Funding Exchange: Media Justice Fund

Posted by on August 15, 2003

[RFP Bulletin]

Applications for Immediate Response Grants

Deadline: Open

The Funding Exchange(http://www.fex.org/home.html ), a national membership organization of publicly supported, community-based foundations, has established the Media Justice Fund in order to support work to shift the focus of media and telecommunications policies to reflect socialjustice values.

Supported by a two-year grant from the Ford Foundation (< a href="http://www.fordfound.org/>http://www.fordfound.org/ ), the Media Justice Fund will support local and national organizing efforts aimed at media-reform policies, open access to technology, and accountability by media corporations. The Media Justice Fund will promote projects that manifest strong collaborations between media and social-justice activists and agendas.

The fund plans to initiate three grantmaking mechanisms to support specific media justice organizing projects and activities in the United States. Each grantmaking program will pay particular attention to projects’ geographic, cultural, ethnic, and programmatic diversity. The three grantmaking streams include annual grantmaking for the development and dissemination of media-advocacy toolkits, annual grantmaking for pilot media advocacy organizing projects, and immediate-response grantmaking to support organizations that demonstrate both an immediate need for funding and a viable action plan in response to unexpected developments in the field.

A major goal of the Media Justice Fund is to reach grassroots organizations across the U.S. that are interested in incorporating media advocacy into their social-justice work. These include organizations that are concerned about the impact of media regulation on their communities, organizations that want to support or create local independent media infrastructure, and those interested in developing media literacy.

The Media Justice Immediate Response Fund is currently open for applications.(The other two funding programs are expected to open in a few months; updated information will be available at the Funding Exchange Web site.) The Fund will award grants in response to quickly developing political situations in the media advocacy field. Grants may be used to support travel, rallies, mailings, printing, materials, and other costs associated with political organizing activities and are intended for use in mobilizing and educating communities in situations where a small grant — up to $3,000 — can have a significant impact.

See the Funding Exchange Web site for details on applying and for further information on the Media Justice Fund.

RFP Link: http://www.fex.org/2.3.2_mediajusticefund.html

For additional RFPs in Journalism/Media, visit:http://www.fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/cat_journalism.jhtml