Four Freedoms Fund

FFF promotes a strongly aligned and effective national immigrant rights field working to advance:

  • Immigration reform,
  • Immigrant Civic engagement and integration, and
  • Civil liberties and human rights.

The Fund's work is guided by the long-term vision of immigrants and refugees fully integrated into American civic life. In particular, FFF supports state and regional coalitions that connect up to nationally coordinated campaigns and down to grassroots, often ethnic-specific groups.

FFF awards grants to foster a strong, national immigrant-rights field by:

  • Supporting a coherent infrastructure of effective local, state and regional organizations,
  • Providing multi-year capacity-building funding and peer-learning opportunities to benefit anchor organizations,
  • Building the communications capacities of key grantees,
  • Commissioning research to identify strategic funding opportunities
  • Sponsoring in-,person, telephonic and webinar briefings for funders, and
  • Operating as a "link tank," coordinating with other grantmakers and grantee networks

Grantmaking and Initiatives

Now in its sixth year, the Fund has invested more than $23 million to 85 grantees nationally. Grants are made in geographic areas with sizable and/or growing immigrant populations, now including 33 states. Additionally, the Fund offers supplemental support to grantees by hosting convenings and providing technical assistance. Based on the needs of the immigrant rights field, FFF has incorporated three specialized initiatives into its work - Strategic Communications, Civic Participation and Capacity Building. Since its inception, FFF has demonstrated its commitment and capacity to move nimbly and focus its grantmaking strategy to address the ever-changing needs and challenges in the immigrant rights field and helping to build its infrastructure for the long run.

Key donors

Current funders include the Carnegie Corporation of New York; Ford Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; Open Society Institute; Horace Hagedorn Foundation; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; J.M. Kaplan Fund; Northwest Area Foundation and Western Union Foundation. The FFF also works closely with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which created the American Dream Fund as a sister fund to promote immigrant integration in 26 local communities.

FFF co-founders Geri Mannion and Taryn Higashi have been named the 2009 co-recipients of the Council on Foundations' Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking! Learn more here.