About Us

The U.S. Human Rights Fund is a partnership of donors who provide strategic field-building support to social justice organizations engaged in human rights work within the U.S. The Fund's mission is to promote dignity, equality, and opportunity for all people by advocating for the U.S. to uphold international human rights within its borders.

The Fund is housed at Public Interest Projects, a 501(c)(3) public charity.

History of the U.S. Human Rights Fund

Launched in 2005, the U.S. Human Rights Fund arose from a shared belief that human rights benefit the causes of progressive social justice organizations. In the years since, the Fund has shown that human rights can furnish greater protections than civil rights alone, and can encourage vulnerable people to define and lead their own struggles.

Donor Education

Besides domestic grantmaking and operational support, the Fund educates donors about human rights as an effective approach to social justice advocacy.

The goal of the Fund is to strengthen connections, diversify legal and advocacy strategies, and to link domestic human rights efforts to the rest of the world. The Fund does not seek to create a U.S. human rights movement parallel to the civil rights, women's rights, or LGBT rights efforts that are already active in this country. Rather, it aims to bolster these movements by infusing human rights values standards and strategies.

U.S. Human Rights Fund Grantmaking Strategy

Human rights are now a proven method of effecting social and political change in the United States.  But the domestic human rights movement faces serious challenges with respect to capacity and coordination. The Fund addresses these needs through four major areas of grantmaking:

Human Rights Training and Education

Multi-issue and Cross-Sectoral Networks

Coordinated Communications and Shared Messaging

Strategic Thinking and Advocacy

USHRF also supports donor education on effective domestic human rights grantmaking. Most recently, the Fund released Perfecting our Union: Human Rights Success Stories from Across the United States. This report, released in March 2010, describes how USHRF grantees and other advocates are using human rights values, standards and strategies to build alliances; change policies and practices; and hold the U.S. government accountabile for meeting international human rights standards.

Where We Work

The U.S. Human Rights Fund currently supports organizations in 15 states and the District of Columbia. For more information about our individual grantees, please see our Grantees page.