WDN Action has granted more than $8.6 million in c4 funding to 67 organizations in 13 states this year. Read on for more about our latest grantmaking and what we’re hearing from our grantee partners. 

So far this year, WDN Action has granted more than $8 million in c4 funding, including our most recent grants to 9 organizations that will have a decisive electoral impact this fall in states like Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan. But despite primary wins and shifts in polling, there’s still significant work to be done between now and November.

We are so grateful for the collective power of this network and all we can accomplish together. And that is why we know we can step up in a major way before the November midterms.  

In WDN Action’s three-part Deep Dive Into Battleground States series, we heard from movement leaders in nine battleground states about how they are fueling progressive wins and working to build long-term power in their states. Read on for highlights from across the country. 

The WDN community recently heard the powerful stories of Brandon Wainright, Dereck Bell, and Colette Payne, three formerly incarcerated leaders and monologists with Motus Theater’s JustUs project. Though their stories are somber, they inspire action toward a shared vision of true justice for all.

Over the past two months, we have moved nearly $4 million to groups that are driving electoral organizing, narrative, and digital programs in advance of November, bringing our total grantmaking this year to $7,307,000. And we’re not done yet.

The impending Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. Wade has obvious implications for abortion rights, but it also signals a crisis for democracy. It’s widely known that GOP legislators hold majorities in the 23 states where the end of Roe will mean abortions are banned. But new analysis from the Reflective Democracy Campaign, a project of the Women Donors Network, reveals just how undemocratic the bans will be. 

With the midterms looming, early resources are critical. So we're making a big investment and moving more than $3 million in funding to 20 organizations that are driving electoral organizing, narrative, and digital programs in critical geographies for 2022.

Indigenous communities are among the most marginalized in the United States, with staggeringly high poverty and unemployment rates, abysmal access to health care, scant political representation, and too many other barriers and challenges to name. The horrifying mistreatment of Native Americans is not a legacy or settled history. This treatment is perpetual and is sure to persist until Indigenous people gain the political power to shape their own destinies.

Nadia Nisha Belkin is the Executive Director of the Asian American Power Network, a growing alliance of 501(c)(4) organizations that are building political and electoral power within Asian American communities across the country. We had the chance to interview Nadia about what AAPN is doing differently.

It is more important than ever to move resources as early as possible to organizations laying the groundwork in key states. With 2022 being a critical election year, Georgia is on our minds.

Justice and equity begin at home. Across the U.S., more than two million nannies, house cleaners, and care workers, most of them women of color and immigrant women, toil every day to keep children healthy and happy, tend to the health of older family members or those who need care, and play the countless other roles that keep a home running.

The announcement of Justice Stephen Breyer’s pending retirement paves the way for a historic opportunity—the possibility of the first Black woman Supreme Court justice in our nation’s history. We need a national coalition to support the nomination and confirmation—and WDN Action grantee She Will Rise is primed to lead the charge.

What if artists had a greater role in the most important conversations, and what if there were stronger links between artists and movements for change? We believe deep, systemic change would be conceivable to many more members of the public and the political elite alike.