U.S. Human Rights Fund

The USHRF seeks to promote human rights organizing and advocacy in the United States and to increase awareness of and support for this work among donors and other constituents. The Fund focuses on domestic social justice groups actively engaged in U.S. human rights work and, more generally, to U.S.-based rights, legal and policy communities.

The USHRF provides support in four strategic areas:

• Human Rights Training & Education: to help build the capacity of activists and groups to actively engage in domestic human rights work across different issue areas, strategies and sectors.
  
• Networking & Collaboration: to foster national and regional networks that link human rights organizations to one another and to the broader social justice community.
  
• Communications: to encourage common and more effective messaging about human rights and its relevance to U.S. practice and policy.
  
• Strategic Thought & Advocacy: to support campaigns that promote the use of human rights to advance substantive policy and/or legal objectives in the U.S.

The Fund's grantmaking includes a sub-fund on ending Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) in key battleground states such as California and Louisiana.

USHRF also supports a Campaign for Domestic Human Rights Accountability, which seeks both to create effective federal and state systems of domestic human rights enforcement, and to build a broader and more active public constituency for human rights accountability.

In addition, the Fund supports donor education on effective U.S. human rights grantmaking including the publication of research and reports.

Grantmaking

Since the Fund launched in July 2005, it has made grants totaling more than $6.7 million to over 46 organizations. In 2009, the Fund aims to provide close to $4 million to support U.S. human rights initiatives. Grants range from $25,000 to $75,000 per year.

Key donors

Since 2005, 13 institutional and private donors have contributed to the Fund. Current members include The Atlantic Philanthropies, Butler Family Fund, Ford Foundation, Four Freedoms Fund, Fund for Nonviolence, General Service Foundation, The Libra Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Open Society Institute, Otto Bremer Foundation, The Overbrook Foundation, Shaler Adams Foundation, Starry Night Fund of the Tides Foundation and an anonymous donor.

For more information about the Fund and its work, visit the USHRF website.