Our Funding
Kolibri’s Staff and Board, made up of Farbman family members and movement leaders, work collaboratively to identify organizations for each of our grantmaking cycles. We deeply value the process of relational grant making and trust-based philanthropy, and thus offer multi-year, unrestricted funds with no reporting requirements and a minimal application process. Our current grantmaking is done by invitation-only.
We are committed to funding organizations working to build power through organizing and movement-building. Kolibri’s guiding framework is that building power is required for long-term systemic change. We understand that movements challenging capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy are not only working to defend against escalating threats, but also to actively re-imagine and build alternative systems and ways of being that honor the dignity of all people.
Kolibri is funding organizations building the following types of power, as defined below:
Organizing Power: The capacity to recruit, train, practice internal democracy, and align the collective around a shared vision/purpose/strategy in service of social change.
Governing Power: The capacity to explore ways to build governing power that centers equitable and shared leadership over resources and rules; this is not just about who, but the how of governing.
Narrative Power: The capacity to develop and shape stories, messaging, and language that change or confront harmful prevailing and socially ingrained norms.
Cultural Power: The capacity to sustain and create cultural practices and traditions that are being threatened by criminalization and erasure.
Economic Power: The ability to resist exploitative components of capitalism and create alternative infrastructures that support regenerative economies in defense of communities.
[Thank you to our friends at The Rising Majority for offering these definitions of power!]
Kolibri will redistribute resources to organizations actively working towards systems change through our power building analysis. Kolibri’s redistribution strategy has also focused on resourcing organizations that work with or apply the following political lenses: Healing Justice, Racial Justice, Disability Justice and Ending Gender Based Violence.
Check out our grantee partners directory! This list only includes groups that have given their consent to be named on our public website. There are many reasons partners may not want to be listed and we will always respect that decision and continue to proudly support their work.
Read our announcements to learn more about our 2024 Reimagining Power Fund and 2022 Reimagining Safety Fund.