The Trans Justice Funding Project is a community-led funding initiative founded in 2012 to support grassroots, trans justice groups run by and for trans people. They make grants annually by bringing together a panel of six trans justice activists from around the country to carefully review every application they receive. They center the leadership of trans people organizing around their experiences with racism, economic injustice, transmisogyny, ableism, immigration, incarceration, and other intersecting oppressions. Every penny they raise goes to their grantees with no restrictions and no strings attached because they truly believe in trans leadership.

 

For us, community-led means trusting and supporting trans leadership. They keep their grant process simple and quick, so that groups can get back to their real work. They believe that a short application—and a wise and experienced activist panel to read it—is all it takes to make informed funding decisions. They give unrestricted funds because they think their grantees know best how to use that money. They love to learn from the leaders they support and to share their work far and wide, but they don’t have site visits and they don’t require any reporting. And each year they work hard to put together a geographically diverse, intergenerational, multi-ability, multi-racial panel of passionate new and established trans justice activists to make the grant decisions.

Over the last five years, we’ve received 661 applications, given away 536 grants through their community-led process, and distributed more than $1.3 million. This work has been possible because hundreds of donors have joined them and because their communities have supported them in so many ways. Let’s continue to dream big and fund even more trans justice work in the coming years!