Dear JustFund Community,

It takes, on average, 15-25 hours for an organization to apply for funding. That translates roughly into $5,000 spent every time an organization seeks a grant, which they will only receive 30% of the time. 

For the 6,600 organizations using JustFund, they spend about an hour applying for funding using our common proposal and once they are in JustFund, they can apply to any other fund in the portal. JustFund has run 230 grant cycles to date – meaning organizations could use their common proposal to apply to hundreds of opportunities, saving a collective 190,000 hours of time – or 22 years of time saved. That’s 22 years of time once allocated to the antiquated world of customized grant applications that can be directed toward the mission advancing work of the organization. 

We don’t have to keep doing philanthropy as usual – we can rewrite the playbook and hundreds of funders and thousands of organizations are jumping at the chance, recognizing that ‘centering equity’ in our giving goes well beyond where we fund and who we fund, but must include a deep commitment to changing how we give. 

That’s why I’m so proud of our growing JustFund community – funders across the country joining us each week to run their grant cycles through JustFund, or dive into the portal to find new work to fund. The need among our historically excluded and chronically underfunded communities is tremendous and there is a lot to address about the way traditional philanthropy works  if we want to truly center equity in our giving. 

The common proposal is a great start – and there is more coming, thanks to the incredible ideation in our JustFund community and our collective desire among grantmakers and grantseekers to reset philanthropy as we know it. At JustFund, we are committed to improving our custom- built technology and practices and systems available to philanthropy so you can be a part of transforming the way we give. We will keep following the lead of organizations to ensure we keep making it simpler, easier, and seamless to access the resources needed to make sure your communities can thrive. 

Keep your ideas coming! Let’s reset philanthropy, for good.  

Warmly,

Iara Peng, Founder & CEO