Overview of SPF Grantmaking Programs 

Over the past ten years, SPF has awarded approximately eight million dollars to grassroots community organizing groups addressing educational, economic and social justice issues in the rural South.  SPF provides general operating support, technical assistance, travel and discretionary grants as well as occasional special initiative awards, to organizations in twelve States: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.  An overview of SPF’s three major grants programs is below.  

Regular Grants Cycle

Through the Regular Grants Cycle, SPF typically awards approximately $750,000 in grants annually through a Request for Proposals (RFP) process to organizations in the rural south to support social, economic, and environmental justice. Although SPF supports program-specific requests, the majority of its grants are awarded as general operating support. 


Discretionary Fund

SPF's discretionary grants program awards approximately $75,000 in grants annually for technical assistance, travel assistance and emergency needs.  Grants typically support organizational capacity-building, staff and board leadership skills, hosting conferences, and travel to conferences and workshops.  Travel assistance supports organizations efforts to build knowledge and grow relationships between isolated groups actively engaged in similar issues.  Applications for this program are accepted on a rolling basis. 

Justice Fund for Disaster Relief and Renewal

Note that we are not currently accepting proposals for the Justice Fund. 
Watch this space for more information. 

The Justice Fund was created in direct response to Hurricane Katrina in order to provide short term relief, mid-term assistance, and long term support for community renewal.  The fund supported our grantee partners and allied social change organizing groups to ensure that the resources got to the people who needed them most.  In addition to relief effort, the Justice Fund has helped support local, statewide and regional gatherings of southern organizers to discuss relief activities, movement building with those affected, and supported strategies leading to change in public policy.  Funds have also been used to support the work of gathering, documenting and disseminating the stories of people in the Gulf Region through these crises. In 2008, the scope of the Justice Fund was expanded to address not only hurricane recovery, but all types of disaster that affects the Southeastern United States. 

General Grant Guidelines 

To be considered for support through any of Southern Partners Fund grant programs, organizations must be rural community groups in the Southeastern United States, self-governed by members of the targeted rural population, and organizing on issues of social, economic and environmental justice that enables community members to become decision-makers.  

 More Information...