In 2025, QMF journeyed through a leadership transition, focusing on internal visioning, strategizing, and priority setting with the new team, and hit the ground running again at the close of 2025 and opening of 2026. QMF is a program of Southern Vision Alliance, a grassroots social justice intermediary organization that builds and supports movement infrastructure in the South. Our priority at QMF remains to center and uplift QT BIPOC leadership across our work in the South. Our strategy continues to resource, sustain, and build power among frontline queer organizations throughout the region. Our vision is to strengthen the movements that push for justice and queer liberation every day. We are thrilled to introduce you to the incredible grantees we’ve selected to join QMF, our brilliant grant selection panel, and our new QMF leadership.
In the 2025-2026 grantmaking cycle, we selected 47 grantee partners from across the region, including organizations in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia to award $325,000. Twenty of the organizations will participate in this year’s fellowship cohort. These grantee partners are leading transformative work – advancing QT BIPOC liberation while building deep connections with intersecting movements, including environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, immigrant rights, sex worker justice, mental health and holistic healing, disability justice, and more. Together, they are shaping a more liberated and interconnected South. In addition to receiving funding, fellows move through a 6-month structured experience grounded in base-building, leadership development, coalition strategy, narrative power, and campaign readiness. Our grant panelists co-lead various trainings and visit organizations locally. Soon, we’ll invite our funders into direct engagement opportunities where they will not only observe, but participate in relationships with the work on the ground.
Of our 47 grantee partners, five are multi-year partners: Southern Organizer Academy, Soulthrive Collective, Bigwitch Indian Wisdom Initiative, Birmingham Black Repertory Theatre Collective, and Grimalkin Records, Inc.. Our work with the power building multi-year partners focuses on increased capacity building through required regular powerbuilding engagements via one-on-one coaching, cohort gathering and networking spaces, executive leadership support, and fundraising strategy sessions.
Our intention is simple: strengthen organizations so they are sustainable, connected, and increasingly autonomous while building the collective muscle to mobilize across the South when it matters most.
Meet the Grant Advisory Panel:
- Je Naè Taylor (she/her), based in Southern Maryland, Cultural Organizer at Highlander Research and Education Center in Jefferson County, Tennessee.
- 2AM RICKY (he/they), based in Atlanta, GA, award-winning multidisciplinary artist, songwriter, and cultural storyteller redefining how music moves people.
- Kamil Oshundara (they/them), based in Atlanta, GA, writer, filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist dedicated to creating “critically conscious” art for systemic change.
- Anthony Jay (he/him), based in Atlanta, GA, cultural curator, storyteller, community organizer for Black and brown queer community building.
- Tavi Hawn (they/them), based in Durham, NC, writer, healer, connector, and changemaker.
- Gladney (he/they), based in New Orleans, LA, Grammy-nominated, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and creative.
Meet our Team:
Penelope French (they, she, he) is a spiritualist, theologian, ethicist, and cultural community organizer with over 17 years of experience organizing within Black, queer, faith-rooted, and movement-based spaces across the South and nationally. Their work sits at the intersection of liberation strategy, healing justice, institutional infrastructure, and spiritual ownership grounded in the belief that alternative sustainable systems are essential to collective freedom.
Due to privacy concerns our other QMF staff member is not named.
Meet our Power Building Grantees:
- Trans Aid Nashville
- Libations & Liberation
- Southern Trans Celebration
- Tulips in the Garden: A Black Queer Supper Club
- Unspoken Treasure Society
- Fuerza Y Union Multiple (FUM)
- Black LGBTQ+ Liberation, Inc. (BLINC)
- Decrim305: The Safe & Just Futures Toolkit
- Trans Queer Youth New Orleans
- Haven Honey Farm
- Sexual Liberation Collective
- Black Butterfly Collective: Organizational Sustainability
- Zepp Wellness Center
- Itsoktobeyouuu Organization
- Ripple Hauxs
- Southern Organizer Academy
- Soulthrive Collective
- Bigwitch Indian Wisdom Initiative
- Birmingham Black Repertory Theatre Collective
- Grimalkin Records Inc
- Meet Our General Operations Grantees:
- We Came to Believe
- Afro Erotic Body
- Central Florida Ballroom Collective
- JXNOLOGY
- Paragon Cooperative
- Soda City Abortion Access Collective
- Southern Fried Queer Pride
- LOUD Queer Youth Theatre
- The Black TGNCI Embodiment Coalition || Healing Embodiment Activation Retreats
- Advocates of the South
- Aflorar Herb Collective
- Greensboro Mutual Aid
- Kuluntu Reproductive Justice Center
- Pride Liberation
- Sol Underground
- Del Ambiente
- Speaking Down Barriers
- Techmoja Dance and Theatre Company
- Pan Asian Queers
- SISTORIES
- Wayward
- Get Embodied Soul Movement (GEM)
- Inclusive Harmony
- Trans Housing Atlanta Program
- This Doesn’t Define Me
- There’s Room of North Carolina
- Dreaming Justice Project
Thank you for being a part of strengthening Southern queer and trans BIPOC organizing. Your partnership helps build the infrastructure that sustains movements beyond a single grant cycle! Please contact us to learn more about our transformative work at qmf@southernvision.org.
