Grants for Reproductive Health

NOTE: Proposals are by invitation only. However, interested organizations are encouraged to contact Groundswell with a brief summary of their work and, where possible or appropriate, staff will schedule a call to discuss.

Background

Groundswell considers birthing rights to be a core component of reproductive justice (RJ). Consequently, Groundswell supports community-based efforts that promote a sense of fundamental dignity for parents, families and communities by reclaiming the sacredness of the birth process and the power of choice around how, when and where birthing happens. To that end, Groundswell believes that access to quality midwifery care is a fundamental human right that should be available to all, regardless of race, age or economic status.

The Birth Justice Fund works to eliminate disparities in pregnancy and birth outcomes experienced by women of color, low-income women, young women and transgender people. We accomplish this by increasing access to empowering and culturally relevant birthing options, led by midwives, doulas and other birth workers of color, and changes in policy and practice aimed at improving birth outcomes.The Birth Justice Fund aims to:

• Improve pregnancy and birth outcomes for women of color, low-income women, young women, transgender and gender nonconforming people; and
• Support parents, families and communities to reclaim their power, restore their relationship to their bodies and each other, and transform how the next generation is welcomed into the world.

The Birth Justice Fund supports organizations, projects and midwives who are working to:

• Increase access for marginalized communities to culturally competent midwifery services, doula support and other holistic birth options, while promoting a sense of fundamental dignity for parents, families and communities.
• Support the entry and sustainability of women of color, low-income women, young women and transgender people into a variety of birth work professions (i.e. lactation consultants, doulas, postpartum service workers and midwives). Increase the number of professionally trained midwives of color.
• Build an infrastructure of support for birth workers of color to increase their knowledge and skills, and advocate for policies and practices that will better meet the needs of their communities.
• Connect women of color, low-income women, young women and transgender people more deeply to themselves, their power and their ability to transform their communities by employing the values inherent to midwifery and other traditional birth practices.

To support a thriving field, the Fund engages in the following key strategies:

• Direct grantmaking to organizations and projects.
• Partnering with new and existing funding sources to increase support for this under-resourced, but critically important work.
• Movement building support to strengthen the intersection of birth justice and other reproductive justice organizing and advocacy efforts.

Guiding Principles of the Fund

Empowerment

We recognize the importance of choice, access to information and resources, and education that empowers people to make their own decisions and act on their own behalf in pursuit of their reproductive health and wellbeing. We recognize that women, in particular, have been disempowered in this regard — but that not all women are disempowered in the same way — and that transgender and gender nonconforming people also face disempowerment. We believe that an empowering birth experience offers a strong space from which to organize and advance systemic change.

Community-based

We honor birth as a sacred community process that places the voices and leadership of parents at its center and addresses issues of equity, access, and birth justice within the context of the whole community.

Interconnected 

We see value in connecting individuals, communities, and generations of women in order to break down isolation, deepen understanding across difference, and join together for greater systemic impacts. We see value in connecting people who parent and give birth across sex, gender, race and class differences.

Holistic 

We believe that the most transformative approaches to childbirth integrate the whole being — mind, body, and spirit — of the person giving birth. This allows for the healing of past traumas and strengthens family and community relationships, including our relationship to the Earth.

NOTE: Organizations that believe they meet these criteria can submit an organizational profile at any time. If your organizational profile falls within our priorities, selection criteria, and funding availability, we will follow up to learn more about your organization. Due to the volume of inquiries, we cannot respond to each organization individually.

Global Fund for Children invests in grassroots organizations around the world to help children and youth reach their full potential and advance their rights.

Our Model

We find.

• We research, explore, and identify innovative groups working with children and youth around the world.

We fund.

• We invest wisely, funding our partners’ life-changing programs for children and youth and keeping a watchful eye on how those funds are put to use.

Together we strengthen.

• We advise, mentor, and guide our partners. We build mutual trust, accountability, and enduring relationships. We provide tools for self-assessment. We support and help our partners grow.

We build networks.

• We connect our partners to each other and to national and regional networks. We bring together brilliant minds to share knowledge, fuel advocacy, and build movements of social change.

And when our partners graduate, we stand proud.

• Our greatest joy comes from knowing that we played a part in helping our partners grow strong enough to continue their important work for children without us.

Eligibility Criteria & Selection Guidelines

At Global Fund for Children, we invite you to join our growing grassroots network if you have shown great potential to improve the lives of children and youth who face poverty, injustice, and discrimination. As we embrace learning and collaboration, we hope you will serve as a model and resource for other community-based partners dedicated to the same big goals.

Focus Areas

Together with our partners, we are building a future where all young people enjoy equal resources and opportunities in society and can live to their full potential.

Our work advances the rights of children and youth across four focus areas and five regions. We have a deep commitment to courageous organizations that support young people facing poverty, injustice, and discrimination.

We support grassroots organizations that are not afraid to tackle the root causes of poverty with innovative, local solutions. Most offer holistic care to comprehensively address the needs of each child. Many become regional and national leaders in children’s rights—raising awareness, influencing policy, and ultimately impacting thousands of children and youth beyond their doors.

Education

Poverty and injustice—and the many hardships that accompany them—deny millions of children the opportunity to learn. We promote the right of all children to access high-quality education, regardless of their circumstances.

Worldwide, 124 million children and adolescents are out of school. Millions more who do attend school do not acquire basic skills in mathematics and reading. And every day, conditions beyond their control—gender, ethnicity, economic status, geography, conflict, disaster—force children and youth to drop out. But giving up on them isn’t an option.

At Global Fund for Children, we believe that educating children and youth is the key to building a more peaceful and just society. When we equip young people with education and skills, we unlock their potential to contribute to their families and transform their communities.

We support education from children’s earliest years to secondary school and on through university or vocational training. We place a strong emphasis on girls’ education to address the current and historical disadvantage for girls, improving access and quality and ensuring that girls have safe, girl-friendly places to learn. For refugees, children with disabilities, child laborers, and more, we prioritize inclusive, innovative educational programming that meets children and youth where they are and addresses their unique needs. For older youth, we support life skills, vocational, and entrepreneurship education so that they are empowered to make smart decisions, build financial resilience, and shape their own futures.

Gender Equity

Young people have the right to protect their bodies, raise their voices, and define their futures. But millions are denied these rights every day. We work to ensure that all children—regardless of their gender or their sexual identity—can be safe, learn, lead, and thrive.

Around the world, girls, young women, and LGBTQ youth—particularly those who are ethnic minorities or refugees, live in rural areas, or belong to other highly marginalized populations—face exclusion, violence, and discrimination. Too often, they are left out of decisions that determine their futures. At Global Fund for Children, we defend the right of all children to live free from discrimination and harmful gender-based attitudes and practices.

We believe that investing in girls delivers invaluable returns to the girls themselves, their families, and their communities, while confronting historical inequalities in societies worldwide. In fact, it’s essential to ending poverty and injustice. We also believe that traditional gender norms limit the full range of possibilities for boys and young men.

Through the work of our grassroots partners, we support girls’ education, sexual and reproductive health and rights, redefining masculinity, and the eradication of gender-based violence and harmful traditional practices, including child marriage and female genital mutilation/cutting. Our strategies engage entire communities—including parents, schools, community leaders, and local and national governments —to work collectively toward gender justice. We equip girls with knowledge and skills that will help them lead independent lives and empower them to become agents of change, while ensuring the men and boys in their lives are engaged in building a more equitable world.

We also support programs that specifically address the needs of LGBTQ youth and help them achieve equal rights around the world.

Our grassroots partners provide shelter to LGBTQ youth who are fleeing violence or persecution, run LGBTQ support groups and summer camps, and offer essential health information and services. Our commitment to gender equity also values advocacy on sexual rights and sexual and gender identity, helping to create a safe and welcoming world for all children and youth.

Youth Empowerment

Right now, the largest youth population in history is coming of age, and most of these young people live in the developing world. It’s a challenge—and an opportunity—we can’t ignore.

According to the United Nations, 89% of the world’s youth live in developing countries. At the same time, youth unemployment is on the rise. And work alone does not mean prosperity: nearly 40% of working youth live in poverty. Together, these challenges pose an enormous threat to our global economic and political stability—unless we seize the opportunity.

By investing in young people, we advance youth rights and work to transform the youth “bulge” into a powerhouse of innovation, opportunity, and social change.

At Global Fund for Children, we empower thousands of youth by equipping them with the skills and knowledge they need to lead lives of dignity, purpose, and economic stability. Our approach involves engaging young people who are also the least likely to have access to mainstream education and training, including girls, refugees, young people with disabilities, and youth engaged in hazardous work.

But economic opportunity is only part of the picture. We prioritize programs that advance young people’s political and civil participation and rights; that amplify youth voices, increase their decision-making powers, and raise awareness of their rights and needs; and that empower young people to educate and inspire their peers to act.

Freedom from Violence and Exploitation

All children deserve to grow up free from danger and harm—yet millions are threatened by war, trafficking, violence, and abuse. For survivors and children at risk, we work to bring safety and dignity to their lives.

Children and youth who live outside of mainstream society—and who are therefore most at risk of violence and exploitation—are often overlooked. Physical, psychological, and sexual abuse happen behind closed doors; poverty and inequality make children more vulnerable to sex and labor trafficking; war and community violence uproot children and youth from their homes and families. Their physical and psychosocial well-being is threatened. And too often, cultural norms make it acceptable to ignore their suffering.

Not on our watch. Global Fund for Children is dedicated to creating systemic change to end violence and exploitation for children and to help young survivors rebuild their lives.

Our grassroots partners provide protection and holistic care to trafficked children, migrants and refugees, child laborers, and survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation. They work to secure children’s legal identities—a critical step toward ensuring children’s safety and access to social services. They prevent future abuses by educating the public, training service providers, and combating harmful cultural norms and practices. And by pushing for better laws and policies to protect children and youth, they contribute to a growing movement that will not accept anything less than safety and security for every child.

Established in 1992 by Lisa and Douglas Goldman, the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund is a private foundation committed to providing support for charitable organizations that enhance our society.  Within its grantmaking areas, the Fund strives to be responsive and flexible as well as to make informed and responsible grants to support qualified projects.  We invite you to review the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund’s newly stated Interests and Priorities.

The Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund supports organizations that are making valuable contributions in the following fields:

Democracy and Civil Liberties

• Goal: Ensure informed, active, and equal citizen participation in the democratic process and protect civil liberties from emerging threats (Geographic Area: National).
• Strategies:
• Protect and expand access to voting.
• Ensure political equality for all by reducing the influence of money in politics.
• Strengthen policy and education efforts to prevent gun violence.

Environment

• Goal: Address the environmental impacts of producing, consuming, and disposing of goods.
• Geographic Area: National
• Strategies:
• Advance sustainable industry practices throughout the lifecycle of products.
• Influence market shifts toward environmentally-responsible materials and decreased use of harmful chemicals.

Jewish Community

• Goal: Combat anti-Semitism and discrimination against Israel (Geographic Area: National, with a preference for projects that impact the San Francisco Bay Area).
• Strategies:
• Advance education, advocacy, and communication efforts about the Jewish community and Israel.
• Facilitate cultural exchanges to educate the general community about Israel.

Reproductive Health and Rights

• Goal: Support abortion service delivery training, safety, and clinics.
• Geographic Area: National (and Northern California)
• Strategies:
• Promote activities that increase and improve abortion provider training.
• Protect the safety of abortion healthcare professionals and their clients.

Reproductive Health

Every woman and girl—no matter where she lives in the world—has the right to live with dignity and have a voice in decisions that affect her life.

The Reproductive Health program is committed to promoting reproductive health and rights, with a focus on high quality information and services. We place a special emphasis on engaging and serving youth, and believe that young people have the best potential for building and sustaining a movement of change.

We aim to:

• Improve the quality of comprehensive sexuality education, voluntary contraception, and abortion care.
• Strengthen service delivery, build leadership and advocacy capacity, and shift social and cultural norms to allow women and youth to make their own reproductive health care decisions.
• Forge partnerships with global research and advocacy organizations, especially networks led by youth, and to create positive and effective messages about reproductive health and rights at the regional and global levels.
• We work with reproductive health advocates, researchers, and providers to advance quality sexual and reproductive health information, services, and rights.

Funding Areas

Family Planning/Contraception

Innovations to improve quality of family planning/contraception. 

Abortion Care

Innovations to improve quality of abortion care. 

Youth

Innovations to improve quality in comprehensive sexuality education and adolescent sexual and reproductive health.

The Population and Reproductive health program is not accepting unsolicited proposals, but welcomes your ideas for funding requests.

NOTE: The Trust Board of Trustees meets four times a year in January, April, July and October to consider grant requests. An eligible request that arrives too late for one meeting will be placed on the agenda of the following meeting. Proposals must be received on the following dates to be included in the agendas noted:

December 1 - January agenda

March 1 - April agenda

June 1 - July agenda

September 1 - October agenda

If any of the above dates fall on a weekend or holiday, the proposal must be received the first working day following the published deadline.

Our Mission

Our mission is to continue and further the philanthropic legacy of Gardner Cowles, Jr. and the Cowles family, which includes promotion of education, social justice, health, and the arts.

The Founder

The Cowles Charitable Trust was first established in 1948 by Gardner “Mike” Cowles, Jr. (1903-1985). Born into the Cowles publishing family of Des Moines, Iowa, Mike was the youngest of Gardner Cowles and Florence Call Cowles’ six children. A newspaper editor and publisher by trade, he was committed to his family’s traditions of responsible, public-spirited, and innovative journalism as well as philanthropy. 

Mike always said that his mother, through her liberal social views, humor, and soft-spoken nature, was his greatest influence. One of the first women in Iowa to earn her college degree, Florence Call made philanthropy her life’s work, beginning by establishing a seed savings bank in her living room to help neighboring farmers through the winter. A strong advocate of women’s reproductive rights and family planning, she supported Margaret Sanger’s mission, including bailing her out of jail on more than one occasion. 

Mike continued his mother’s legacy of activism and was politically engaged both nationally and internationally. The Cowles family was passionate about civil rights and race relations in 20th century America, as demonstrated not only through their philanthropy but also via their trade. In a 1955 speech detailing what makes a great editor, Mike said:

“The greatest editors I know are just like the greatest educators and are successful for the same reason. They are thoughtful men with scrupulous regard for the truth. They are men who strive to stir the best in the human race, not pander to the worst. They are men who dare to lead, even when the direction is temporarily dangerous and unpopular.”

With his brother John, Mike was co-owner of Cowles Media Company. In 1937, he published the first issue of LOOK, a national picture magazine with roots in Mike’s passion for photojournalism and the journalistic innovations that the brothers had implemented at their newspapers. For Mike, LOOK was a visual tool meant to inspire and open the world to its readers; an instrument meant to facilitate one of his greatest passions: education. Of education, Mike stated in a 1949 speech: 

“The only answer to ignorance is education and more education. And I mean more than just the formal education in more and better schools, colleges and universities. I mean more adult education, more public forums, more discussion groups. But above everything else, I mean better newspaper and magazine editing, better news and discussion and debate programs on the radio. And I mean the use of the powerful new medium of television to make people understand and think. Too much thinking nowadays goes on in a bath of noise, because life is so busy, so complex…leaving the common man appallingly confused and misinformed.”

Mike Cowles left to his family a philanthropic legacy that continues to this day. The majority of the Cowles Charitable Trust’s current trustees are Mike’s direct descendants. 

For more information on Mike Cowles and the Cowles family, click here.

Note: The Foundation asks organizations with which it does not have a standing relationship to submit an LOI as the first step in the grant application process. In 2021, this process is for organizations that are new to the Foundation or whose last grant was awarded before 2019.

The Leland Fikes Foundation is a private, grantmaking foundation in Dallas, Texas. Founded in 1954, the Foundation is named for Leland Fikes, a prominent oil and gas executive, real estate investor, and philanthropist.

Funding Priorities

During its early decades, the Leland Fikes Foundation funded a broad array of causes. More recently, the Foundation has intentionally narrowed its focus and now primarily supports organizations concentrated in four major fields.

The Leland Fikes Foundation funds general operations, programs and direct services, advocacy, capital, and capacity building in alignment with our four strategic priorities:

Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice - We support a range of strategies to improve access to reproductive healthcare.

Dallas-Area Human Services

We support our local community though a variety of social service organizations addressing community needs such as housing, food, employment, and physical and mental health.

Progressive Values

We seek to strengthen a free, inclusive, and transparent democracy. This work includes support for public policy, advocacy, litigation, civic engagement, and expanding voting access.

Just as systemic racism and other structural inequities permeate all areas of society, we seek to further equity through all areas of our grantmaking. Applicants should be prepared to share how racial equity informs their program development and implementation. We are committed to listening, learning, collaborating, and deepening our work to combat racism and injustice in each of our stated priority areas.