2025 Annual REPORT
Solidarity
Shines the Way
Letter from Co-EDs
and Board Co-Chairs
As militarized violence and authoritarian crackdowns continue to escalate, both at our doorsteps and around the world, the current moment calls us to stretch ourselves in new ways. In dire times such as these, where do we turn for political insights, moral clarity, and hope? Powerful organizing by global social movements is shining the way.
At the historic Third Nyéléni Global Forum in Kandy, Sri Lanka, we saw the sheer strength of the worldwide struggle for food sovereignty, three decades in the making, and how the movement has effectively expanded itself to become a force for systemic transformation. In Brazil’s Amazon, while world leaders conducted business as usual amidst literal and figurative fires, social movements in the tens of thousands demonstrated the power of climate justice as a unifying frame for the demands of Indigenous, Black, peasant, and feminist movements, among others. And from Kandy to Belém and countless points in between resounded an ever louder united call for an end to genocide and a free Palestine.
“Vitally, movements are not only articulating what we are against, what our partners call “the project of death,” but also what we are for: the defense and protection of life itself.”
Less than a quarter into 2026, the US government wasted no time in launching violent military assaults on Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran, and communities within its own borders, while announcing planned next steps for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and threatening a host of additional attacks. Such aggressions are spurring a renewed global anti-war and demilitarization movement that is connecting the dots between attacks on immigrant, Black, Indigenous, and other frontline communities in the US and those in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and beyond.
Here again, global social movements are leading the way in cross-border organizing rooted in internationalist solidarity. Vitally, they are not only articulating what we are against, what our partners call “the project of death,” but also what we are for: the defense and protection of life itself. They demonstrate this daily through powerful alternatives that they are building in the here-and-now, bringing us ever closer to the other world that we know is possible
In philanthropy, we have our work cut out for us to join, and learn from, social movements in meeting this critical moment. To contribute to these efforts, this past fall Grassroots International launched a framework for solidarity philanthropy as a tool for building the movement support infrastructure that is so urgently needed. The framework is informed and inspired by decades of collaboration with both our movement partners and community of supporters, who embody the steadfastness and solidarity necessary to get us through the multiple crises upon us.
We build the road collectively, and we are beyond grateful to be building with each of you.
Chung-Wha, Sara, Maria, and Jesenia
Co-Executive Directors and Board Co-Chairs
$100+ million
redistributed to social movements since 1983
145+ grants
to movements in 20+ countries, plus at the regional and global levels in 2025
Our funding and partnerships support grassroots movements working across six interconnected areas.
- Human Rights Defense
- Climate / Ecological Justice
- Food Sovereignty
- Healing and Wellbeing
- Grassroots Feminisms
- Defense of Territory
>90%
of our 2025 budget went to programs and education
100%
of our grants to long-term partners in 2025 were multi-year
Global Organizing
for Systemic Change
In times of heightened crisis such as these, social movements show us a powerful way forward, ramping up mutual aid and community-based solutions to meet the basic needs of their communities while organizing globally to build the power necessary for system-wide change.
From militarized urban communities to the frontiers of extractivism in the Amazon, they are forging connections that link together their futures – and ours. In an era of tightening borders, they are demonstrating the power of internationalism, solidarity, and global organizing as a praxis of hope.
The past year saw major momentum on interrelated global processes aimed at the systems change that is so urgently needed. The following are snapshots of two of these processes that we have been honored to accompany, and that inspire us forward.
Galvanizing the
Global Food Sovereignty Movement
Our global food system is a source of tremendous power and profit for a few and harm for many. The weaponization of food as a tool of war, subjugation and genocide is becoming ever more blatant.
Social movements are working to change this through food sovereignty, “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”
A galvanizing moment for the now three-decade old food sovereignty movement was the Nyéléni Global Forum of 2007 in Mali, where diverse social movements converged to develop a collective framework and strategy for transforming the food system from the bottom up. The forum’s outputs have been key to the advancement of food sovereignty, from alternative local food systems to national and global policymaking. Grassroots International was among the few funders present at the forum, accompanying both the gathering and the many work streams flowing out of it with financial, technical, and political support.
The latest milestone in this dynamic movement-building process took place this past September, with the Third Nyéléni Global Forum in Kandy, Sri Lanka. There, 700+ social movement representatives from 100+ countries gathered to chart out the next steps for a global movement now numbering in the hundreds of millions. This time, the scope of Nyéléni extended well beyond food sovereignty, becoming a space for building cross-sectoral global resistance and transformative solutions. This forum was significant for active participation by labor and feminist movements, youth and gender expansive people and additional sectors. Notably, the latest forum was built upon a multi-year regional consultation process, bringing the voices of countless more people into the forum than those physically present.
As with the prior Nyéléni forums, Grassroots International was there at Kandy, where our roles included accompanying our regional and global partners there, taking part in the North American delegation as part of our US/Turtle Island-focused work, and leading a delegation of donors and funders. The funder delegation was the first of its kind at Nyéléni, having emerged from dialogues between the organizers of Nyéléni and allied funders in the lead-up to the forum, which Grassroots International was honored to facilitate. A special highlight was sharing the newly launched solidarity philanthropy framework with the movements at Nyéléni, who embraced it as vital to their goals of financial autonomy, as reflected in the forum’s outcome documents.
As Nyéléni is a living, breathing process, it is now the task of social movements to carry forward the critical momentum coming out of it, including coordinated global campaigns on key issues of our times like international trade, aquaculture, healthcare, and debt. And it is the task of allied philanthropy to nurture this work. For a process like Nyéléni to thrive, the movements stewarding it need to be well functioning, and the extensive infrastructure needed to connect these movements across vastly different geographies, including periodic physical gatherings, is essential. The Nyéléni Funders Circle, which grew out of the above-mentioned dialogues in the lead-up to the forum, is a concrete vehicle for funders and movements to achieve this together.
“We bring together Indigenous and feminist knowledges and ways of being in the world, working in diverse collectives that do not just change who is a leader, but change what leadership looks like… Across all the diversities we represent, to strengthen our struggles, we are raising our voices together, declaring: Systemic Transformation: Now and Forever! We are in this together.”
Kandy Declaration of the Third Nyéléni Global Forum
Converging for Climate Justice
in the “Lungs of the World”
The next stop in global movement building following the Nyéléni Forum was the People’s Summit toward COP30, an articulation of more than 1000 social movements and civil society organizations that ran parallel to the UN COP30 climate meetings in Belém, Brazil in November 2025.
Social movements saw the location of the COP30 and the People’s Summit in the Brazilian Amazon as strategic both for Brazil being home to some of the world’s largest and most vibrant social movements as well as home to a plethora of extractive projects in some of the world’s most critical ecological zones.
Some of these extractive projects are being carried out under the banner of “green” and “blue” carbon credit schemes and other measures recognized by movements as exacerbating the climate crisis rather than addressing it. Calling out false solutions and advancing true alternatives grounded in social and ecological justice was a main thrust of the People’s Summit.
As part of our long-term accompaniment of climate justice work, Grassroots International supported both the popular organizing around COP30 and the participation of our movement partners from across the world. Many took part in “inside-outside” strategies around COP30, participating both in the formal proceedings and the self-organized activities outside the official venue.
Inside activities ranged from a session exposing the links between militarism and the climate crisis to testimonials on the false promises of carbon credit schemes. Outside activities included the Peoples’ Summit and the Global March for Climate Justice, both attended by tens of thousands. This wide variety of tactics, together with others, such as a protest by Indigenous Peoples within the official meetings, brought the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis to the fore and forced critical debates – around fossil fuels, false solutions, and more – in a setting otherwise dominated by corporate interests.
Grassroots International was there at the People’s Summit, where our role included that of a connector. For instance, we fostered opportunities for our partners from Haiti and West Africa to build relationships as well as connecting our Puerto Rican partner, Organización Boricua de de Agricultura Ecológica, to speak on a panel on peasant seeds organized by our Brazilian partner Movimento Camponês Popular/Popular Peasant Movement (MCP).
Just prior to the Peoples’ Summit, we also accompanied the IV International Encounter of Communities affected by Dams and the Climate Crisis. There, we joined our partners in celebrating the announcement of the construction of the International Movement of People Affected by Dams, Socio-Environmental Crimes and the Climate Crisis – a new global movement that will operate similarly to our global partners La Via Campesina, World March of Women, and others.
The social movement activities around COP30 demonstrated the sheer numbers and diversity of movements working toward climate justice in deeply intersectional ways, and being there reinforced both our commitment to long-term accompaniment through solidarity philanthropy and our hope for a brighter future.
“We have taken on the task of building a just and democratic world, with buen vivir/good living for all…The advance of the extreme right, fascism, and wars around the world exacerbates the climate crisis and the exploitation of nature and of peoples…Let us root our internationalism in each territory and make each territory a trench in the international struggle…This is the way to resist and win.”
Declaration of the People’s Summit Toward COP30
Forging Solidarity Philanthropy
In 2025, we released Solidarity Philanthropy: Redefining Philanthropy’s Relationship to Social Movements. Solidarity philanthropy aims to reorient the sector to be in service of social justice through ongoing critical reflection, practice, and learning together with movements. It approaches philanthropy not as a fixed, monolithic structure but as a site of contestation, to be humanized and organized.
This year was a big step forward for our work articulating and advancing this concept. Learn more below.
The components of Solidarity Philanthropy
Solidarity, Internationalism,
and Praxis
Solidarity and internationalism affirm that our fates are inextricably linked within and across borders as we strive to build a better world. Praxis helps us approach our collective work as a living, breathing process based on continual learning and evolution.
Positionality and
Alignment with
Movements
We must be aware of our positions in systems of power and oppression. This involves attention to race, class, and other aspects of our identities, as well as where the money we are redistributing has come from. We must also work to align with social movements on values, visions, analyses, and theories of change.
Movement
Accompaniment and
Donor Organizing
Movement accompaniment and donor organizing go hand in hand. We must commit long-term to walk together, build deep relationships of trust, and learn with each other.
Origins of Our Approach to Solidarity Philanthropy
In some respects, solidarity philanthropy carries forward work we have been doing all along.
Since 1983, we have built deep relationships of trust with our movement partners and donors. Solidarity for us is far beyond financial. It is relational: walking a long path together, learning from each other, and aligning our values and visions with those building a better world.
Solidarity philanthropy’s call to action also builds upon collective work through the years to shift the philanthropic sector from the inside: working in joint initiatives to fund climate movements; organizing coalitions to stand against genocide; contributing in funder and donor networks, and nurturing spaces for direct interactions between donors and movements.
In this long journey, a framework was the logical next step.
How the Framework Developed
Doing the work is one thing. Defining and honing it so it can be shared with others is another. It took years of internal discussions to describe and define work we had been doing for decades.
But praxis is a continual process of learning, action and reassessment, and it must be done collectively. We talked to our partners, donors, and funders to learn from them. Later, our first Solidarity Philanthropy Praxis Retreat offered a particularly important opportunity.
For nearly a week, movement representatives, progressive funders, and donors came together to both learn about the still-in-development framework and shape its direction collectively.
The Framework’s Impact So Far
In September, at the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, our solidarity philanthropy framework debuted. Since then, the publication has had a much further reach than we even expected.
We were deeply moved when the social movements at the heart of the Nyéléni process for food sovereignty endorsed the call for solidarity philanthropy. We expressed gratitude to our collaborators in the Nyéléni Funders Circle, a group committed to accompanying the global movement for food sovereignty, as they added their voices to the call for a “philanthropy of solidarity” and systemmic transformation.
It made a splash in the non-profit sector, too. Thousands checked out the publication, and hundreds of non-profit staff, funders and donors are spreading the word.
What’s Next
We may have a framework, but we have much more work to do to organize and shift the sector. We know we’re not alone in that work either. That’s why, later in 2026, we’ll be releasing a solidarity philanthropy toolkit. It aims to equip nonprofits, progressive funders, donors and philanthropic staff with practical guidance to shift and act in solidarity and accompaniment with social movements.
Praxis remains our guide star. To that end, 2026 will see the convening of another Solidarity Philanthropy Praxis Retreat. Not only will funders, donors, and social movements again be in conversation and community, it will be a space to help further refine and apply what is meant by solidarity philanthropy in practice—to better accompany those on the frontlines of building a better world.
Philanthropy’s Future: Incentive Competitions or Social Movements?
Forbes covers the solidarity philanthropy framework, distinguishing it from other approaches.
“In Solidarity” with Chung-Wha and Sara
Our co-EDs are interviewed about solidarity philanthropy on the Becoming the Vision podcast.
Supporting the Food Sovereignty Movement over the Long Haul Takes Solidarity Philanthropy
This article featured by both Proximate and Alliance Magazine illustrates solidarity philanthropy in practice vis-à-vis the Nyéléni process.
Practicing solidarity: Lessons from a partnership between funders and social movements
This article for Candid shares learnings on solidarity philanthropy from accompanying grassroots feminist movements.
Movement-Led Momentum
2025 was marked by extraordinary challenges. But across the globe social movements met the year with bold and powerful action.
In the face of rising authoritarianism, genocide, climate chaos, and more, our movement partners and allies have not wavered. Together, they have redoubled their efforts, building unity and power to resist the bad and build the good. Read below about the work Grassroots International has been honored to accompany.
“Unity is what has made us strong and is what keeps us alive and organized.”
Jaime
Social Movement Organizer, Honduras
for Transformative Change
Grassroots International is first and foremost about relationships: the decades of accompanying social movements; the deep conversations with donors and funders; the strategic planning with allies.
We’re grateful for each and every relationship we have with our wonderful donors, funders, movement partners, and allies. Hear voices from this community and consider joining us.
“Grassroots International is one of the few organizations that has the history. We have the long, long relationships.”
“There are few spaces that really explore how we can transform philanthropy in solidarity with global social movements and this space does just that.”
“We are not facing a problem that can be solved in two or four years, but rather we are confronting a model, a model of extreme violence.”
“It’s so critically important to have Grassroots International out there in the world advancing internationalism.”
“The hope and the resistance has to be global. If it’s happening somewhere else, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you.”
Grassroots International for 2026
In the immortal words of Latin America’s social movements, la lucha sigue. The struggle continues. If social movements are to advance real change in 2026, if philanthropy is to shift to real solidarity, it will take all of us.
Grassroots International seeks to accompany and support the work of social movements, our allies, and our co-conspirators. And we in turn are asking you to join, or re-commit, to our community of engaged and active donor- and funder-activists.
Donate to
support our work
As authoritarianism, militarism, and the climate crisis deepen, solidarity is the way forward. Support our work accompanying social movements in 2026.
Sign up to get
our Solidarity Philanthropy toolkit
In 2026 we’ll be releasing our solidarity philanthropy toolkit, a practical guide for applying the framework’s concept to your foundation, non-profit, or work as a donor. Fill out this form and don’t miss its release.
Join our Fall 2026
delegation
In November, donors, funders, and allies will join Grassroots International on a visit with our partners in Guatemala. Fill out the interest form to stay updated as more info gets released.
