NoVo Foundation: Radical Hope Fund

The NoVo Foundation’s mission is to foster transformation from a world of domination and exploitation to one of collaboration and partnership. One of the Foundation’s core values is Radical Hope, meaning that it remains deeply optimistic that it can contribute to systemic progress that addresses the root causes of injustice.

The Foundation believes the social justice community must develop strategies to overcome the structural failures that are undermining our communities, including racism, misogyny, xenophobia, transphobia, and other forms of structurally reinforced hate, bigotry, and exclusion. The United States is at a critical moment that calls for creativity and innovation, grounded in the wisdom of those both past and present who have resisted, subverted, and transcended oppressive conditions and policies. Community-based solutions should be nurtured, human rights safeguarded, and key sectors and institutions that ensure a society oriented around compassion and justice strengthened.

The Radical Hope Fund is designed to complement NoVo’s current work, either by supporting organizations and efforts that may not thematically align with the existing initiatives, or by encouraging organizations to go deeper and farther with connection, collaboration, and courage. It is grounded in hope that a time of great challenge can also spur a moment of unprecedented collaboration and imagination, deepening our collective ability to build a more just and balanced world. The Radical Hope Fund will focus on supporting the following essential strategies for change:

• Bringing communities together for cross-issue, cross-sectoral organizing that centers feminist leadership, including but not limited to policy advocacy campaigns
• Global solidarity and transnational movement-building connecting issues and movements that are aligned in their purpose and vision
• Leveraging the power of media, culture, and the arts to engage in storytelling and share ideas, moving hearts and minds for change, including creating new strategic platforms and collaboration between artists/culture-makers and movement organizations
• Seeding experiments in building new structures and systems to propel us into a world that is oriented around interdependence, mutuality, and love rather than domination and extraction, with an emphasis on cultivating local, community-driven solutions

NoVo is accepting Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) that align with the goals of this Fund, prioritizing organizations and collaborative efforts in accordance with the following guiding principles:

• Seizing the opportunity to be bold, creative, and risk-taking in a way that expands our notions of what is possible
• Demonstrating sharp strategic approach, with particular focus on organizing and building power that centers feminist leadership, especially the leadership of girls and women (cis-, trans-, and gender non-conforming) of color
• Building organizational capacity to go the distance with alliances, coalitions, and networks, and reach across issues, sectors, and other traditional divisions in our movements
• Holding a national and global perspective that connects movements and defies the false nationalism both being touted by the current U.S. administration and on the rise globally
• Adopting a proactive stance that keeps a view of the horizon and building a foundation for the future, even as we do defensive and resistance work
• Reexamining how we show up to do the work of social justice and experimenting with ways of doing/being that center our humanity, interrupting movement habits in favor of practices that will sustain leaders and movements in the long run
• Bolstering security and adaptation of groups that amplify the voices of targeted communities and/or challenge the normalization of white supremacy, xenophobia, and misogyny

Amount: The Foundation has committed $20,000,000 to this fund over four years. Total project budgets should be at least $250,000 per year. In the case of a single organization, project budgets should not exceed 33 percent of the organization’s total annual budget. In the case of some newly formed initiatives/coalitions/campaigns, the project budget may be the same as the total budget of the collaboration, but should not exceed 33 percent of the total combined organizational budgets.

Eligibility: Registered 501(c)3 non-profit organizations, 501(c)3 equivalent organizations outside of the U.S., or any initiatives/groups/collaborations with a 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor. Within the United States, efforts based in under-resourced parts of the country are encouraged to apply.

Link: https://novofoundation.org/radicalhope/

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