Inside Philanthropy

Go beyond 990s.

You are here: Find a Grant / Grant Finder / Grants for Human Rights

Grants for Human Rights

Learn more about grants for global security and grants for human rights by exploring Inside Philanthropy’s list of top global security and human rights nonprofits below. Subscribers can also explore funders using our Grantfinder Search Tool. Become a member.

Key Funders

Funding trends in human rights 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by representatives from around the world and adopted in 1948, establishes certain fundamental rights to be protected worldwide. These include the right to life, the rights to not be held in slavery or subjected to torture, the right to seek asylum from persecution, freedom of thought and expression, and workers’ and cultural rights, among others.

Philanthropy for human rights, complex in nature, focuses on an array of intersecting issues – from freedom from violence to resource rights, in various national and political contexts. The human rights funding landscape is especially challenging in a time of overlapping crises, including climate change, a rise in authoritarian governments around the world, and multiple genocides. 

Between 2 and 8% of global foundation giving supports human rights work, the Human Rights Funders Network (HRFN) estimates. A relatively few top funders dominate this philanthropic space. In 2020, “The top 12 funders accounted for 53% ($2.7 B) of human rights funding,” HRFN reported. That means that changes in strategy by a single leading funder – such as the transformation currently underway at the important human rights funder Open Society Foundations – can impact the entire field.

Human rights philanthropy overlaps with grantmaking for women and girls, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ rights, racial equity and Indigenous rights, and many other philanthropic spaces. Given the multiplying risk factors that climate disasters and ensuing climate migration will have on human rights, human rights funders are increasingly supporting climate-focused nonprofits, as well. Similarly, funding for frontline climate-justice groups increasingly gets categorized as human rights funding, which explains how the environmental funder Global Greengrants has been identified by both HRFN and Candid as a top human rights grantmaker in recent years.

Human rights philanthropy exists in an era of transformation, albeit gradually, from a historically Western-dominated, top-down approach to a more global and local approach. Women’s and feminist funds, such as FRIDA and Astraea, have been leaders in demonstrating trust-based, intersectional human rights philanthropy, making grants directly to local organizations around the world. And although they represent a small share of overall human rights funding, local and regional funders play a critical role in direct funding of local organizations and movements in countries that are under-resourced, or indirectly resourced, by large philanthropies based in North America and Western Europe, HRFN found.

Where are human rights grants going? 

The Human Rights Funders Network identifies 27 issue areas of human rights grants and nine populations that face unique challenges when it comes to human rights: children and youth, human rights defenders, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQI people, migrants and refugees, persons with disabilities, racial and ethnic groups, sex workers, and women and girls.

Many human rights grants focus on one of these groups, while a smaller share of grants focus on several intersecting identities. Grants for human rights support everything from grassroots activism to legal aid, research, emergency response, and advocacy.

Grants for human rights often invest in specific populations or nations. For instance, the Arcus Foundation works to increase safety and protections for LGBTQ people in 12 focus countries in the Americas and Africa. Feminist funds, such as the network of Urgent Action Funds and the private foundation Foundation for a Just Society, are leaders in funding to support human rights defenders. 

The vast majority of grants and grant dollars for human rights go to organizations based in North America, even if some of those grants ultimately support human rights initiatives in other places.

Gaps in human rights funding 

With the majority of human rights grants going to North America, a substantial gap in funding exists for human rights organizations based anywhere else in the world, the Human Rights Funders Network has repeatedly found. There is also a persistent gap in direct funding going to regions other than North America, with much of the funding passing through intermediaries or INGOs based elsewhere. For example, HRFN found that 40% of the funding meant to benefit the Middle East and North Africa moves through organizations based in other regions. In HRFN’s analysis, this reflects a “trust gap” in global human rights philanthropy. HRFN has also found that identity-based human rights funding most often focuses on a single identity (e.g., women), and less frequently addresses multiple or intersecting identities. The combination of these factors produces gaps such as a very small percentage of human rights philanthropy going to Indigenous women, the majority of whom live in Asia and Africa, as documented in a global analysis of funding to Indigenous women by Archipel for International Funders for Indigenous Peoples and Foro Internacional de Mujeres Indígenas.  

As noted above, feminist funds, and local and regional funders, are leading the way in addressing these gaps. Most of the funding from Prospera, an international network of women’s funds, for example, goes to formerly colonized territories in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

HRFN is also careful to point out that all of this “is not to suggest that human rights work in North America is overfunded,” when the reality is that organizations everywhere are under-resourced relative to the vast need for human rights funding.  

Published on