Special Report Title:
Dollars and Dissent: Donor Support for Grassroots Organizing and Nonviolent Movements
Published September 2022
PDF available for download
Special Report Abstract:
Around the world, more people than ever before are using nonviolent collective action to secure rights, achieve justice, and build democracy. This strategy has been twice as effective at attaining these goals than has violent action. Yet despite this, from 2011 to 2018, public charities and private foundations gave only three percent of their total human rights funding to support nonviolent collective action.
Drawing on in-depth interviews and surveys with donors and grantees, this report outlines trends in donor support and details how donors’ values, organizational structures, and perceptions of risk affect their support for the work of grassroots organizers and nonviolent social movements. Furthermore, this report assists donors seeking to deepen their understanding of whether, when, where, and how to provide this support.
About the Author:
Benjamin Naimark-Rowse is the Topol Fellow in Nonviolent Resistance and a PhD candidate at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is a Term Member in the Council on Foreign Relations and a Truman National Security Fellow. Ben’s expertise in social movements and resourcing of movements draws on two decades of experience in the donor, NGO, and academic worlds. He has served as a Program Officer with the Open Society Foundations, an electoral observer with The Carter Center, a board member of the University of Chicago’s Human Rights Program, and an advisory committee member of the Leading Change Network. His publications include “Liberating the ‘Enemy’,” “Nonviolent Resistance,” “Darfurian Voices,” “Surviving Success: Nonviolent Rebellion in Sudan,” and “The Founding Myth of the United States of America.” Ben holds a M.P.A. from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago. His research has been supported by a Harvard Program on Negotiation Graduate Research Fellowship and as a USIP-Minerva Peace and Security Scholar. He is married to Nadia Marzouki. They are the parents of twin girls.