Grantmaking

BELOW ARE DESCRIPTIONS OF OUR PREVIOUS AND CURRENT GRANT PROGRAMS.  PLEASE SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER HERE TO RECEIVE NOTIFICATIONS REGARDING FUTURE FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES. 

Active Grant Portfolios

Past Grant Portfolios

ADOLESCENT GIRLS OF COLOR MULTI-YEAR GRANT PROGRAM

Through our 2017 community-based research, we learned how the dynamics of patriarchy, racism, and colonization continue to affect girls and gender-expansive youth of color in New Mexico. Additionally, we continue to see difficult outcomes around education, mental health, food insecurity, and poverty for girls and gender-expansive youth of color. While girls and gender-expansive youth of color are typically at the bottom of most social hierarchies, they are simultaneously deeply powerful, resilient, and brilliant. When their rights and self-determination are fully realized, adolescent girls and gender-expansive youth of color positively impact both their own lives and entire communities, transforming structures of poverty and inequity in ways that benefit everyone.

To this end, NewMexicoWomen.Org’s multi-year Adolescent Girls of Color Funding Cycle began in 2019 with the belief that concerted and intentional investment is needed in programs that center the experiences of and create spaces for girls and gender-expansive youth of color to connect, build power, and engage in healing. This grant cycle supports organizations specifically working with and for adolescent girls and/or gender-expansive youth of color, with an emphasis on programs that encompass gender justice and healing, and that develop the well-being and leadership of young self-identifying women and gender-expansive youth of color as change agents.

The AGOC grant cycle is not currently accepting applications. For updates about funding opportunities through this program, sign up for our newsletter here.

GENDER JUSTICE MULTI-YEAR GRANT PROGRAM

In our 2017 community-based research, communities emphasized that root causes such as historical trauma and colonization, patriarchy, and structural racism have a significant bearing on the health and well-being of self-identifying women, girls, and communities in New Mexico. Based on these findings, NMW.O adopted a strategy of gender justice and healing in all our programmatic work. The Gender Justice grant program is guided by this strategy and supports the work of nonprofit organizations that are working to address the root causes of gender and racial inequities or provide culturally rooted and relevant healing. This includes supporting organizations engaging in advocacy, community organizing, and community health and healing work for structural-level change. This multi-year grant prioritizes organizations led by or serving self-identifying women and girls of color, transgender and gender non-conforming folks, and immigrant, low-income, and rural communities.

The Gender Justice and Healing grant cycle is not currently accepting applications. To receive updates about funding opportunities through this program, sign up for our newsletter here.

Healthy Masculinity MULTI-YEAR GRANT PROGRAM

Beginning in 2023, NMW.O initiated a Healthy Masculinities open grant cycle, which emerged from the work of the New Mexico Healthy Masculinities Collaborative (HMC) and the past two years of developing the NM Healthy Masculinities Toolkit. It also stemmed from NMW.O’s 2017 research, The Heart of Gender Justice in New Mexico, in which a key recommendation from communities around the state was the need for healthier masculinities and gender roles.

We are in a crisis of masculinities and gender, with profound impacts on our children, families, and communities. Working toward healthy masculinities and reimagining our gender frameworks are essential to gender justice and healing. Our understanding is that healthy masculinities are nonviolent and find strength in being vulnerable. They center on connection, compassion, emotional awareness, humility, and respect. Healthy masculinities result from intentional work to understand one’s privilege and power; to learn how toxic masculinities play out in our families, relationships, communities, society, and world; and to practice behaviors and support efforts that counter domination, inequities, and violence. In this vein, the Healthy Masculinities Grants support self-identified men and male-identified youth, as well as multi-gendered groups, to engage in healthy masculinities work in their communities, including focused on exploring healthy masculinities, healthy relationships, consent, patriarchy, the impacts of colonization on gender relations, and more.

Healing Awards

In our 2017 community-based research, healing was mentioned as a core element of gender justice and was discussed alongside the ongoing legacies of colonization, structural racism, and patriarchy. Communities across the state voiced a need for care practices and rejuvenation for individuals and organizations working for social change. Participants described how their work can often be exhausting and grueling. In many cases, individuals working to create social change are also from the communities most impacted by inequalities. As such, there is a need to foster and build space for long-term self and collective care. Participants in our research emphasized, “We need the resources to nourish ourselves from within, instead of the nonprofit world just being like a contest of who can go hardest before you fall flat.” Support for healing and care is critical to creating longer-term change and sustainable organizations.

Based on what we learned, in 2018 we began to pilot a Healing Award program. Since 2022, the Healing Awards have prioritized organizations doing critical gender and reproductive justice work. Reproductive justice is inherently connected to other social justice and reproductive rights issues. These awards are intended to nourish and sustain the well-being of staff members of organizations working to ensure that New Mexicans have the social, economic, and political resources to make sound decisions about their bodies, families, sexuality, and reproductive health. From 2022 to 2024, the Healing Awards have funded a variety of self and community care and healing activities such as staff social and healing retreats, team-building activities, group social gatherings and trips, wellness courses, massage and acupuncture, and much more. Award recipients have expressed how profound these unique grants are in terms of supporting community and collective care and sustaining wellness in a way that general operating and program grants cannot. Read on to learn more about the Healing Award recipients from past and current cohorts.

This Healing Awards program does not accepting applications. To receive updates about funding opportunities, sign up for our newsletter here.

Past Grant Portfolios

2020 GENDER EQUITY EMERGENCY FUND GRANT PROGRAM

As the world and our communities here in New Mexico struggled with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, NMW.O responded to the immediate needs of local communities in 2020 by creating the Gender Equity Emergency Fund. We anticipated that the impacts of the pandemic would be far-reaching for communities and grantee partners statewide, who were unable to do their regular work, or were called upon to respond even more extensively given the pressing needs of their constituencies. In light of this, the 2020 Gender Equity Emergency Fund gave preference to organizations and programs serving self-identifying women and girls, particularly the needs of women and girls of color, women and girls in low-income and rural communities, the LGBTQ+ community, and the immigrant community. The COVID-10 Gender Equity Emergency Fund disbursed $173,000 through this fund throughout 2020.

NMW.O does not anticipate conducting another emergency fund at this time unless there are extenuating circumstances that prompt us to do so. To receive updates about other funding opportunities, sign up for our newsletter here.

2012 – 2016 WOMEN’S ECONOMIC SECURITY GRANT PROGRAM

Based on the findings from NMW.O’s 2014 Indicators Report, the 2012 – 2016 grant cycles focused on women’s economic self-sufficiency. NMW.O is aware that economic injustice, low-wage jobs, lack of worker protections, and extractive economic systems perpetuate poverty and intersect with many other pressing issues faced by women, girls, and gender-nonconforming people in New Mexico. To that end, grants were made to organizations and programs statewide working on economic justice and women and girls’ economic self-sufficiency.

This grant program is no longer active. To receive updates about funding opportunities through this program, sign up for our newsletter here.