seed a Women of Color Design Council that places women and girls of color with lived experience and a wide range of perspectives at the center of our strategic planning model. Schusterman Family Philanthropies, meanwhile, addresses the intersecting problems and roots of gender-based violence in our strategies, including through improving economic security, decriminalizing reproductive care and preventing harassment endured by candidates running for elected office. Funders can begin with smaller steps, too, including asking relevant questions in open requests for proposals (RFPs) and other application processes.
Know your limits — not every funder has the capacity to identify new survivor-led groups within their grantmaking portfolio. Donor collaboratives like Collective Future Fund that are committed to supporting survivor-led organizations provide an effective way to drive funding into the hands of those best positioned to do this work.
We have the ability to adopt a more comprehensive approach to addressing gender-based violence so that all people can live their lives to the fullest, free from violence and fear. Let’s not let another Sexual Assault Awareness Month go by or wait for Domestic Violence Awareness Month to approach to do so. Philanthropy must be relentless and bold to transform our field and advance the right of all survivors to heal and thrive.
Brook Kelly-Green is Senior Director, Gender and Reproductive Equity Grantmaking at Schusterman Family Philanthropies. Ada Williams Prince is Director, Program Strategy and Investment at Pivotal Ventures.
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