PDF Awards $170,000 to Grassroots Organizing including $15,000 in Western MA Published on June 2, 2025
AMHERST, MA – The Peace Development Fund (PDF) announced their annual grant awards to 29 organizations around the country. This included grants through their Western Massachusetts Transformation Fund (WMTF) to four social justice organizations in Western Massachusetts. The grant award decisions are made through a participatory process that includes community members, building the expertise of local leaders and drawing upon their community experience. This year the organization had a total of 284 applications, the largest number of applicants in PDF history.
The Western MA Transformation Fund supports local organizing efforts in Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire Counties that are challenging injustice, shifting power, building social movements, and creating new community structures anchored in social justice. These annual grants are made possible by the generous support of individual contributors.
2025 grant awardees include: Decarcerate Western Mass Bailout Project, Our Fire Collective, Seeing Rainbows, and a group that wishes to remain anonymous.
“This is a precarious time for grassroots organizations working for social justice with many facing loss of funding and political backlash. To meet the increased need, we doubled many of the grant sizes and increased our funding,” shared Lora Wondolowski, Director of Advancement and Communications.
Local grantee, Our Fire Collective creates political education opportunities for trauma-exposed workers. “We are determined to heal alongside the fractured communities of public health and education professionals,” says Naqibah Al-Kaleem, co-founder of Our Fire Collective. “These compassionate workers tend to the local impact of de-funding and increased racist and transphobic activity. Meanwhile, they’re grieving and hustling, and we want to support them to stay in their jobs. This grant helps us build ground-level partnerships where it’s needed most right now.”
Each year, PDF accepts applications for three grant funds, the Seeding the Movement Fund, Braiding New Worlds Fund, and Western Mass Transformation Fund. The Braiding New Worlds Fund supports youth-led and youth-focused organizations around the country to the build the capacity of future social justice leaders and the Seeding the Movement Fund resources grassroots organizations around the nation.
2025 Grantees:
- America On Trial Inc; New York, NY
- Best Practices Policy Project; Morristown, NJ
- CHAAD; Chicago, IL
- Common Good Montana; Missoula, MT
- Communities Creating Opportunity; Kansas City, MO
- Construyamos Otro Acuerdo; San Juan, PR
- DecrimSexWorkCA; San Francisco, CA
- Fanm Saj, Inc; Port Saint Lucie, FL
- Germantown Residents for Economic Alternatives Together; Philadelphia, PA
- GYPSY Ayiti; Haiti
- Huntsville Bail Fund; Huntsville, AL
- LEAN Lived Experience Advocacy Network/Propel Nonprofits; Minneapolis MN
- Memphis Tenants Union; Memphis, TN
- Merrimack Valley Project; Lawrence, MA
- More Than a Hashtag; Las Vegas, NV
- PHENOM; Worcester, MA
- Anonymous Org, Brooklynn, NY
- Pro Voice Project; Sandpoint, ID
- Regional Tenant Organizing Network; Oakland, CA
- Students for International Labor Solidarity; Calabasas, CA
- SWOP Hawai’i; Honolulu, HI
- Tonelhuayótzin Nuestra Raíz A.C.; MX
- Trans Income Project; New Orleans, LA
- Youth Alliance for Housing; Astoria, NY
- Youth Power Coalition; Jackson Heights, NY
The Peace Development Fund’s mission is to build the capacity of community-based organizations through grants, training, and other resources as partners in human rights and social justice movements.
