Map 3. Funding & Policy Landscape
An equity approach to anti-violence advocacy must acknowledge the structural inequities that impact survivors’ options for safety. We must not only acknowledge this, but identify and change the systems, policies, or practices create it.
Data on the scope and impact of specific policies (like this LGBTQ+ Equality Tally) or evaluating the practices of specific systems (like this Justice Index) can help our advocacy efforts by drawing a clear line between policy and outcome.
COMING SOON! To do this, CSAJ will engage the field in creating a survivor equity scoring index and conducting additional research to develop and map policy, funding, and service-related data onto the dashboards. The purpose of Map 3 will be to:
- Add policy information on critical and survivor-defined issue areas as layers to existing Maps or in new dashboards, including advocacy stories and strategies for change
- Align funding strategies (of government and private funders) to equity goals that respond to those most impacted and their safety needs
View this Data & Methodology Doc.
Structural inequity is defined as “the complex ways in which historical oppression, culture, ideology are formed, enacted and interact through our political economy, public policies and institutional practices to produce social dynamics that reproduce and reinforce a hierarchy of color [and other hierarchies of social dominance] that privileges whiteness [and cis-gendered, heteronormative patriarchy].”
– The Aspen Roundtable Structural Racism & Community Revitalization Project (adapted from and building upon their definition of “structural racism”)
Policy Landscape Dashboard
Coming soon!
During the next phase of the Mapping Equity Project we will research and gather state-level policy information on critical policy issues that shape the Safety Landscapes in Map 2. This will build upon priorities set by survivors and advocates in the forthcoming National Policy Platform for Survivor Economic Equity, and continue to engage survivors and advocates.
In the meantime, explore the Safety Landscapes in Map 2 and submit your stories and other feedback on past, current, and future economic policy advocacy.
And join our lists to hear about the work and opportunities to engage.
Funding & Service Landscape Dashboard
Funders can play a critical role in advancing equity for survivors. Our service systems and advocacy efforts should be designed, and funded, to understand and meet the self-defined safety needs of survivors. However, a broad critique of current social justice movements (not only anti-violence work) is that “success” (or safety) is defined by service outcomes rather than survivor-defined outcomes.
Fortunately, there has been a recent shift to align funding with the needs of communities that are most impacted. For example, in 2022 the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), which administers grants under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), Department of Justice, adopted office wide equity priorities in response to the Biden-Harris Executive Order 13985 to Advance Racial Equity that included “advancing racial equity as an essential component of ending gender-based violence,” and which informed their 2023 budget request and grant-making priorities.
Many private foundations — including this project’s funder, The Allstate Foundation — have also established equity priorities and adopted new methods of giving, like trust-based philanthropy. And many direct-service organizations, from shelters and legal services agencies to statewide domestic violence coalitions, have also committed to addressing the link between anti-violence, anti-racist, and anti-poverty movements.
Over the past several years, CSAJ has partnered with the Alliance of Local Service Organizations (ALSO), to advance OVW’s equity priorities via State Administrators of the STOP-VAWA funding stream. In 2019, we partnered on a STOP Intensive Technical Assistance and Pilot Project (SITAP). In 2023, ALSO will pilot a STOP Implementation Planning Data Dashboard for STOP Administrators.
If you are a STOP subgrantee, potential grantee, or planning partner in your state looking for access to STOP service and funding dashboards, contact your STOP Administrator or email ALSOSTAARProjectTA@also-chicago.org for help connecting to them. And check back for additional efforts to map funding of multiple federal and private funding streams.
Supplemental Resources
On organizational practice, equitable funding, and to fuel policy advocacy.
Between October 2021 and January 2022, a coalition of NYC-based direct advocates held a series of visioning calls with…
Data Collection & Exploratory Research on How Domestic Violence Coalitions Practice Economic & Racial Justice
In September 2017, REEP facilitated seven From Margins to Center Listening Sessions to facilitate dialogue across the field on…
Special thanks to the Alliance of Local Service Organizations (ALSO) for partnership on the funding landscape and tailoring dashboards for STOP-VAWA Administrators.
Created by: Sara Wee
This project is supported by the Allstate Foundation
