March 2026
RESOURCES FOR THE LONG HAUL OF RESISTANCE
At the Social Justice and Solidarity Fund we understand the need to support organizations with a long-term vision of how to get where they want to go. We fund organizers who know that big changes for worker power take big time (as well as big plans). One of our board members just visited the world’s first union at Starbucks, in Chile. It took workers there 13 years to win a national contract. “I worked at Starbucks for 15 years,” said its first president, a former student activist.
On the other hand, rights can vanish quickly, at the stroke of an authoritarian’s pen. We are funding those who’ve stood up in the last year to take up the fight.
One of those groups is the Federal Unionists Network—FUN. Luckily, the FUN had already been founded as a loose network of union reformers and met at the 2024 Labor Notes Conference. Starting with just that degree of organization—and the politics of bottom-up unionism—the FUN has been able to lead on fighting cuts to the federal workforce, where the official unions were rusty.
In fact, a host of newish rank-and-file union reform movements are getting help from SJSF. These are in the electrical workers (IBEW), entertainment workers (IATSE), auto workers, grocery workers (UFCW), and teachers unions, as well as our old friends in the Teamsters (TDU). We also support the Association for Union Democracy, which is a resource for all such groups.
At our March quarterly meeting we awarded $383,000 to these organizations. Our website lists all our grantees. Often our support enables the hiring of a staffer that a fledgling group would not be able to afford, thus tripling their capacity for outreach.
We also awarded scholarship grants to movements so they could send rank-and-file workers to the Labor Notes Conference, June 12-14 in Chicago this year. Over the years dozens of networks and reform groups have been founded at Labor Notes, where workers can meet in person. They derive tremendous help and inspiration from each other there as well, learning from those who’ve been at the business of reform for a long time.
Labor Notes has just issued a packet of materials on “How to Build a Reform Caucus,” which should encourage even more growth in this hopeful wing of the labor movement.
We hope to see many of our friends and donors at the Labor Notes Conference. Please let us know if you’ll be there, talk to our board members, and alert us to more organizations that could benefit from a financial boost. We will be scouting!
We are proud of the amount of money we’ve raised from generous donors like you, and of the seamless way we’ve passed it on to groups in need—our overhead in 2025 was only .36% of our grant total.
Of course, all this is possible only because of our donors. We are seeing new donors alongside our faithful stalwarts, and if you’re not one of them yet, please see How to Donate and become one. We believe there’s no place to give that will make a greater impact.
We seek your input both on potential grantees and on potential donors. If you give us names, we are happy to contact your friends. You can read About Us for background – or contact one of our board members.