Thousand Currents
/OVERVIEW: Thousand Currents supports grassroots organizations in Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America focusing on global development, climate change mitigation, food, economic justice, women and girls.
IP TAKE: Thousand Currents focuses its grantmaking on grassroots organizations involved in the overlap between climate change mitigation and indigenous rights, sustainable agriculture and food systems and women’s and girls’ causes in Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America. Many of its grantees are women- or youth-led organizations involved in organizing and advocacy with rural and indigenous communities in developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
While this funder is not accessible, preferring a proactive grantmaking approach, it is highly collaborative and supportive. It simply receives more grant requests than it has an ability to respond on a case by case with a limited staff. As well, TC’s focus on grassroots organizations requires they research who and what to fund as the climate change funding sector evolves rapidly. This collaborative funder provides site visits and often seeks to partner with highly effective organizations that are accountable, transparent and financially sound. Thousand Currents works closely with its grantees. Some grantees are then offered a greater degree of ongoing support for their work. This is an excellent grassroots funder to know given how collaborative it is and how much it likes to support organizations complete or scale their work.
PROFILE: Thousand Currents, formerly known as the International Development Exchange, was established in 1985 in San Francisco. The organization “partners with grassroots groups and movements—led by women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples in the Global South—that are creating lasting solutions to our shared global challenges.” Recent grantmaking has prioritized indigenous groups, community building, sustainable farming, conservation and coalition building in Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America.
Thousand Currents also runs a signature program, Thousand Currents Academy, a weeklong event for “social change agents who want to mobilize resources and support grassroots solutions,” and participates in two impact investing collaboratives: the Buen Vivir Fund and the CLIMA Fund.
Grants for Climate Change and Sustainable Agriculture
A significant portion of Thousand Currents grantmaking goes to initiatives that promote sustainable agriculture, water management and the limitation of fossil fuel extraction from indigenous lands. All grantmaking goes to locally-driven grassroots organizations that have active presences in their local communities, though TC takes a generous approach when it comes to looking at scale of impact for its funded organizations. An African grantee partner, Health of Mother Earth, operates in Nigeria and South Sudan to organize and advocate for climate justice and food sovereignty. In India, Thousand Currents partners with Sahyog Sansthan, a collaboration between scientists, organizers and farmers that works toward sustainable and equitable water management and “drought proofing.” A grantee in Brazil, Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens, advocates for “a new people-led energy model for Brazil” and to protect communities that are threatened by ill-constructed dams and waterways.
Grants for Global Development, Women and Girls, and Economic Justice
About half of all of Thousand Currents’ grants invest in organizations serving and/or led by women, and this is not unintentional. TC sees women, and particularly BIPOC women and young people, as those most impacted by extractive wealth accumulation that has produced poverty and historically left out of traditional philanthropy (see here).
In Zimbabwe, one grantee partner, the Institute for Young Women Development, aims to educate young women from rural farming and mining communities on issues of human rights, gender equality and entrepreneurship. An Asian grantee, Nari Chetana Kendra/Women Awareness Center Nepal, has used funding to organize 42 women’s farming cooperatives for financial stability through equitable banking and microlending opportunities. And in Guatemala, Thousand Currents partners with the Asociación de Mujeres Ixpiyakok, an agroecological organization of indigenous Mayan women. Thousand Currents selected each of these grantees based on the desire to help women and girls in local communities advance in terms of economic justice and global development.
Grants for Global Development
Thousand Currents indirectly supports global development across all three of its areas of priority. The foundation broadly focuses on organizing underserved communities to “build power and interdependence through cultural knowledge.”
One grantee partner, the Abahlali based Mjondolo Movement of South Africa, aims to organize the poor of South Africa for access to land, housing and dignity through political challenges to class oppression. Another grantee partner, the Pacific Network on Globalization, received funding for its Campaign for Trade Justice, calls itself “the people’s watchdog for trade issues” and engages in research, advocacy and organizing for equitable development. And in Mexico, Thousand Currents has partnered with EduPaz, an organization that supports grassroots groups promoting equitable food production and access to economic resources.
Important Grant Details:
Thousand Currents makes about $500,000 a year in grants. It tends to offer new grantees $10,000 grants for a period of six months to a year, during which Thousand Currents works collaboratively with the organizations it funds. After this period, some organizations become grantee partners, which receive ongoing support in amounts of up to $40,000 per year for several years. Grantees tend to be grassroots groups led by women and/or youth offering a high degree of interaction with rural and indigenous communities. The organization presents profiles of its recent grantees on its Africa, Asia and The Pacific and Latin America and The Caribbean webpages.
This funder does not accept unsolicited proposals for funding; it chooses its grantees through rigorous research, referrals and site visits and names accountability, transparency and financial soundness as important characteristics of its potential grantees. General inquiries may be addressed to the organization’s staff via email at info@thousandcurrents.org or telephone at 415-824-8384.
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