What Fund for Nonviolence does

The Fund for Nonviolence is a non-endowed private foundation founded in 1997 and headquartered in Santa Cruz, California. It operates as a grantmaking foundation, channeling resources to social justice movements, networks, and organizations working to dismantle structural racism, challenge state violence, and promote active nonviolence. The foundation maintains four primary grantmaking programs: Reimagining Public Safety, Death Penalty Abolition, Reparations Accountability & Healing, and Braiding Indigenous Futures. It also supports a Legacy Fund for continuing grantees and an Opportunity Fund for rapid-response funding. The foundation was established as the primary vehicle for redistributing a donor's lifetime excess income and bequest assets, reflecting a commitment to wealth redistribution, and it relies on ongoing contributions rather than an invested endowment corpus.

The foundation serves nonprofit organizations, movement coalitions, and grassroots groups, with funding provided through an invitation-only process in consultation with key partners in each field rather than open applications. Its core customer segment is social justice movements and organizations, particularly those led by or centering the voices of people from marginalized communities. The foundation is staffed by approximately five people, including a President/CEO (Betsy Fairbanks, since 1997), a Program Director, two Program Officers, and a Senior Advisor, and is governed by a board of directors chaired by Mona Cadena. The business model is professional services–style grantmaking: the foundation receives donor contributions and redistributes them as grants, with no product pricing, no revenue model tied to commercial customers, and no publicly disclosed financials.

The foundation has no technology product or proprietary platform; its core outputs are grant capital, convenings, and publications. Notable initiatives include the Bridging the Divide Collaborative (2012–2014), which brought together criminal justice reformers and crime victim advocates across four convenings to produce the Bridging the Divide: A New Paradigm for Addressing Safety, Crime, and Victimization report (2014). Customer-facing channels are limited to a website and direct outreach; the foundation does not employ traditional marketing or distribution channels.

Name

Fund for Nonviolence

Legal name

Fund for Nonviolence

Website

https://fundfornonviolence.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

1997

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

The Fund for Nonviolence is a non-endowed private foundation founded in 1997 in Santa Cruz, California, that provides invitation-only grantmaking to social justice movements and organizations across four programs: Reimagining Public Safety, Death Penalty Abolition, Reparations, and Indigenous Futures.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Private Foundation Grantmaking

NAICS

Grantmaking Foundations (813211), Grantmaking and Giving Services (81321), Social Advocacy Organizations (8133)

akta.pro primary industry

Social Justice & Human Rights Grantmaking Foundations (BPAGAKAN)

akta.pro secondary industry

Private Foundations (BPAGAKAA)

Keywords

• Social justice grantmaking
• Private foundation funding
• Movement building grants
• Nonprofit philanthropy
• Criminal justice reform

Headquarters

HQ city

Santa Cruz

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Others

Revenue model

1. Foundation Grantmaking: The Fund for Nonviolence is a non-endowed private foundation that supports social justice efforts through grantmaking. It was established as the primary vehicle for redistributing a donor's lifetime excess income and bequest assets.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Core offering

Fund for Nonviolence is a non-endowed private foundation established in 1997 that redistributes a donor's lifetime excess income and bequest assets through grantmaking to social justice organizations. The foundation operates four primary grantmaking programs — Reimagining Public Safety, Death Penalty Abolition, Reparations, Accountability & Healing, and Braiding Indigenous Futures — along with a Legacy Fund for continuing grantees and an Opportunity Fund for urgent needs. Funding is provided through invitation only, in consultation with key partners in each field.

Product overview

Fund for Nonviolence is a non-endowed private foundation founded in 1997, based in Santa Cruz, California. The organization operates as a grantmaking foundation with four primary grantmaking programs: Reimagining Public Safety, Death Penalty Abolition, Reparations Accountability & Healing, and Braiding Indigenous Futures. The foundation also supports a Legacy Fund for continuing grantees and an Opportunity Fund for urgent needs. The organization does not offer technology products or services but rather provides grant funding to support social justice movements.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Reimagining Public Safety Supports work to build new systems to achieve safety, healing, and accountability through community-driven solutions and replacing punitive responses to violence with healing and transformation. Targeted at social justice movements and organizations in the United States.
• Death Penalty Abolition Supports coordinated work including litigation, advocacy, policy, communications, and research to abolish the death penalty in the United States through legislative reform, reducing executions, and limiting new sentences. Targeted at social justice movements and organizations.
• Reparations, Accountability & Healing Supports work to broaden public understanding and increase accountability for historical and ongoing structural racism and state violence experienced by Black communities, focusing on truth-telling, addressing trauma, redress, reconciliation through healing, and preventing future harms.
• Braiding Indigenous Futures Supports Indigenous-led efforts to help communities heal from trauma, reconnect with their culture and traditions, and become stewards of ancestral homelands, focusing on resourcing movement builders, restore and reclaim efforts, climate and land protection, and building kinship and solidarity.
• Legacy Fund Supports a set of continuing grantees through ongoing grant relationships. Targeted at established social justice organizations with sustained engagement with the foundation.
• Opportunity Fund Provides rapid response funding to address urgent needs in additional areas beyond the four primary programs. Targeted at social justice organizations responding to time-sensitive opportunities or crises.
• Bridging the Divide: A New Paradigm for Addressing Safety, Crime, and Victimization A comprehensive report resulting from a collaborative of crime victim advocates and criminal justice reformers, challenging traditional approaches to criminal justice and public safety through transformational approaches to crime and accountability.

Quantifiable outcome

• Four primary grantmaking programs operating under lenses of dismantling structural racism, challenging state violence, and promoting active nonviolence

Named customers1 record

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Partnerships

One partnership is on record.

• Bridging the Divide CollaborativecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFund for Nonviolence initiated and staffed the coordination of the steering committee of diverse advocates that provided leadership for four groundbreaking convenings and the resulting Bridging the Divide report (2012-2014), bringing together criminal justice reformers and crime victim advocates.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Borealis Philanthropy: Philanthropic intermediary that pools funds from multiple donors to support racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and movement-building. Comparable as a grantmaking intermediary in the same thematic space, with overlap in racial justice and Indigenous solidarity funding.
• Proteus Fund: Philanthropic intermediary and funder collaborative supporting movement-building, democracy, and racial justice. Comparable as a grantmaking organization focused on social justice fields, with similar intermediary-style relationship-building approach.
• Marguerite Casey Foundation: Private foundation supporting movements for social, economic, and racial justice. Directly comparable in mission, grantmaking philosophy, and focus on funding grassroots community-led movements in the U.S.
• Public Welfare Foundation: Private foundation focused on criminal justice reform and ending the death penalty. Highly comparable in its death penalty abolition and public safety reform work, with overlapping grantee networks and similar strategies.
• Hill-Snowdon Foundation: Family foundation focused on social justice movement building, particularly for Black, brown, and Indigenous communities. Highly comparable in focus areas (reparations, racial justice, Indigenous solidarity) and movement-grantmaking approach.
• NoVo Foundation: Private foundation focused on social justice, gender equity, and movement building, particularly for girls and women of color. Directly comparable as a values-driven private foundation supporting grassroots organizing and structural change.
• Open Society Foundations: One of the largest private foundations in the world, Open Society Foundations funds social justice, human rights, and movement-building efforts globally. Highly comparable as a private grantmaking foundation supporting marginalized communities and structural reform, operating at vastly larger scale.
• Arcus Foundation: Private foundation funding social justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and conservation. Closely comparable as a private foundation with explicit social justice and movement-building funding priorities, though Arcus also has a significant conservation portfolio.

Broad incumbents

• Ford Foundation: One of the largest U.S. foundations with major programs in social justice, racial equity, and movement building. Comparable thematically but operates at vastly larger scale, with broader geographic and issue-area scope than Fund for Nonviolence.
• San Francisco Foundation: Major community foundation with strong focus on racial equity, social justice, and movement building in the Bay Area. Comparable in thematic focus and Bay Area ties (a Fund for Nonviolence board member leads its Systems and Programs team), though it operates as a community foundation rather than a private foundation.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/fund-for-nonviolence

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles10 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Fund for Nonviolence