We provide flexible and grantee-driven funding to grassroots and frontline organizations fighting for human rights in the digital age. We pursue this work at a time when civil society around the world is working under increasingly difficult circumstances, from targeted censorship, to restrictions on operations, to threats to physical safety. It is also a time when the digital space has become a critical battleground in broader human rights struggles, as well as a place where marginalization, societal discrimination, and violence can be reproduced and even amplified. We aim to strengthen the global digital rights community by expanding, diversifying, and empowering the movement at the grassroots.
Our grantees work with users and communities most at risk of and most detrimentally impacted, online or off, by digital rights violations.
We fund work in low- and middle-income countries, parts of the world receiving the least amount of human rights funding. In rare cases, we support efforts that directly support people in one of these countries, even if the grantee is not based there.
We Prioritize
Grassroots organizations rooted in at-risk communities with limited access to funding
Frontline organizations working in contexts where the impacts of digital rights violations are most severe
Organizations working at the intersection of digital rights and other human rights issues
Feminist organizations working to protect the digital rights of women, LGBTQI+ people, and gender nonconforming people
Featured Grantees
Turkey Blocks
Detecting and contextualizing censorship events in real time, and supporting communities facing hacking, surveillance, censorship, and online harassment. Turkey Blocks is a vital source of information on the human rights, social, and economic impacts of internet shutdowns and other digital rights violations, and their connection to the broader trend of closing civic space in Turkey.
Acoso.Online
Building Latin America’s first context-specific resource for victims of online harassment, including dissemination of nonconsensual pornography. From reporting to online platforms, to pursuing legal remedies, to opening community dialogue and defending sexual freedoms, Acoso.Online empowers women, LGBTQI people, and their supporters to report, recover, and resist. The tool is localized in 14 countries, with coverage expanding throughout the region.
Sursiendo
Conducting participatory research to uncover the digital security needs of activists and human rights defenders in Chiapas, Mexico, as well as the broader context of surveillance and other digital threats to human rights in the state. Sursiendo supports at-risk users in a region with a history of violent repression of social movements and indigenous communities.
7amleh
Researching issues including censorship, surveillance, and profiling of Palestinians on social media, and advocating for better policies to protect Palestinians’ freedom of expression. 7amleh has integrated digital rights into the broader Palestinian rights movement and has led the charge within Palestinian civil society to hold tech companies accountable for the human rights impact of their policies.
iFreedom Uganda
Training sex workers and LGBTQI individuals on digital security, and advocating for internet freedoms from a human rights perspective. iFreedom Uganda — a network of 28 member organizations — was founded to ensure that marginalized groups in Uganda are able to freely express themselves without fear of reprisal from state agencies and dangerous hacking groups.
Fundación Acceso
Providing systematic physical, technological, legal, and psychosocial assistance to human rights defenders, journalists, environmental and indigenous rights activists, and feminist and LGBT leaders across Central America, who face violence and criminalization of their activism. Acceso coordinates efforts to document and investigate digital attacks on civil society through its Regional Digital Security Observatory.
