Since a radicalized U.S. Supreme Court ended federal protections for abortion care in June, one of the key questions facing abortion care providers and advocates is whether or not the usual boom-and-bust cycle of reactive giving that has always accompanied new legal threats to abortion care would become a sustaining wave this time.
If the National Network of Abortion Funds’ experience is any guide, both individual donors and institutional funders may be getting ready to keep the money flowing over the long haul.
On the individual giving front, the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF) has seen success using a “tandem fundraising” tool from ActBlue. It provides donors with a one-stop-shopping approach in which a single donation is spread across more than 90 individual abortion funds, which help people with everything from travel expenses to the cost of abortion care. In the first four days after the Dobbs decision was handed down, ActBlue reported that NNAF’s member funds had received more than $5.7 million from people using the tool.
Individual giving through the ActBlue tool has slowed significantly since then, but the money is definitely still coming. As of October 12, according to NNAF’s Executive Director Oriaku Njoku, donors had used the tool to move $8.2 million directly to abortion funds. This is a welcome development in a country where, as of late August, roughly one-third of American women were living in states that had passed laws to stop poor and middle-class women from securing abortion care.
Njoku, who founded an abortion fund in the South before taking the helm at NNAF, has had ample experience with rapid-response giving in the wake of political threats to abortion rights. Still, Njoku thinks this moment is different. “We’re starting to see that people understand and are galvanized by donating to the local expert organizations in their community, and acknowledging the fact that the folks on the ground in their communities know how best to use those resources and get them out immediately,” Njoku said.
Individual donors aren’t alone in paying attention to needs on the ground. According to Njoku, thanks to the work of reproductive justice advocates, the philanthrosphere is starting to open its collective eyes to “using an intersectional lens when thinking about their funding or philanthropic responsibilities,” including funders that are working in arenas like economic, labor and gender justice. Such funders, Njoku said, are starting to see how abortion access and reproductive justice intersect with their work and goals.
That increased awareness is starting to slowly translate to NNAF’s bottom line. For instance, the organization received $4 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and more than $500,000 from the Silicon Valley Foundation in 2022, according to Candid. But while legacy funders are starting to step up and new funders are showing interest, “It’s not going to happen overnight, just like we didn’t get here overnight,” Njoku said. Still, these are welcome developments given that prior to Dobbs, funders were only moving 21% of their reproductive rights money to abortion rights and services, and less than 2% to abortion funds.
Overall, the past year has seen a number of funders step up, and be vocal about, their efforts to support abortion rights and access. The Packard Foundation, which has supported reproductive rights for about as long as right-wing funders have fought to end abortion care, has emphasized its commitment to the fight with $14.1 million in additional emergency funding this year. In March, two months before the Dobbs decision was leaked, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, another long-time abortion rights champion, increased its reproductive equity funding by 30%.
And as IP’s Connie Matthiessen reported in July, a number of foundations and funders publicly condemned the Dobbs decision. This vocal support of abortion rights and access is a welcome development given the silence some reproductive health funders are maintaining even today.
But while there are grounds for cautious optimism, Njoku pointed out that the current threatening political moment is the result of decades of work and financial investment by anti-abortion and anti-democracy forces. “My hope is that folks understand that this is a long-term investment that’s required, so we’re not here 50 years from now talking about how abortion isn’t legal or accessible,” Njoku said.