Four Freedoms Fund

The Four Freedoms Fund (FFF) is a national funding collaborative founded in July 2003 to energize American democracy by supporting and engaging immigrants and refugees. The FFF connects local, often ethnic-specific groups to coordinated state and national campaigns for;

  • Immigration reform,
  • Civic engagement and integration, and
  • Protection of civil liberties and human rights.

The FFF makes grants to foster a strong, national immigrant-rights field by:

  • Supporting a coherent infrastructure of effective local, state and regional organizations;
  • Providing multi-year, capacity-building funding and peer-learning opportunities to anchor coalitions through its Capacity Building Initiative and other efforts;
  • Regularly commissioning strategic research to identify funding opportunities
  • Sponsoring in-person and telephonic briefings for funders;
  • Building the communications capacities of key grantees through its Strategic Communications Initiative; and
  • Operating as a “link tank,” coordinating with other grantmakers and grantee networks

Grantmaking and projects

The Fund has invested more than $6.7 million in 51 grantees nationwide. (See below) The FFF makes grants in strategic geographic areas with sizable and/or growing immigrant populations, now including 14 states. Recently, the FFF published and hosted national briefings for funders on two reports—Tracking the Groundswell: An Update of Opportunities and Challenges for Immigrant Communities in 2007 and Groundswell Meets Groundwork: Recommendations for Building on Immigration Mobilizations (2006)—on the mass mobilizations of spring 2006 and the subsequent opportunities and challenges for immigrant communities and funders.

Key donors

Current funders include the Carnegie Corporation of New York; Ford Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; Open Society Institute; Horace Hagedorn Foundation; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; J.M. Kaplan Fund; and Western Union Foundation. The FFF also works closely with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which created the American Dream Fund as a sister fund to promote immigrant integration in 26 local communities.

For more information about the Fund and its work, visit the FFF website.