Community Resourcing

Through a participatory and community-centric grantmaking model, we provide flexible funding to support local, regional, and global abortion stigma-busting work and the reproductive justice movement.

Our resourcing approach includes grantmaking for groups through our Abortion Community Care Fund, and individual leaders resourcing within our diverse community spaces and programs.

Nurturing the abortion justice ecosystem from the roots

Since its creation, inroads has devoted $1,027,118.15 USD to support 161 community stigma-busting community organizations in 47 countries.

After almost 10  years of community resourcing, our results demonstrate that recipients of inroads funding go on to scale their own work with funding from other entities offering more complex long-term funding opportunities that require higher administrative capacity levels and significant documentation.

Thanks to inroads long-standing community ties with members within the movement and our participatory and trust-based approach, we are honored to be often the first funding partners of many powerful abortion grassroots collectives and to back innovative stigma-busting projects that other organizations might consider “too risky” to support. 

With inroads’ initial funding, many of our grassroots grantee partners can grow, build capacity, and evolve. They become leaders in their community and spearhead a ripple effect that transforms abortion narratives, realities, and policies for the better.

In the spotlight: Women Spaces Africa in Kenya | inroads members since 2015

"Before inroads, it was a challenge to find spaces openly speaking about abortion or funding for abortion justice work. But through inroads, we found a community that resonated with what we were doing. inroads trusted us as a grassroots organization. They were our first donor, and that trust helped us grow and achieve so much and allowed other donors to come on board. They have contributed immensely to our work of realizing justice for the community we serve.” - Women Spaces Africa.

Abortion Community Care Fund

Funding is key to nurturing the resistance, creativity, and sustainability of the people powering the Reproductive Justice movement. Currently, less than 2% of traditional philanthropic funding goes to feminist and gender justice causes, and within that group, only a few cents go to abortion justice efforts.

At this critical moment in history, when we face oppressive stigma-driven efforts pushing for criminalization and restriction of abortions and bodily autonomy worldwide, we believe in strengthening our collective commitment to nurturing and funding vital abortion justice work.

In a world impacted by stigma at every level, our funding opportunities for abortion movements can be extremely rare, even unique.  As such, hundreds of grassroots collectives come to us for much-needed funding and support.

The Abortion Community Care Fund aims to respond to the needs and dreams of our community of abortion stigma busters by providing flexible funding that sustains their work, supports their care and collective power, sparks collaborations, and ensures their resistance and persistence amid threats, criminalization, and compounding crises.

We do so through three resourcing streams:

1. Bloom Grants

This resourcing stream is focused on funding the core and care needs of groups who do not ordinarily have access to mainstream sources of funding and are impacted by compounding injustices, as well as groups who want to experiment to try out ideas that are considered “risky” or innovative.

Examples of support include the arts, research, translation, documentation, podcasts, community-based projects, or even seed funding to support the launch of something new, like an abortion and RJ hotline. The core needs of groups and spaces for care, reflection, and healing are also supported. 

• Funding amounts: $3,000-$5,000

• Funding term: 1 year

• Funding window: yearly window.

“inroads has been exceptionally awesome. Very considerate of individual members/organizations, it always ensured the whole process of funding was not complicated to follow. inroads makes you feel you are home away from home, in the comfort of a network that has your back.” inroads member from Zambia.

In the spotlight: Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir - Argentina | inroads members since 2014

"We have achieved the social decriminalization of abortion, that is a victory, it is no longer a taboo subject. In a Catholic society, such as Argentina, we share Catholic arguments in favor of the right to decide as the fact that the Virgin Mary was consulted to be a mother, we speak of an inclusive Church that accompanies women and not that condemns them. We have made audiovisual material with funding from inroads that tell stories of Catholic women who had abortions; that material has been one of our most watched videos on our YouTube channel." - CDD Argentina.

2. Collective Power and Solidarity

Abortion work is rooted in collective work, power, and solidarity. We know this as it is the way that our community has and continues to respond, sustain, and support abortion work, understanding that long-term, sustainable change does not happen alone. This resourcing stream funds the joint efforts and strategies of two or more groups to leverage the collective power and solidarity of the community and movements.

Examples of support include: joint leadership of processes, cross-movement collective care/learning spaces, collective participatory research and action work, cross-border support networks and multi-place artistic, embodiment and healing efforts  to create worlds where abortion can be cared for and decriminalization/abolishing can be dismantled with creative collective practices.

• Funding amounts: $10,000-$15,000

• Funding term: 1-2 years

• Funding window: yearly window in the second/fourth quarter

“We would have never been able to bring this strategy to our country if it hadn’t been for the inroads grant. Nor would we have been able to analyze our work through data analysis had it not been for inroads’ support and accompaniment. However, equally important was our integration into a wider, international stigma-busting community. This greatly impacted our organization by improving our understanding of the global battle to fight stigma and making us feel part of a global community. – inroads member from Mexico.

In the spotlight: Kobiety w Sieci & Abortion Dream Team in Poland | inroads members since 2014

With the support of the inroads Fund, they nurtured narrative change, raised the visibility of their work, and expanded their community and reach so that people in need of abortion could more easily find reliable information and support. They shared how the inroads grants enabled them to develop an accessible website, create transformative media guides, and host stigma-busting workshops and spaces to foster community collaboration and narrative change.

3. Sustain and Respond

Our community faces constant threats and crises in their lives and livelihoods that require urgent support. Sustain and Respond is a rolling fund providing trauma-informed holistic emergency support to abortion activists under threat and/or crisis. The spirit of the fund is to protect activists dismantling abortion stigma, and share the burden of risk and resilience through community care and resourcing support. Sustain and Respond recognizes the psychosocial impact of adverse conditions, legal and political marginalization, and multiple sources of oppression experienced by the criminalization of activism.

Examples of support include: Holistic security tools and training, threat modeling assessment(s), attorney fees, bail/bond, expert support/accompaniment, and dependent support during crises.

This is a new stream for which we are actively mobilizing resources. With the support of funding partners, we envision this stream to include:

• Funding amounts: $1,000-$3,000

• Funding term: 6-months to one year 

• Funding window: Rolling – this openness is designed to ensure we are able to respond to the constant threats and crises that our community experiences.

“[We need] instant support for protecting stigma busters who get threatened, harmed or illegally arrested in difficult advocacy contexts.” – inroads member from Ghana. 

Resourcing the Change-Makers Powering Abortion Justice

Resourcing the individual change-makers leading our abortion justice movements is not just important; it's urgent. Across the world, reproductive justice work is often undervalued and uncompensated, disproportionately excluding and impacting the well-being of social justice leaders from the Global Majority and marginalized communities. 

inroads aims to shift power and practices across the traditional global development sector by actively fostering and compensating abortion justice change-makers' wisdom and contributions within our community and wider movement spaces that nurture the reproductive justice ecosystem.

Resourcing the Change-Makers Powering Abortion Justice is a funding stream we incorporate in the design of our members' capacity-building and collective power workshops, cohorts, external sessions, and convenings, where we fund abortion justice leaders to be active participants, facilitators, advisors, trainers, stigma-busting resources curators, speakers, and care supporters. 

It is integral to our Fellowships and Mutual Learning programs, where individual participants are compensated for their contributions and projects. It is key to our Regional & Global Gatherings, where we fund a majority of participants to ensure accessibility and honor the leadership of grassroots collectives and movements.

Since we started this resourcing stream aimed at individual change-makers, inroads has allocated over 100,000 USD to fund individual projects and contributions for approximately 140 network members.

We aim to deepen this process of co-creation and leadership within our network, disrupting power imbalances and ensuring movement leaders have funds not only to create and lead abortion justice efforts but also to protect and care for themselves.