Maine Initiatives is proud to announce the seven organizations selected for the 2025–2026 Giving Project Fund for Community Organizing. Chosen through a participatory grantmaking process led by a cross-class, multiracial donor organizing cohort, each organization will receive one year of unrestricted general operating support. This year’s grantees are advancing Indigenous sovereignty, collective safety beyond punishment, land justice, and community-rooted healing. Their work reflects a shared understanding: that lasting change is built through organizing — by those most affected — and sustained through collective resourcing. The 2026 Giving Project Community Organizing Grantees are: Bomazeen Land Trust — advancing Wabanaki land return, stewardship, and cultural revitalization. Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition — organizing to reduce incarceration and build a restorative, humane justice system. Resources for Organizing and Social Change (ROSC) — developing grassroots leadership and movement capacity for nonviolent systems change. Mawita’nej Epijij — strengthening Wabanaki cultural lifeways, healing, and collective sustenance through land-based community. People’s Coalition for Safety & Justice (PCSJ) — building coordinated community safety systems led by Black, Brown, immigrant, and transgender leaders. nibezun — cultivating Native-led spaces for healing, ceremony, language revitalization, and sustainable lifeways rooted in ancestral relationships to land and water. Land in Common — organizing for land justice by stewarding land as a commons for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and diasporic communities. The Giving Project is part of a national network committed to donor organizing, wealth redistribution, and community accountability. It is a model that shifts power in philanthropy by building the skills, relationships, and political clarity needed to fund grassroots movements for the long term. These organizations are not only responding to urgent needs. They are transforming power — building leadership, shaping new systems, and creating futures grounded in liberation. Photo credit: Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition

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