Tides’ Impact in 2024

“Winning is important,” a grantee partner with Tides Foundation’s WE LEAD Fund told us earlier this year. She was explaining why her organization balanced the long-term work for systemic change with shorter advocacy wins that could be accomplished more easily. “It’s really defeating for our community when we pick fights that are long and protracted struggles. We need the wins for momentum.”  

Right now, as immigrants, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, educators, activists, and all who work for social justice prepare for the attacks we’ve been promised will come, we need the wins. And there are many: in 2024, grassroots leaders and donors came together to defend the most vulnerable, formed alliances in response to crisis, and won important victories for reproductive justice and inclusive, multiracial democracy. 

Numbers are one way to measure Tides’ role in supporting this work — Tides Foundation granted over $212 million to protect democracy in 2024, or we’re the 5th-largest funder of LGBTQ+ issues in the U.S., or Tides Center helped 131 grassroots organizations advance their missions in communities across the country — but numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. With 2025 on the horizon, we’re sharing the stories, voices, and wins that light our way forward.  

The Heroism of Community Leaders After Hurricane Helene

In hurricane-ravaged Florida and North Carolina, community leaders remained steadfast in their missions in the face of disaster, bringing aid and support to the most vulnerable even as many of their own homes and offices were damaged by the storm. At the Partnership for Appalachian Girls’ Education (PAGE), a grantee with Tides Foundation’s Advancing Girls Fund whose offices were destroyed by flooding, staff sent care packages to girls impacted by Hurricane Helene and worked to solve students’ connectivity issues at the same time that they were cleaning dead fish and debris out of their headquarters. Groups like State Voices Florida, a fiscally sponsored project of Tides Center, pivoted rapidly to provide short-term crisis response while advocating for long-term climate change mitigation and infrastructure. Tides Foundation’s Crisis Response Fund granted over $100,000 to grassroots hurricane relief in 2024, with a second round of grants planned in 2025.   

PODER Emma, which has been organizing mobile home residents to prevent displacement for over a decade, was one of seven grantees supported by Tides’ Crisis Response Fund in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Standing United Against the Climate Crisis

Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, a group of Indigenous advocates for human rights and land back, has been defending Hawaiians’ access to clean water for years. When Maui suffered devastating wildfires, they knew exactly how to lead relief efforts: they already had experience distributing clean water to families on Oahu whose drinking water was poisoned by a fuel leak from the U.S. military’s Red Hill bulk fuel storage facility. With support from Tides Foundation’s WE LEAD Fund, Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi provided clean water for hundreds of Lahaina fire victims and Red Hill-affected families and distributed $42,700 in direct cash aid to families affected by the Lahaina fire. While standing up to big polluters and advocating for just environmental policies, Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi remained intently focused on the community’s health and well-being: the group even paid for clothing and hair and nail services so that high schoolers who lost their homes in Maui’s wildfires could attend prom. 

Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi’s work underscores the intersectional nature of the environmental justice movement: the fight to keep chemicals out of drinking water cannot be separated from the larger work of building a better future for the people who drink it. As Judith LeBlanc, the executive director of Native Organizers’ Alliance, shared during a panel hosted by Tides’ WE LEAD Fund: “Let me tell you, as you just stay and stay and stay, it becomes part of your way of thinking about your relationship to all things; your relationship to the natural world; your relationship to social and economic phenomena.”  

Victories for Multiracial Democracy and Reproductive Justice

Despite voter suppression legislation, misinformation, and misleading language on some ballot measures, there were important, hard-won victories for multiracial democracy and reproductive justice in 2024. Both Louisiana and Alabama doubled their Black representation in Congress this year with the support of Healthy Democracy Fund grantees like Alabama Forward and Step Up Louisiana, who fought voter suppression and supported new congressional maps that did not dilute the power of Black voters.  

Across the country, organizers and volunteers won crucial victories for abortion access at the ballot box, restoring or protecting access in seven out of ten states where abortion was on the ballot. Tides’ Healthy Democracy Fund granted $837,500 directly to Nevada’s successful campaign to protect abortion in its state constitution, and grantee partners like Make the Road Action Nevada and Make It Work Nevada ran large-scale campaigns to reach voters of color about the measure. 

And in California’s 45th Congressional District, organizations funded by the Orange County Civic Engagement Table, a collective action fund at Tides Foundation, ensured election integrity and made sure every vote was counted by correcting the kinds of technical errors that disproportionately cause immigrants’ ballots to be rejected. With all votes counted, Derek Tran, the son of Vietnamese refugees, won the tightly contested House race by a mere 653 votes. 

Tides Foundation’s Healthy Democracy Fund granted $28 million to 166 different organizations in 2024, part of $212 million granted out by Tides to protect democracy this year. Some estimate that 5% of all nonpartisan democracy funding in 2024 passed through Tides.  

Tides’ Healthy Democracy Fund granted $837,500 directly to Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, which led the effort to enshrine abortion in Nevada’s state constitution this November.

Countering Anti-Immigrant Lies With Truth

To strike back against anti-immigrant lies that seek to divide us, Tides Foundation’s Immigrants Belong (I-Belong) Fund hosted its first convening between the ten immigrant rights organizations in its inaugural community of practice. By granting $100,000 each to 10 grassroots immigrant justice organizations and partnering with Define American’s narrative change experts, I-Belong seeks to amplify the storytelling power of immigrant communities and counter misinformation with powerful truths. As part of this first phase of the project, each member organization in I-Belong’s community of practice partnered with social media influencers to share pro-immigrant stories of shared values and belonging with persuadable audiences who are otherwise bombarded with divisive misinformation.  

Centering the Leadership of Girls of Color

To make an impact in the lives of girls and gender-expansive youth of color, we need their leadership in shaping our grantmaking strategy. Tides Foundation’s Advancing Girls Fund launched a Youth Advisory Council to give girls and gender-expansive youth of color a voice in grantmaking decisions. Over the next year, the Council will generate ideas for youth-led investments, help develop new guidelines for participatory grantmaking, and make grant recommendations. Tides’ Advancing Girls Fund granted over $25 million to organizations supporting the leadership and well-being of girls, young women, and gender-expansive youth of color in 2024. 

Tides’ Advancing Girls Fund created its Youth Advisory Council to give girls and gender-expansive youth a voice in grantmaking decisions.

Building Digital Resilience for Grassroots Nonprofits

41% of nonprofits report being the victims of a cyberattack within the past three years, and 70% report that they wouldn’t be equipped to respond if attacked. This year, Tides partnered with some of the world’s leading tech companies to bolster nonprofits’ defenses against the cyberattacks we know are coming. 

Okta resourced nonprofits to build their cybersecurity capacity through the Okta for Good Fund at Tides Foundation, whose $50 million commitment to building a safely connected world includes multi-year, unrestricted grants to the CyberPeace Institute and NetHope’s Global Humanitarian Information Sharing & Analysis Center (ISAC). And Google announced the next 15 cybersecurity clinics receiving funding, in-kind support, and volunteer mentorship from the $25 million Google Cybersecurity Clinics Fund, a collaboration with the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics to establish clinics that are already working to help local governments and nonprofits strengthen their cybersecurity defenses and prepare for potential crisis situations. 

We Can Defend Democracy, Hold Those in Power Accountable, and Build a Powerful Intersectional Movement for Justice

As we look ahead to 2025, we’re focused on building community relationships that will shift power and lead to systemic change. We’re committed to empowering community leaders and fostering connections that strengthen our collective ability to adapt and thrive. Sign up for Tides’ email and join a growing network of changemakers who are reshaping communities for a more resilient tomorrow.