Rapid Response
Rapid Response
With our commitment at the intersection of racial justice and systems change, these one-time, $10,000 or $20,000 grants will continue to support movement building, mobilization, and power building around causes or issues that promote racial justice through advocacy, organizing, and/or coalition building.
In 2025, the Meyer Foundation will make available rapid response funding to current core grantee partners to address emergent and urgent challenges and opportunities that surface throughout the year.
With our commitment at the intersection of racial justice and systems change, these one-time, $10,000 or $20,000 grants will continue to support movement building, mobilization, and power building around causes or issues that promote racial justice through advocacy, organizing, and/or coalition building.
Purpose
These grants are intended to address the need for:
- Urgent community organizing and/or associated direct actions, including but not limited to costs to support language justice, accessibility needs, etc.
- Unanticipated legislative, policy, or ballot initiative campaigns (within the constraints of 501(c)3 tax code and associated restrictions on lobbying)
- Costs associated with strategic/impact litigation and/or community defense funds
- Communication campaigns to address emerging rhetoric, including addressing dis- and misinformation campaigns
- Organizationally distributed direct support to community members to include individual bail fees, legal costs, etc.
- Mutual aid
We will consider other organizational needs beyond this list, however, we will prioritize requests that most closely align with Meyer’s current areas of support.
Meyer will also continue to support organizational capacity building outside of rapid response grants.
To learn more about what is supported through capacity building, please click here.
Helpful Definitions
The following definitions may be helpful in learning more about our rapid response grantmaking. Click each term to expand.
Rapid Response Grant Tiers
Meyer will offer two tiers of grants to support work in the amounts of $10,000 and $20,000.
Requests will be evaluated based on the feasibility of spending down these funds in the six-month time frame. Grantee partners will be asked to provide some basic numbers and/or budget rationale to explain the request amount.
Additionally, work funded through these rapid response grants must be based in DC, Maryland, or Virginia, or have multi-jurisdictional or regional impacts.
Grants Processes & Provisions
Rapid response grants should be spent within six months of receipt, as these grants are intended to meet an urgent or emergent need. Grantee partners who receive rapid response dollars will complete a very abbreviated reporting process at the end of that six-month period.
Fiscally sponsored programs will be required to sign and complete grant agreements within one week. Fiscally sponsored grantee partners who are not able to sign and complete a grantee agreement within the allotted timeline will forfeit funds.
Rapid Response Schedule & Award Timeline
Our application for rapid response grants will be open for approximately two weeks at the start of each month, from February to November, with grants awarded the first week of the following month.
Both the application and review process have been designed to be as quick and simple as possible to ensure that funds are dispersed to grantee partners in a timely manner to address urgent issues.
| Apply Between: | For Final Payments By: |
|---|---|
| February 4-14 | March 7 |
| March 3-14 | April 4 |
| April 1-11 | May 2 |
| May 5-16 | June 6 |
| June 2-13 | July 3 |
| July 1-11 | August 1 |
| August 4-15 | September 5 |
| September 2-12 | October 3 |
| October 1-10 | October 31 |
| November 3-14 | December 5 |