The JustPax Fund welcomes proposals to create space for critical inquiry, generating awareness, and promoting solutions to some of the most complex societal challenges facing the global community.
The JustPax Fund provides financial and logistical support to individuals and organizations working for effective change in the realm of gender justice, environmental justice, and/or economic justice. Through monetary grants, JustPax invests in projects and initiatives that bring innovative and novel approaches to justice advocacy, research, and implementation.
The JustPax Fund donors are adherents of the Believer’s Church tradition and welcome proposals that address gender, environmental, and economic justice as applicable or relevant to that tradition. Applications stemming from other faith traditions and belief systems are also welcome.
Vision: Justice Challenges are spiritual, social, political, practical and personal. They are woven together in an entrenched paradigm that infects every institution, from the religious to the secular. Many of the longest standing cultural artifacts depend on their perpetuation and the corresponding belief that they cannot or should not change. But change they must, and now. The JustPax Fund seeks to support projects that offer a new paradigm, a more gracious path forward.
Molded by the values of the Anabaptist and Believer’s Church Tradition that embrace service, justice, tolerance, mutuality, and religious liberty, the JustPax Fund seeks to catalyze economic, environmental and gender justice:
Economy: JustPax Fund acknowledges that the history of economy is also a history of exploitation, extraction and oppression. While they aspire to the spirit of free exchange to the mutual benefit of all, this has all too rarely been practiced in reality. Those who have been stripped of their agency, their land, their culture or their autonomy cannot be said to be partners in joyous or voluntary exchange. They seek to see and understand the effects of colonialism, racism, violence and commodification in the economic systems.
Environment: If they have silenced the voices of exploited workers, so too have they marginalized and buried the cries of the nonhuman companions. The world warms, species vanish, the soils die and slowly they poison ourselves and the neighbors. They have forgotten the role as respectful and reverent stewards and lost the way in an entitled domination and destruction of the only home and once cherished community.
Gender: They have cultivated an unseeing of those from whom they take economically and environmentally, and also of those they claim to most dearly love. Part of any pursuit of justice must be a reconnection with the wholeness of others, of seeing individuals of any gender as the complete and complex individuals they are — not simply for the roles (traditional, cultural, or biological) in which they might serve them.
Funding Information
Total Available Funding: In 2023, they anticipate awarding a total of up to $400,000 across all JustPax Fund projects.
Award Amounts: The JustPax Fund has traditionally awarded grants of up to $25,000/year for gender, environmental, and economic justice projects. They occasionally increase this cap for exceptional projects.
Criteria
The JustPax Fund invites applications for funding from nonprofit organizations across the United States that are engaged in gender, environmental, and economic justice initiatives.
Terms of Eligibility
Novel and Innovative:
Activities must be novel and innovative in nature – creating social space for new conversations, strategies, and partnerships – where proposals are oriented toward new and creative approaches to inquiry, engagement, and action.
Beyond addressing the effects of economic, environmental, and gender injustice, qualifying activities create innovative and replicable initiatives that transform paradigms of oppression. These initiatives provide real-world examples of non-extractive economic activity, environmental systems that harmonize human and non-human activities, and social systems of respect and just governance. Examples of transformative rather than reactive proposals include but are by no means limited to alternative economic systems that reward sustainable rather than extractive practices, community engagement strategies that elevate marginalized groups into leadership roles, and initiatives that transform the participation in systems of oppression or injustice.
Interdisciplinary and Action Oriented:
Proposals from applicants across a wide and diverse range of experiences and realities, disciplines and vocations are encouraged. Proposals are encouraged to reflect the importance of interdisciplinary engagement. Proposals should outline the ways in which diverse voices will be identified and included during project implementation. Research and project proposals are encouraged to be oriented towards practical applications, and/or the potential for impact is clearly demonstrated.
Open & Accessible:
Grants are open and accessible to all qualifying individuals and organizations including, but not limited to: artists, social entrepreneurs, students, teachers, engineers, pastors, professors, poets, scientists, writers, farmers, economists, activists, dreamers, peacebuilders, and individuals and organizations within universities and colleges, mission societies, professional associations, or church agencies, etc. All individuals who possess a passion for justice and have a plan for confronting the most urgent injustices surrounding gender, the environment, and/or the economy are encouraged to apply. Grant applicants shall not be limited to specific academic disciplines, church and para-church agencies, or their paradigms.
Fiscal Agency & Tax Exempt Status:
Eligible applicants must be associated with a USA qualified tax exempt organizations under regulations of the United States Internal Revenue Service in order to receive funds. The JustPax Fund cannot provide funding directly to individuals or organizations without USA tax exempt status.
JustPax Without Borders:
Recognizing the potential for funding across national borders, the JustPax Advisory Board may consider grants made to organizations sourced outside the United States, so long as the recipient is associated with a USA tax exempt organization.
