In Defense of Movements Project

An Investment Roadmap for Funders Seeking to Defend Justice Movements from Political Prosecutions and Disrupt State-Sponsored Repression

The weaponization of the criminal system against Americans pursuing an inclusive, representative democracy and seeking justice and equity is not new. And yet, today’s rising authoritarian movement is expanding local, state, and federal tools of political prosecutions in order to silence activists across a wide array of social issues, dismantle entire movements, and undermine the promise of our democracy. Across our country, individuals, grassroots formations, nonprofits, and their funders are being surveilled, investigated, and prosecuted for their political activity against corporate or state interests.

Introduction

The In Defense of Movements Project is an emerging, strategic collaboration between private and public funders and philanthropy-mobilizing organizations to synthesize and catapult the wisdom and expertise of movement scaffolding organizations who are leading the political, narrative, and legal defense of a wide array of justice movements facing state repression by a weaponized criminal legal system. State actors and state-adjacent actors are working to destabilize movements everywhere – launching attacks through the media, civil courts system, financial platforms, government surveillance arms, and through congressional, state, and attorneys general investigations, sometimes with the threat of revoking IRS status. While these attacks are seemingly disparate in nature, this is a coordinated trend occurring in red and blue states across the country.

Philanthropy is increasingly exploring new initiatives that can support the long-term safety and security needs of the movements at risk of these attacks. Yet there is still a needed intervention to address political prosecutions as part of these broader threats facing movements that goes beyond safety and security. The scale and breadth of political prosecutions today are different than ever before and already targeting movements for migrant, racial, gender, queer, economic, and climate justice, including those advocating for voting rights, Palestinian human rights, and the safety and dignity of the unhoused in America. Regardless of who is in the White House in 2025, political prosecutions will continue and likely emerge as an even deeper threat to already-imperiled movements, especially as investments in the carceral system have continued across the past several administrations.

The In Defense of Movements Project is led by Democratizing Justice Initiative, Communities Transforming Policing Fund at Borealis Philanthropy, CS Fund, Piper Fund, and Funders for Justice and is seeking partnerships with other funders and PSOs behind a unified mission to enable our justice movements to operate in fearlessness and determination - undaunted by the specter of state repression through the weaponization of the justice system, and steadfast in their power building.

This project is relevant to any funder whose theory of change includes power building and community organizing. In Defense of Movements is not about shifting your priorities, but enabling us all to double down on what matters to us. We seek to align and activate philanthropy behind practitioner-identified long-term structural solutions that will enable justice movements and their funders to:

Conduct a risk assessment of political prosecutions and how to mitigate and prepare for attacks before they occur;
Fight political prosecutions on multiple fronts: in the legal system, the political arena, and the court of public opinion;
Blunt the likelihood of future attacks and emerge stronger as movements;
Balance long-range scaffolding needs, capacity scaling, and shorter-term opportunities to increase preparedness, coordination, and strength in ‘hot spot’ jurisdictions;
Pilot new approaches for the development of legal, organizing, and communications scaffolding for at risk movements.

The In Defense of Movements Project is a creative collaboration across issue areas, especially between those advancing the interconnected issues of climate, queer, gender, migrant and racial justice and anti-militarization. We operate by foregrounding the wisdom of movement leaders in clarifying the problem, developing and advancing narrative, legal defense, and organizing solutions, and advising funders on how to take action.

The Project is a roadmap for institutional philanthropy, funder collaboratives, and individual donors rooted in the values and principles for fund allocation established in partnership between movement and philanthropy. Our role as funders is to nurture a container for this work, cultivate robust funding from new and diverse sources, foster appreciative inquiry and thought partnership along the way, and promote collaboration across silos.

Our organizations have already conducted conversations with many experts who have experienced or have provided support to those who have experienced political prosecutions by the state for their activism. The proposal herein is directly emergent from what we have heard from the field. We know that this project is much larger than any of our institutions. We welcome your partnership, vision, and leadership!

For additional background to this document, we welcome you to explore the following primers that we have developed:

Alarmingly Common: Modern-Day Political Prosecutions Targeting Justice Movements
From Past to Present: Understanding this Moment in Political Prosecutions of Leftist Movements in the United States.
Warning Signs & Intervention Points: Stages in State-Sponsored Suppression of Social Justice Movements
Interviews with Practitioners: Identified Needs & Opportunities for Intervention

Understanding the Threat

It is imperative for funders to understand how alarmingly common political prosecutions that target movements for racial, social, and environmental justice and human rights are today. Political prosecutions are happening all over the country — this is not an issue of blue states vs. red states or urban vs. suburban vs. rural. Movements engaged in a broad range of strategies — protest, mutual aid, direct service, policy advocacy, or electoral activity – have endured this targeted oppression at the hands of government, corporations, media, and reactionaries.

To be clear: our opposition is not just targeting protesters, high profile activists, or leading organizations engaged in First Amendment activities, but rather they are focused on how to repress entire social movements and dismantle their supporting infrastructure.

It is no longer just the right to protest or dissent that is under attack, but the fundamental right to organize and to participate with a cause for justice that has become the predicate crime against the state. This is happening against the backdrop of racialized state violence against movements; increasingly militarized policing and criminalization as a tool of authoritarianism; changes in technology and surveillance that movements cannot keep pace with; a corporate war on the First Amendment; and a rise in polarization and political violence.

We see how the state has used the technological advancements and lessons learned from the global war on terror to target domestic social movements, attacked them as criminal syndicates, and targeted their funding and support infrastructure as enemies of the state. Looking at trends among authoritarians from around the globe, we can anticipate ‘foreign agents’ laws being used increasingly as tools to repress dissent and attack the financial structures of movements. We can heed the threats embedded in Project 2025, like calls for greater use of racketeering laws against activists – laws that are traditionally used for those involved with extortion and murder. We can pay attention to the seeds already planted of increasing regulatory attacks against nonprofits, and labels of extremism designed to sideline leaders, organizers, and even just everyday people speaking out for justice. All of these threat vectors intersect with - and are amplified by - non-state reactionary movements and activists who present digital, physical, and organizational dangers as well.

“...[W]e believe strongly that funders are not just bystanders — we must act as agents to safeguard our constitutional right to free speech and peaceful assembly. It’s time for philanthropy to invest in the urgent security needs, long-term security infrastructure and legal advocacy of movements that enable us to protest and engage in other forms of dissent as a key pathway to social progress.”

–Rajasvini Bhansali, Solidaire Networks

Philanthropy’s Role

The authoritarian movement has largely gone unchecked for decades by philanthropy and has become a clear, present, and growing danger to our collective vision of an inclusive democracy.

Leading practitioners defending movements note that there are very few funders looking at the incredible risks to movement formations – and funders themselves – as a result of the weaponization of the judicial system. This is a holistic threat to the engine of democracy.

The philanthropic responsibility in this moment lies in moving beyond narrow sector silos, limited interventions in static theories of change, and short term interests. Instead, we must rapidly come to terms with the scale of threat, the dangerous lack of preparations against what comes next, and the gravity of consequences of continued funder inaction at this moment.

Roadmap for Funders

The In Defense of Movement Project requires philanthropy to demonstrate the same fearlessness and determination that justice movements embody in the defense of our bodies, our communities, our planet, and our values.

We are calling on philanthropy at-large to make a substantial annual investment for the next several years into building the critical movement infrastructure necessary to defend justice movements as they advance our collective progressive vision and build a multi-racial democracy.

The Project is seeking stakeholder partners across philanthropic sectors and at every level of funding to identify and engage in a roadmap based on this bold strategic vision:

Set a table of philanthropic and practitioner leaders who will work together to elevate the scope of the problem within philanthropy and among new potential funders, and the need to focus on long-term solutions.
Assemble the In Defense of Movements Brain Trust - a diverse, multi-discipline group of practitioners who will lead this long-term infrastructure visioning and implementation of high-potential strategies for improving movement’s resilience against state sponsored repression. This will include both national organizations supporting movements and state and local movement formations that have themselves faced these assaults and are sharing their wisdom with their peers. The brain trust will be assembled in a collaborative fashion, with input from funders and practitioners. It will be designed to foreground voices engaging in legal, narrative, and organizing strategies. Once assembled, it will determine how to best function as a liberated gatekeeper – sharing emerging insights and wisdom with the field in a secure fashion while providing opportunities to welcome others into the conversation at various touchpoints.
Launch a grantmaking mechanism such as a Pooled Fund (or work with a partner who can absorb this grantmaking effort) that will disseminate minimally $7 million in annual grant making capacity over two years. We view $7 million as the threshold of committed dollars for activating the brain trust as we work towards a larger dollar grant pool for both the pilot two years and the subsequent imagined years. Grantmaking will be guided by the Brain Trust through a participatory grantmaking process.
Engage, educate, and advise prospective funders, donor collaboratives, and funder affinity groups across sectors in order to mobilize resources - through collaborative or direct giving - to the strategies that are identified by the Brain Trust.
Build resource mobilization capacity to develop funders outside of institutional philanthropy, including individual donors and law firms, to bring their resources and expertise into prioritized infrastructure and rapid response needs.

More on the In Defense of Movements Brain Trust

While there are many brilliant practitioners and thought leaders, there is no one single perspective, organization, or solution that can understand, field, or respond to the comprehensive list of threats at hand. Legal strategies alone will not stem the tide. Organizing in a vacuum absent legal and strategic communications is ineffective. And strategic communications are only as impactful as the organizing and legal strategies provide pathways to sustainable victories.

We see the need for an initial investment in a 24-month pilot phase of resourcing movement needs by convening approximately 20 multidisciplinary practitioners together in a creative environment, both online and in person, where they can envision the long-term scaffolding needed to support movements and prioritize the necessary steps to get there.

The In Defense of Movements Brain Trust will grapple together with Identified needs & opportunities for intervention. As a starting point, they will draw from the questions, problems, and potential solutions such as:

How do we increase the number of lawyers who are trained to show up in defense of movements by an order of magnitude? How do we cultivate the next generation of lawyers who are aligned with movement?
How do we prepare at risk movement formations by pre-staging resources? What’s the most effective way to do that?
How do we nimbly and effectively plan for the next mass indictment of protesters – and how do we memorialize the lessons learned along the way and carry them forward, ensuring movements emerge resilient?
How do we turn political prosecutions back on the state, making them painful and politically toxic?

Participants

Participants will include lawyers, organizers, and communicators with an understanding that the scaffolding that needs to be built bridges all three needs. They thrive on structural analysis, strategy, and long-term movement building; they are willing to engage in breaking down organizational and issue silos and promoting deeper collaboration; and they are comfortable with operating in an environment focused on creativity and nimble experimentation.
Organizations invited to participate at this level of macro view thinking are committing staff resources for two years to act as infrastructure architects. They will designate one staffer as a primary point person and one staffer as an alternate who will be kept fully up to speed on the project and available to step in when the point person is unavailable. The organization will receive $80,000 over two years for their participation in the project, dispersed as $40,000 for each of two years.

Time commitments and resourcing staff time

Participants will commit to 4 multi-day (anticipate 4 days) in-person convenings during the 24 months of the pilot project. All expenses will be covered on top of the $80,000 allocation to the organization.
Additional time commitments will include occasional online correspondence to share information; an online 2-hour meeting every 4-6 weeks of the collective whole to continue advancing the conversation and action items; as well as committee meetings focused on advancing key questions related to specific issues and/or designed to provide detailed structure to advance specific projects for funding.
There will be a pool of funds to provide for honorariums when the brain trust wants to invite people outside the group to lend their wisdom and expertise to the group’s thinking on a particular problem/strategy.

In-person convenings

Multi-day gatherings will be approached as a refresh and a creative endeavor. In other words, we will create a true retreat container for people to first slow their nervous systems, ground themselves, and lean into sustainability practices, relationship-building and expansiveness before going deep into process mode and a culture of productivity focused on fighting authoritarianism.
Develop authentic relationships grounded in shared values, understanding that differing personalities and work styles can stand in the way to deeper collaboration and a willingness to work in collaboration towards a shared goal, and acknowledging that success involves developing muscle and moving at the speed of relationship. This includes a facilitated process of clarifying our shared values and principles for our approach to this project, and community norms for our collaborative engagement.
Engage in level-setting: Unpack together how we define and articulate the problems and the key questions we will answer together – to ensure we are grounded in shared language and understanding.
Create alignment between philanthropic advisors and practitioners on the parameters, and undergirding values, for allocating funds
Discuss how we will make decisions, stay aligned, and approach a consent-based decision-making model.
Develop alignment with common language and framework for understanding warning signs for repression and how to triage rapid response requests and needs
Envision together big ideas, moving towards specific recommendations and prioritization for what to advance first
As infrastructure and projects are built out, participants will utilize these tools in service of rapid response needs, and will evaluate how they help us intervene more quickly and more effectively to meet the needs of local movements, and recommend how to pivot, as necessary.

Facilitation / Coordination

This project will necessitate skilled facilitation and coordination both during and between in person convenings – as such, a line item will be allocated to cover these costs.
The brain trust will be invited to participate in choosing a facilitator, who will work to support both the brain trust and the funder collaborative.
Facilitator will work to develop agendas and support meetings, including advancing the work of issue and project specific committees.

A Participatory Grantmaking Process

The primary goals of the In Defense of Movements Project are to call philanthropy to action and incubate the long-term scaffolding needed to address the weaponization of the justice system against movements. We aim to leverage funding that can act as a catalyst for resource mobilization from across philanthropic sectors by showcasing recommendations on short-term and long-term projects.

Using a participatory grantmaking practice, the Project would enable innovative solutions and scalable interventions to move quickly forward rather than sitting on a shelf. Funder participants in the Project agree to heed the collective wisdom of the Brain Trust while reserving the right to request more information about the vision behind a project/tactic and ask for clarification around potential markers for success.

Funders and practitioners understand that this is a pilot project that will lean into experimentation. We know some recommendations are designed to test the waters and inform future/longer-term tactics.

Currently, we are exploring the best vehicle/s to direct said funding to movements, such as establishing a pooled fund, or absorbing this project into an existing pooled fund housed at one of our partner institutions.

Launching In Defense of Movements Project

In Defense of Movements Project serves as a hub for funder organizing that engages and educates prospective funders, donor collaboratives, and funder affinity groups across sectors in order to mobilize resources. The work of broadening philanthropic understanding and in turn the prioritization of what’s at stake, what it takes to intervene, and how funders can invest cannot be left to one institution or formation. Instead, we all must take a more sweeping approach to defending justice movements from state repression — no matter the issue, locale, or community impacted. Solidarity is our best defense.

A critical component of the In Defense of Movements is to develop new donors and funders to the Project as well as more rapid response funds on the front lines of response to state repression. In order to accomplish this goal, the Project is prioritizing the increase of resource mobilization capacity to engage individual donors and law firms. Diversifying funding streams for the defense of movements not only ensures a more sustainable, long-term resourcing but also, ensures greater security for all involved funders.

Our starting points for the Project are to organize practitioners in support of educating philanthropy on the challenges at hand, incentivizing them for their time and engagement and building momentum towards a resourced brain trust. To accomplish this goal, our organizations are raising seed dollars to support practitioners who are committed to the project and the needed funder education that will make it a reality, as well as coordinating and fundraising staffing necessary to get these practitioners in front of philanthropy and primed to invest.

We hope to partner work with you as your capacity allows in the coming year to create and implement this series of impactful conversations and presentations for philanthropy.

Step 1: Philanthropic Education & Engagement - $450,000 (January-June 2025)

$300k - Six-month grants to 10 practitioners who will play a leadership role in educating philanthropy on the need for long-term infrastructure investments and the challenges at hand
$75k - Coordinating and project support for practitioners and funder leadership team
$75k - Philanthropic outreach advisor to craft and implement a legal community fundraising plan

Step 2: Launch Two Year Pilot: Brain Trust & Accompanying Grantmaking - $9,945,000 (July 2025-June 2027)

This budget reflects the minimal amount needed in order to move forward with establishing a brain trust who will collaborate for two years, while working to raise more funds for subsequent years.

Braintrust - $2.67 Million

$1.75M - stipends over two years for 20 organizations in brain trust
$600K - 4 convenings
$240K - facilitation of braintrust and philanthropic advisors
$80K - administrative support/operations for brain trust

Grantmaking “kickstart” pool - $7 Million

Project incubation grants, to be disseminated through brain trust wisdom by the end of the two year pilot cycle

Grantmaking administration and fundraising expenses - $275,000

Grantmaking overhead expenses (administrative/operations/fees, etc.) - $100k
Staffing for philanthropic outreach and engagement to expand investment pool - $175,000

Ken Chapman