Open Your Tent for Supporters Wide, Says Leader of Progressive Group

Groundswell Fund

December 5, 2017 | Read Time: 1 minute

Vanessa Daniel thinks the reproductive-rights movement has it all wrong in focusing too narrowly on abortion and contraception rights.

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“It’s very hard to build a wide and expansive, numerically significant base when you’re only inviting people in through a single-issue door,” she says.

She started the Groundswell Fund to raise money for grassroots organizing groups that link reproductive rights with other progressive issues like environmental justice, civil rights, criminal justice, immigration, and LGBTQ rights. Since its founding in 2003, the fund has awarded $32 million in grants, mostly to groups led by women of color, low-income women, and transgender people.

Conventional thinking that single-issue groups are more effective underestimates the average person’s ability to deal with complexity, Ms. Daniel argues.

“Young people get it immediately,” she says. “It’s almost like, ‘What do you mean LGBT rights are over here and economic justice is over here?’ They really see the connections.”

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About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.