Early in December Groundswell Action Fund and Resist This PAC launched a new, 501(c)(4) micro-fundraising campaign to channel some of the rage-giving in response to the ongoing, multi-pronged attack on reproductive rights.
The message of the new Until We’re Equal Fund is that, in a post-Roe country, the state-level fight for abortion access will be more important than ever. The good news is that established BIPOC, women, and trans-led organizations are already on the ground throughout the U.S., including states where the right to abortion is most in jeopardy, and they already have the years of expertise and infrastructure in place that will help them advance the work for reproductive freedom. All that’s needed now is the support to make that possible.
Until We’re Equal’s goal is to introduce donors to those existing organizations, with a focus on groups working in some of the most anti-choice states in the country. Money raised through the campaign will be added to the support that grantees are already receiving from Groundswell Action Fund, with grantees operating in the South and Midwest receiving the highest priority.
Given the names behind it, there is reason to believe that this effort could have a solid impact on the fight to overturn state-level legal hurdles to abortion access and prevent even more such hurdles from being passed.
In addition to Groundswell, which is administering the fund, and Resist This PAC, Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown is an Until We’re Equal co-founder. Ai-Jen Poo and Jess Morales Rocketto of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Care in Action respectively, are the new fund’s co-leaders.
The involvement of Resist This PAC alone points to experience with successful micro-fundraising campaigns. The group has collectively raised roughly $10 million through micro-donations for work including the 2020 Georgia Senatorial elections and an effort to unseat the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election results.
Groundswell Action Fund Senior Director Quanita Toffie said that the new campaign will be distributed digitally, as well as through the current Groundswell community and via organizers spreading the word through their respective communities.
All of Groundswell’s 48 grantees, Toffie said, lead the field in three key areas: they’re working to build lasting political power through grassroots organizing and voter engagement, they’re engaged in intersectional organizing using “a race, class, gender, and decolonization lens,” and they’re making “bold demands.” As an example of that last trait, Toffie cited the successful push to remove the 40+-year-old Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding of most abortions, from President Biden’s 2022 budget proposal. The All* Above All coalition, an Until We’re Equal grantee, was among the organizations involved in that fight. Individual grantees are focused on a variety of issues including abortion funds, workers’ rights, and environmental justice in addition to the struggle for reproductive rights.
Along with raising money for underfunded BIPOC-led groups, Toffie said another goal of the Until We’re Equal fund is to “bring along and educate [new small donors] who might be newly-activated just based on how politicized our whole world and lives have become,” and connect those individuals with existing organizations “that already have the expertise and infrastructure to actually advance,” with the hope that at least some of the new donors will also become volunteers.
“We're really hoping to replicate that model of everyday people being able to actually channel their rage, frankly, at this moment that we're facing, and to become part of something larger,” she said.
Ultimately, Toffie said, Until We’re Equal’s organizers hope that one of the core outcomes of the campaign will be to inform and engage donors in ongoing grassroots organizing, and not just during election campaigns. “Grassroots organizing is the only path that we have to actually reclaim power [not just] in the case of abortion rights, but all of the other issues that our grantees are fighting,” she said.
Donate to Until We’re Equal here.