Our approach:

FACT believes that the best way to promote and sustain social change is to make larger, long-term investments in a small number of organizations, and help them achieve financial stability by funding general operating expenses.

With a current portfolio of over 30 organizations, we can add only two to four new organizations each year. In order to leverage our limited funding dollars, we only fund geographic “clusters” of groups with shared values and political objectives that are already working closely with one of our existing grantees. By pooling their resources and collaborating on analysis and campaigns, the groups are able to support each other and have a greater collective effect.

We recognize that most organizations cannot afford to spend valuable time preparing grant proposals that have little chance of being funded. Moreover, FACT’s small three-person staff has a limited capacity to read and process funding requests. For these reasons, we have a policy of not accepting unsolicited grant proposals, and instead proactively seek to identify organizations in California, the southern United States, and France that we feel advance our mission.

In 2004, the Board of Directors decided to completely distribute its endowment no later than 2020. In the next three years (2008-2010), we will only consider funding new organizations that directly advance our current portfolio or clusters. Beginning in 2011 we will no longer be adding any new organizations to our portfolio.

We look for organizations that take a comprehensive approach to exploring the connections between issues through organizing, research, advocacy, and coalition building, and we rely heavily on site visits and face-to-face meetings for information about potential grantees, preferring to observe groups in action with their members rather than interacting solely with staff.

Our grantmaking strategies:

All of our funding falls under a single, broad heading: Social, Economic and Environmental Justice. Within that sphere, we divide it into three inter-related funding strategies:

1. Community Organizing and Intermediaries — FACT believes that long-term social change occurs when individuals recognize and exercise their collective power to influence the public policies that affect them and their communities. Community members are their own best advocates. By organizing together, they can speak in one voice to demand a role in the development of public policies and hold their elected representatives accountable to their needs.
   
   We therefore support a community organizing model centered on grassroots, democratic groups that have traditionally been ignored or denied access to social and economic resources and political power. We believe that helping disenfranchised citizens become leaders is the best way to redress these injustices.
   
   We‘re less interested in organizations that "do" for others than we are in groups that help people realize what they can do for themselves. We seek grantees that are engaged in multi-issue community organizing, advocacy, and activism on the basis of shared values and interests, including intermediary organizations that build cross-sector coalitions.
   
   
2. Capacity Building — Technical assistance, training, and other types of organizational assistance to help our grantees be more effective. This program includes:
   
   
   • General support grants for nonprofit technical assistance providers
   • Small discretionary grants for capacity building needs of limited duration and scope
   • A pool of consultants that work with grantees on management and governance issues
   • Three-year grants for two organizations that are ready to move to the next level
     
     
3. Collaboration — Cross-sector collaborations and coalitions with unlikely allies present a major opportunity to bridge issues that affect the shared interests of otherwise isolated communities. Forging these kinds of multi-issue coalitions among otherwise separate interest groups can produce a much greater impact on a given issue or policy area than if the groups worked alone.
   
   A growing number of funders are supporting these kinds of movement-building partnerships because they recognize that traditional approaches have not yielded sufficient results. FACT itself tries to build relationships and collaborate with activists and other funders as much as possible, and the growth of progressive funder affinity groups in the last ten years offers an opportunity for social justice foundations to coordinate their grantmaking efforts more effectively.