Progress Alliance of Washington Grant - Core Grants

The Progress Alliance of Washington Grant focuses on empowering organizations that build political power, particularly for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. Through strategic investments, the grant aims to strengthen a diverse and inclusive progressive movement in Washington. The funding prioritizes long-term relationships, impactful policy solutions, and tools that enhance movement capacity. Core Grants are awarded to partners committed to fostering civic engagement and ensuring democracy works for everyone.

Our approach to investing in Washington's vibrant progressive movement is rooted in three core grantmaking principles:
We prioritize long-term power-building over cyclical wins.
We prioritize deeper, more responsive relationships with our grantees, which means taking on fewer overall investments with higher touch support.
What We Fund: Core Investment Areas
LeadershipTo drive political change, we need skilled candidates, elected officials, and organizational leaders who are equipped to lead, reflect the diversity of the people they represent, share our values, challenge our assumptions, and champion our issues.CommunicationsTo inspire the public and persuade elected officials, it takes unified, clear, and emotionally compelling stories dominating the public narrative about our vision for the future, how we get there, who benefits, and who stands in our way.PolicyTo create a healthy and just Washington state where economic prosperity is shared and democracy works for everyone, we need smart, high-impact policy solutions that improve people's material lives today, while changing the systems to address the root causes of the issues our communities are facing.Movement CapacityAt the foundation of a successful movement are crucial tools and capacities to support the efficiency and effectiveness of our movement's organization, such as research, polling, data infrastructure, capacity building, coordination support, and more.Organizing & ElectionsTo ensure that our democracy works for all of us, everyone must have the opportunity to participate in civic life.
Core Grants are for our long-term organizing infrastructure partners who are building explicit political power with a constituency base and contributing to a strong multiracial, cross-class, community-led progressive movement.

Eligibility

We grant to approximately 20-35 organizations and projects each year, with the majority of our grant funding provided in multi-year commitments to our partners.Explicit political power-building focus and impact and/or explicit focus and impact in developing and providing tools/information/capacity that strengthens the progressive movement in Washington State
Anti-racist in values, execution of work, and impact
Clear accountability to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities
Centering the leadership and knowledge of BIPOC communities
Geographic and tactical diversity to build a cohesive and impactful statewide progressive movement and create the conditions for meaningful political change
Emphasis on the progressive movement’s biggest gaps – including tactics, tools, and communities that are under-resourced
From a 501(c)3 or a 501(c)4 organization as determined by the IRS, or a project that is fiscally sponsored by such an organization*