The Collective Action Assistance Fund (CAAF), an initiative of Humanity United Charitable Fund, is a multi-donor fund providing creative and flexible funding and services to support nonviolent movements advancing rights, climate action, democracy, and sustainable peace.
In the face of global challenges, peaceful, democratic, people-powered movements urgently need more responsive and creative resourcing than ever before. Nonviolent social movements around the globe are now the main catalysts for rights, demonstrating effective tactics that can be scaled and replicated.
Funders of all types are paying attention. A new wave of commitments and interest from bilateral and donor governments are creating opportunities for private and philanthropic funders to align and leverage their resources for greater scale and impact.
Fund Approach and Objectives
Our decisions and strategy are guided by movement leaders, activists, and ecosystem allies and actors. We aim to leverage our unique advantage to support activists, human rights defenders, and peacebuilders to think, plan, prepare, and adapt to achieve long-term success.
The overall purpose of CAAF is to:
1. Invest in & Catalyze Movements: Invest in and catalyze inclusive, rights-based, peaceful movements at critical times in their development and strategic planning through flexible, demand-driven, and participatory means;
2. Support the Enabling Environment of Movements: Establish enabling environments, infrastructure, tools and tactics, and networks of movements;
3. Strengthen Collaboration and Collective Action: Provide a model of public-private partnerships that can transform future models of coordination, collaboration, and learning to drive people-powered social change.
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What We Fund
We are committed to making responsive, demand-driven grants that fill gaps in critical moments and support long-term planning and action, supporting a multitude of movement structures with both insider and outsider strategies.
• Intersectional movements with opportunities for outsized influence
• Bridge learning between U.S. and global movements
• Movement ecosystems
• Thematic areas: climate youth, gender equity democracy, and peaceSpecifically, CAAF provides:
• Core or flexible funding for movement ecosystems and their enabling environments, including annual or multiyear general operating (core) support and highly flexible project support.
• Advocacy and mass organizing support for movement leaders and movements to enable broad-based organizing, media and social media campaigns, nonpartisan reform, and other forms of mass mobilization and change.
• Movement training, skill building, and coordinating support within and across movements, including conflict resolution, physical and digital security, decision-making, leadership; and including funding key allies, infrastructure, and experts to provide this support and services.
• Research, mapping, and landscape assessments to enable movement decision-making, analysis, strategizing, and coordination; and to support Fund learning and advocacy.
• Movement service provider support to scale, extend, and/or expand their existing field services and support, including rapid response, emergency services and support, movement coaching, non-violent activist training and resources, etc.For its funding recipients, as funding permits, CAAF can also provide:
• Rapid response/contingency funds for at-risk activists, movements, and communities, including legal, medical, and/or evacuation support.
• Mental health and well-being funds for movement leaders, activists, and allies.
• Convening, peer-to-peer exchange, and travel support to enable movement leaders and activists to exchange ideas, collectively strategize and build stronger alliances, and participate in global and regional dialogues and spaces, including logistics, service providers, physical and digital gathering spaces, and other travel expenses.We will fund up to $ 40,000 per grant. Calls for applications will open 3 times per year.
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Who Do We Fund
CAAF funding is available for a wide range of movements and ecosystem actors who comprise and help advance social movements. These include:
• Nascent, informal, and formalized groups leading, advancing, or participating in movements.
• Civil society organizations, community groups or CBOs.
• Local media and investigative journalists.
• Student groups, trade unions, and other frontline actors.
• Organizations and institutions who provide physical and virtual spaces, tools and technologies, trainings and coaching, and other types of assistance to movement leaders and activists.
• Non-state actors who effectively target, curb, or counter authoritarians, their regimes and allies. -
Funding Recipient Limits
With a generous understanding of the format, shape, and level of formality of prospective funding recipients, we only have a few strict limitations. These are:
• Funding recipients must be nonviolent and nonpartisan.
• Funding recipients must be working on a recognized human right.
• Funding recipients cannot be government bodies, agencies, or entities.
• Funding recipients cannot be political parties.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CAAF PARTNERS, CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW: