Fiscally Sponsored Projects

Bridges is a hub for strategic progressive initiatives dedicated to exploring innovative tactics to engage diverse audiences, foster strategic thinking, and encourage alignment across movements, geographies, and disciplines. We envision a world where advocates for human rights and gender justice perform like the best jazz band, playing excellent music without a director or sheet music and inspiring diverse audiences to follow our beat by working in harmonic, strategic, and responsive ways. Whether your target audiences are judges, parliamentarians, bureaucrats, policymakers, community leaders, or opinion leaders, you will benefit from the expanded toolbox and the lessons you will learn from our incubated initiatives.

Contigo Fund is the first and only LGBTQ+ Latinx fund in the United States, a top funder of LGBTQ+ Latinx communities in the nation, and the largest LGBTQ+ participatory and grantmaking organization supporting LGBTQ+ communities of color in the U.S. South. Contigo launched in response to the horrific June 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando that occurred on Latin Night, targeting LGBTQ+ people of color. “Contigo” means “with you” in Spanish, reflecting our Latinx roots.

Contigo is a grassroots, place-based intermediary in the U.S. South, authentically community-driven, and nationally leading philanthropic model that advances social, racial, economic and gender justice. Contigo’s approach deepens a sector-wide transformation rooted in the values of intersectionality, self-determination, and collective liberation within Southern philanthropy.

Contigo offers financial support, convenes and strengthens connections, and builds on the leadership of individuals and capacity of organizations, especially emerging and grassroots groups that often lack access to mainstream philanthropy. Contigo serves as a backbone organization in the region and strategically resources and centers efforts of those working to heal, educate, and empower Pulse-affected and LGBTQ+ communities historically marginalized by society -- particularly Black and Latinx individuals, immigrants, and people of color -- so they can drive solutions to the disparities in their own communities and build a strong intersectional movement to end all forms of bigotry in Orlando and across Central Florida.

The Disability & Philanthropy Forum is an emerging philanthropy-serving organization created by the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy. Central to the Forum’s mission is expanding philanthropic commitment to disability rights and justice by centering the leadership of the disability community – essential tenets of achieving a more equitable, inclusive future for all.

Increased social and political polarization in recent years has forced leaders in philanthropy to reconsider the ways in which charitable dollars--often in the form of Donor Advised Funds--may be inadvertently directed to dangerous and xenophobic activity, including but not limited to hate and extremist speech. The Horizon Forum provides a research based convening space for stakeholders in the grant-making community to address this shared public challenge by identifying best practices, exploring case stories, and developing practical solutions. It also creates opportunities for foundations to accelerate and grow their existing work in nurturing socio-economic equity, developing anti-racism initiatives, and advancing cultures of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sector.

The Horizon Forum’s work is grounded in the firm belief that long-term change in the sector must be developed by philanthropy’s own leadership. experience, and insight. It carries out its work through applied research practices of peer-learning, cross-sector dialogue and academic analysis. The initiative's primary activity consists of hosting semi-annual dialogues with stakeholders and researchers familiar with the institutional landscape of philanthropy and unique challenges of self-regulation therein. It also partners with peer institutions and university-based research centers to provide public facing thought leadership and data-based recommendations for stakeholders. Finally, the program also provides direct services for foundations, assisting them in establishing processes and policies for vetting grantees and ensuring they protect their mission to nurture the public good and “do no harm” with their philanthropy.

The Impact-Driven Philanthropy Collaborative (IDPC) promotes thoughtful and intentional giving practices by convening representatives from the donor support ecosystem to strengthen the overall field. The Collaborative’s efforts focus on influencing donors in the top 5 percent of wealth holders, where giving has become increasingly concentrated. Though participation in giving is strong in this segment, the ways people are giving are not yet resulting in meaningful change on issues and in communities. Supported by Raikes Foundation staff and others, this collaborative brings together key stakeholders in the ecosystem of donor support to think together how we might influence donors to give more, give now, and give in ways more likely to make a difference. We believe transformative and inclusive impact comes when donors focus on equity, systems change and effectiveness. Members come together to share, learn and collaborate and have identified opportunities for collective action that would support the full ecosystem.

The Jewish Liberation Fund (JLF) mobilizes resources to sustain and grow a progressive Jewish movement for justice and liberation. Rooted in the practice of participatory grantmaking and philanthropy, JLF’s Steering Committee and decision makers are – and will always be – people who are “closest to the pain”: organizers, activists, spiritual leaders, and others who are deeply rooted in the grassroots progressive Jewish movement for liberation, and who bring the wisdom of lived experiences at the intersections of systems of structural oppression.

More Equitable Democracy (MED) is an intermediary focused on strengthening democracy at the state and local levels. It engages with organizations working in underrepresented communities, particularly people of color and young people, to develop their own democracy reform agendas. This is based on connecting current policy goals with structural change related primarily with redistricting and election methods. Further, MED provides technical assistance, capacity building, and financial resources to activists, organizations, and coalitions interested in advancing democracy reforms that promote equity.

The Prevention Collaborative works to reduce violence against women and their children by strengthening the capacity of key actors to deliver effective prevention programmes, based on feminist principles and evidence-and practice-based knowledge. We serve the specific needs of practitioners and implementing partners by curating evidence, mentoring organisations, and ensuring that donor funding is channelled wisely.

ReFrame builds narrative power to win. We invest in people — strategists, creatives, leaders, and dreamers — developing the skills, acumen, and networks we need to advance just narratives at scale. We use powerful technology to understand narratives across society in real time, gain strategic insight, and forecast arising opportunities to advance just narratives. We develop strategies, curate stories and mobilize networks to advance narratives that light the way to justice, liberation, healing and freedom for all people and the Earth.

State Law Research Initiative’s mission is to help build a body of legal research on the state constitutional law of the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment. Since the 1960s the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the federal 8th Amendment has dominated this area of the law, but state supreme courts retain the power to establish state constitutional protections stronger than those afforded by the federal constitution, making them an important alternative venue for criminal defendants and those already incarcerated seeking protection and redress. To foster this work SLRI seeks to facilitate and fund research on both the legislative history of state constitutional clauses banning cruel and unusual punishment and state supreme courts’ interpretations of those clauses, and to make this research widely available to the legal community.

The Transparency, Accountability & Participation (TAP) Network is a broad network of CSOs that works to ensure that open, inclusive, accountable, effective governance and peaceful societies are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and that civil society are recognized and mobilized as indispensable partners in the design, implementation of and accountability for sustainable development policies, at all levels.

Third Wave Fund resources and supports youth-led, intersectional gender justice activism. We build on the brilliance of our communities using responsive and participatory grantmaking so we can sustain our movements and thrive—now and long term. Our grantmaking and donor mobilizing advances the community power, well-being, and self-determination of young Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) most directly impacted by and best positioned to end gender oppression. We specifically resource grassroots movements that are 1) multi-issue, 2) community-led and 3) unapologetically queer, trans, intersex, and sex worker-led.

The Visiting Room Project (TVRP) is a digital experience that invites the public to sit face-to-face with people serving life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) to hear them tell their own stories, in their own words. More than five years in the making, TVRP is home to the largest collection of first-person testimonials ever gathered from people serving LWOP. At Proteus, TVRP is working with the participants who generously contributed their stories to the project to design a screening and engagement plan. This plan will involve first taking the interviews to the people and communities most important to the men in the project for facilitated screenings. It is our hope that these screenings might open pathways for connection and dialogue between individuals and communities who have been separated for decades by incarceration. Over time, we will also aim to reach wider audiences through public exhibits and screenings. We invite artists, writers, institutions and educators to work with us and expand on the interviews in our archive to bring these stories to the public in a variety of forms.