IP Briefing: What’s Going on With Philanthropy for Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice in the U.S.?

In a sentence: Reproductive rights are at serious risk in the United States, and philanthropy is being pushed to do more to support vital frontline work for reproductive health, rights and justice.

What’s going on

“The challenges to reproductive health, rights, and justice are unprecedented, but the movement is strong, resilient, and creative. Now is the time for philanthropy to go beyond the usual cycles of ‘boom and bust’ funding, with sustained, scaled investments for the long term,” Becky Tolson wrote in our State of American Philanthropy paper on the topic.

National organizations doing research, legal and policy advocacy, and health service providers have tended to receive the largest amount of philanthropic support in this space. Think Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood. But movement leaders have been saying—and some funders are starting to hear—that it’s critical to also fund BIPOC-led grassroots groups and coalitions working at the state and local levels. Groundswell Fund, the Ms. Foundation, Third Wave Fund, and others signed an open letter in 2017 urging philanthropy to do that in the face of mounting threats to reproductive freedom in the United States. The stakes are even higher today.

More and more funders in this area are now adopting a justice and equity framework, recognizing the links between access to reproductive healthcare, structural racism and poverty.

Because many funders have shied away from funding abortion-specific work, abortion funds have historically received a small share of the funding in this field. Now the immediate threats to abortion rights are prompting funders and leaders in the field to prepare for the impacts of recent court rulings.

By the numbers

20% of the $912 million in foundation funding for reproductive rights from 2015 to 2019 was earmarked for abortion rights, according to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. Less than 3% went to abortion funds, which actually help people access abortions. But after Texas enacted a near-total abortion ban in September, Texas abortion funds were flooded with donations.

Key funders

Most of the funding for reproductive health and rights organizations comes from large foundations like Susan Thompson Buffett, Ford, Hewlett and Packard.

Important intermediaries in this field include Groundswell, Ms. Foundation for Women and Third Wave Fund, who move resources to grassroots groups and the movement for reproductive justice—defined by movement leader Loretta Ross as “the right to have a child, the right to not have a child, and the right to raise your children.”

Women’s funds and community foundations play an important role in funding work to address disparities in access to reproductive healthcare and maternal health.

Major donors in this space include Melinda French Gates, who in 2019 made a $1 billion pledge to support gender equality through her company Pivotal Ventures, and mega-donor MacKenzie Scott, who has given to Groundswell Fund, National Women’s Law Center and Forward Together.

New and notable

Dawn Wolfe looks at how philanthropy fell short in protecting abortion rights, and what it can do now.
After Texas passed a near-total ban on abortion last fall, there was a surge in philanthropic giving to protect Texans’ abortion access.
Reproductive rights were a focus of MacKenzie Scott’s latest round of gifts, which included $25 million for the Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity and $15 million for the Guttmacher Institute.

Food for thought

“Fund us like you want us to win. If you have an endowment and you care about these issues, you should be giving organizations no less than six figures a year.” — Sheena Johnson, senior director of grantmaking, Groundswell Fund, here

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