As we look toward our 25/26 grant cycle, the Queer Mobilization Fund is excited to announce some changes to our program!
QMF has worked diligently to adjust our program to reflect the needs of our community since our inception, and this year is no different. This year, we are shifting our offerings to highlight power building and concentrate our impact as we fight against cycles of systemic oppression. We are hoping that the shifts we’re introducing during this grant cycle will serve to double down on our efforts to empower organizations toward collective liberation through growth and movement sustainability. For this purpose, and with feedback from our community grantmaking panel, we are shifting to an even higher focus on power building and concentrating our efforts by establishing a smaller but more intimate and intentional grantee cohort.
What’s New This Year?
- Smaller cohort size
Because we are invested in making sure our power building cohort has the best support possible, QMF is cutting down the size of our cohort starting this year. This shift is designed to support our groups in making the highest possible impact on their communities, with an intense focus on growth and collaboration.
- Participation guidelines
Historically, engagement for grantees in QMF’s power building opportunities has been completely optional. With the intentional shift to better focus on power building, we are changing our grant requirements to include consistent engagement in cohort offerings, with a minimum participation goal for grantees of once per month. As a capacity building fund, we consider this offering to be at least as important as the money! Grant decisions for this cycle will be deeply informed by applicants’ interest in engaging in power building offerings.
- Multi-year funding
We’re thrilled to announce that QMF is launching our first ever multi-year grant! Our Multi-Year Funding Fellowship offers returning grantees an opportunity to invest in their own growth with a three-year grant that offers $20,000 per year to awarded organizations, for a total of $60,000 over the grant term. Multi-Year Fellows will be required to regularly engage in power building opportunities, including cohort networking, one-on-one coaching, executive support, and fundraising skill building consistently throughout the grant cycle. This offering centers an intention and responsibility to grow movement maturity through efforts to increase organizational capacity and overall sustainability.
- Other resource opportunities
Outside of our BISCUITS, GRAVY, and Multi-Year grants, QMF will now be offering additional grant opportunities for organizations that are not awarded a power building grant. Small grants of up to $3,000 will be available for general operations and/or rapid response support for QTBIPOC-led and centered projects in the US Southeast. We are also planning to launch an information-gathering form to encourage QTBIPOC movement organizations within our region to inform us of their organization’s material needs so that QMF can work with and alongside our partners to support matching needs and potential offerings. For more information on these funds, please reach out to us at qmf@southernvision.org.
- Shifts in our funding priorities
This year’s funding priorities are shifting to highlight an emphasis on base-building, While QMF’s work will always center healing justice and creative liberation, we are adjusting this lens away from our funding priorities and instead into the overall ways that we are approaching this work. We encourage organizations to implement sustainability practices and creative strategies toward an overall goal of collective action and movement building. Our adjusted list of funding priorities will uplift work that includes healing justice, cultural organizing, and base-building, while creating visibility for BIPOC/LGBTQ people through stories, creative expression, and other artistic mediums that directly impact and/or influence the work of power building.
We know these are big changes! We are excited to explore the possibilities that these new structures will open up for our grantees, partners, and overall community through an intentional drive toward collective action. Even with all of this happening, many things about QMF will still remain the same as we move forward – we will still be funding the same states in the US Southeast, we still hold the same overall goals for our work, we will still offer application support for folks who want it (as well as alternative application methods), and first and foremost, we are still keeping ourselves centered in community feedback through our grantmaking panel which guides all of our funding and structural decisions.
We look forward to the upcoming application cycle opening on August 1, and encourage anyone with questions to reach out to us by emailing us at qmf@southernvision.org. We can’t wait to learn more about your project!
