Donor Organizing 2023 Update

Donor Engagement and Donor Organizing Programming

Thank you to our community of donors for making our continued accompaniment of social movements possible! Your support is what makes it possible for Grassroots International to quickly respond in moments of crisis, like the current situation in Palestine, and also to provide steady ongoing accompaniment to our movement partners.

2023 Highlights

This past year, we had a robust donor engagement and donor organizing program.

We formally launched our Solidarity Encounter program, following a successful pilot last year, and held four virtual Solidarity Encounters, connecting our donors and broader community to our movement partners. The Encounters create a space for engaging with our partners’ frameworks, analysis, and visions, and also for us to be in community together. The Solidarity Encounters we held in 2023 were:

• False Solutions and Climate Justice Frameworks with activist academic Gopal Dayaneni, Nnimmo Bassey of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), and Sara Mersha of Grassroots International; 
• Community-Led Agroecology with Ana de Ita Rubio of the Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano (CECCAM), Gabriela Linares of Unión de Organizaciones de la Sierra Juárez de Oaxaca (UNOSJO), and Jovanna Garcia Soto of Grassroots International (translated highlights of the recording forthcoming); 
• Understanding Grassroots Feminisms with Martha Lidia Godinez Miranda of Sector de Mujeres and Lydia Simas of Grassroots International; and 
• Healing Justice in Black Feminist and Palestinian Liberation Movements with adrienne maree brown, Dr. Devin Atallah of the CURCUM Collective, and Ayman Nijim and Trina Jackson of Grassroots International

When asked about what they liked about the Solidarity Encounters, participants’ responses included, “the love present”; “the tenderness of the solidarity among the speakers”; “the gentle facilitation and the welcoming of the emotions that were coming into the space”; “hearing wise words from people who have been involved in these struggles for a long time”; “it was deeply engaging and authentic, free of jargon and discourse”; “the sacredness that was created by the organizers and the sincere presence of the participants”; and “the space that was given for people to be in community and to sit and feel together.”

We also brought a delegation of donors and activists to Palestine this summer, to learn from and be in solidarity with our movement partners at a critical moment in the struggle for Palestine, and to explore the connectedness of struggles of Palestinian liberation with climate justice and Black liberation. Read some of the delegates’ reflections in this photo essay.

We also assisted the organizing of donor collectives such as the Friends of Boriken, and the donors and other members of the steering committee of the Martín-Baró Initiative; and we supported individual donors in peer-to-peer fundraising for Grassroots International. Many thanks to the donors who used the occasion of their birthdays, weddings, or other important life moments to raise funds from their friends and families for Grassroots International. 

2024 Planning

We are excited to offer a sneak peek into the donor engagement and donor organizing programs we have in the works for 2024! We are planning a new series of virtual Solidarity Encounters, all of which will be free and open to our entire community, including allies, donors, funders, and prospective donors and funders.

We are also organizing a donor delegation, likely for a week in early July, to visit movement partners in Brazil. And in September, we will offer a new Solidarity Philanthropy Praxis cohort – an intensive in-person learning and praxis space for donor organizers to spend approximately four days exploring Grassroots International’s Solidarity Philanthropy framework and building community together, along with representatives of our global movement partners. These programs will be by application, and will be for donors, advisors, and staff of donor networks who are interested in deepening their engagement with us and being a central part of our donor political formation and donor organizing initiatives in the years ahead.

We invite you to complete our donor engagement survey to let us know what kinds of activities you would like to participate in, and what topics and regions you would like to learn more about in our written communication materials and in our Solidarity Encounters. Your responses will not only inform our planning for the year ahead… we can then reach out to you specifically about your interests!

Thank you in advance for taking the survey!