TJFP Announces 2013 Grantees

Even if you were not a recipient of a Trans Justice Funding Project grant, the act of strangers across the country-collectively pooling their money together to support trans justice work makes this an absolute success.

We received 104 applications—more than triple what we were expecting. The task we gave to our panel of activists from across the country was an impossible one.

The TJFP panelist with the help of facilitator Nico Amador, spent two long days discussing more than a thousand pages of applications,
newsletters, pictures, brochures, and articles (not to mention 25 videos). When we were fundraising, $50,000 felt like an astronomical
sum. But when presented with so many great groups all struggling to get by, $50,000 didn’t feel like very much at all.  Most of the groups who applied fit our original criteria, so the panel faced some hard choices about how to narrow the field. In particular, we made the difficult decision to focus only on smaller, less established groups—groups that other funders might consider “risky.”

One third of our grantees do not have a fiscal sponsor. With the exception of one organization with a slightly larger budget, all the groups we funded had a budget of under $70,000. Half of our grantees have a budget of $5000 or less. This means that the total combined budgets of our 22 grantees is less that $520,000. It’s a good example of just how much gets done with very little money and an enormous amount of committed, volunteer labor. It’s also an example of how vastly underfunded grassroots trans justice work is, and how long the road ahead will be as we work to help change that.

We humbly thank everyone who took the time submit an application and support the TJFP.