The Kinship Fund Grant Guidelines

Vision
We believe in a world where every person can thrive.

Mission
The mission of The Kinship Fund is to build the resilience and well-being of women and girls through the financial and capacity-building support of nonprofit organizations.

Our Values

• We acknowledge that unbalanced power, bias, and inequity shape our systems, including philanthropy, and we remain committed to redistributing power in service of a more equitable world.
• We are here to learn and believe those closest to the issues are best positioned to guide our giving practices.
• We focus on relationships, not reports.
• We seek to model humility, honesty, and mutual accountability.
• We understand trust is built over time and only when we show up to align our actions with our words.

History
The Kinship Fund is an initiative of the Nancy Neffson and Wetmore Family Foundation, founded by Nancy Neffson just before she died in 2021. Nancy challenged Kim Jones to apply her experience and creativity to create an organization supporting the advancement of women and girls in our community. Out of this hope, The Kinship Fund was launched in May 2023.

Area of focus
We focus on San Diego County and partner with organizations that work to change systems that have historically oppressed marginalized populations and perpetuated mass incarceration, poverty, and prevented access to education.

Who we fund
We fund nonprofits that are designated 501(c)(3) organizations or are fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3). We are not able to fund individuals or individual scholarships. We do not hesitate to fund small organizations that are a mission fit, and we encourage applicants who are in the grassroots and formation stages of their work.

Types of grants we fund

• General operating support
• Capacity building grants
• Project support
• Seed grants for new programs
• Challenge or matching grants
• Innovation grants

How we work with partners
It’s our goal to work in partnership with the nonprofits we support. This means we practice grantmaking that strives to reduce the impact on organizations in the time it takes to complete applications and reports, and reduces the time between applications and grant awards.

We believe philanthropy in San Diego can be different, and we are working to make it so, building relationships where trust is our core value. Within our grant cycle, we award multi-year grants that provide general operating support and accept unsolicited grant applications.