Faster Than Authoritarianism: Rapid Response as a Frontline Strategy for Democracy Defense

“Chasing every fire and fighting every crisis is overwhelming and ineffective.” These are the familiar pushback arguments philanthropy has long used to dismiss rapid response as insufficient to address long-term structural change. However, rapid response intermediaries—made up of organizers and movement practitioners—have long understood that it is harmful to characterize rapid response within a myopic framing that disconnects it from long-arc transformation and movement building. In fact, rapid response is necessary. There will be no opportunity for our sector to shape and achieve a long-term vision if we fail to connect our futurist aspirations to clear, timely actions we can take today.

Authoritarianism relies on speed, confusion, and exhaustion….Our movements cannot afford to meet [that strategy] with extended deliberation and years-long strategic overhauls.

Ironically, similar arguments have been used by past and current federal administrations to minimize and invalidate rapid response tactics used by progressive movements to fight oppressive systems. And yet, we are witnessing a coordinated conservative rapid response strategy that was detailed in Project 2025. Described by allies of President Donald Trump as “flood the zone,” this approach was designed to intentionally overwhelm movements for justice and make it nearly impossible to respond or defend democracy before sweeping changes were embedded.

Authoritarianism relies on speed, confusion, and exhaustion. Faced with this reality, rapid response has become the most necessary and obvious frontline response for democracy defense. Our movements cannot afford to meet “flood the zone” with extended deliberation and years-long strategic overhauls.

Safeguarding the Movement for Justice

In a world still impacted by the ongoing pandemic, climate disasters, and the extremes of modern capitalism, organizations—large and small, nonprofit and grassroots—are again mobilizing rapidly to safeguard social services and civil rights. From cuts to SNAP food assistance and federal layoffs, to abortion restrictions, attacks on gender-affirming care, ICE raids, and surveillance, navigating these harms requires resources. But these costs are not foreseeable line items; they could not have been planned for in organizational budgeting in the prior fiscal year. And it is impossible to forecast the work needed to ensure communities’ safety as anticipated “measurable impacts” in a grant report or an application for funding.

This is why rapid response models that move unrestricted funding with condensed applications, flexible spending, and minimal reporting have been particularly effective at meeting organizers’ needs. Rapid response funding provides organizers with timely, nimble resources to act in real time when communities are under attack. The funding does not come with rules that dictate rapid response work or movement strategy; rather, it offers breathing room and sustainability to organizers who have always carried this work and would do so regardless of funding. It strengthens rapid response infrastructure, which in turn, further enables organizers to act swiftly and strategically.

These strategies are increasingly essential at this moment for social justice movements to act, and to counter their opposition.

Turning Urgency into Action

Rapid response funds across the ecosystem have seen dramatic increases in demand. For example, at Emergent Fund, where I work, requests grew from roughly 70 to 100 per month in 2024 to more than 300 per month in 2025. By mid-2025, we increased our grantmaking by 50 percent in response to this surge in requests. By the end of that year, we doubled it, distributing $1 million more than originally planned. While significant, this level of grantmaking addresses a small fraction of what is needed to resource movement efforts, underscoring the need for collective action in philanthropy.

Critically, beyond meeting immediate needs, we have seen that rapid response work, carried by organizers, funders, and movement infrastructure, is critical to our broader movement ecosystem.

In Minneapolis, organizers demonstrated the power of escalating and framing community-driven narratives in real time by swiftly documenting harm, circulating footage, offering analysis, and mobilizing large-scale demonstrations. This resulted in a growing public awakening around the realities of ICE violence and authoritarian propaganda.

This strategic organizing in response to the recent violent actions by federal immigration enforcement—including the murders of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti—exemplifies how infrastructure supports timely action. We’ve heard from organizers in Minneapolis that existing infrastructure and trusted relationships—cultivated during the 2020 uprisings in response to the murder of George Floyd, and continued through necessary COVID mutual aid networks—made their collective response to ICE rapid and effective. As rapid response funders, we know this to be true.

Many of our applicants at Emergent Fund are prior grantees seeking to reactivate mutual aid projects or fortify existing ones through capacity building trainings. What may have begun in 2025 as a moment when many in our movements were still finding their footing has evolved into a more coordinated and committed effort to both counter harm and build something new from the ashes.

The Case for Coordinated Collective Impact

Philanthropy and rapid response organizing are most effective when they are coordinated, collective, and well-resourced across movements and funding sources—and increasingly, we are seeing this alignment take shape. Existing and emerging coalitions are helping movements organize at scale, positioning philanthropy to resource that work, and engaging in collective partnership to respond to the threats facing our democracy.

Movement and funder formations, such as the Block and Build Funder Coalition and Rising Majority, are part of this shared ecosystem, supporting the understanding that rapid response is most catalytic when it builds on long-standing investment in movement relationships and infrastructure well before crisis hits. But we need more.

Our movements must make coordinated efforts that bind us in collective strength and align our resourcing so that philanthropy is funding immediate response needs while also connecting those urgent efforts to a more expansive vision for our futures.

Rapid response infrastructure doesn’t need to be reinvented; it needs to be reinforced for sustainability. Here is what philanthropy and movement should do differently.

• Philanthropy: Resource what already works. In general, philanthropy’s response has been piecemeal. Many funders that never conducted rapid response funding created their own funds, with varying levels of success, primarily due to a lack of trusted relationships with grassroots organizers to strategically deploy rapid response funds. Funders that made grant decisions only once or twice a year were overwhelmed by rapid response requests they lacked the infrastructure to support. Rapid response is an essential pathway that most of philanthropy does not have the capacity to directly hold alone.

If your foundation cannot move funds quickly, that is not a reason to opt out of supporting rapid response infrastructure. Foundations can partner with intermediaries and pooled funds that are already holding the work. Rapid response intermediaries, rooted in the communities being served, hold the trusted relationships, streamlined processes, and movement accountability with grassroots organizations that most foundations haven’t been able to build. Through these partnerships, you can channel your resources into rapid response. You can also make sure your existing grantees can quickly access emergency funds for legal defense, crisis communications, and other needs that can’t wait for your next grant cycle.

The question is whether our philanthropic efforts to resource ecosystems can rise to meet the needs of organizers in this moment.

Additionally, if you have any capacity to increase your payout this year, do it. Communities are facing urgent needs, democracy is backsliding, and we still have our collective power to use as we see fit. Even modest increases can make a meaningful difference. Organize your leadership and trustees get more money out the door.

• Movement organizers: Ask boldly and ask often. Even if your funder lacks dedicated rapid response funds, ask anyway. Growing demand from grantees is a form of collective pressure. It signals to funders that their infrastructure is insufficient and demonstrates the need for creating the conditions for change to best serve their community partners. If your funder can’t give directly, they can activate their network on your behalf. Philanthropy’s responsibility extends beyond direct grants—it includes creatively ensuring movements are resourced by activating relationships and organizing across the field.

There are a number of rapid response movement funds that organizers can turn to and that philanthropy should resource as part of strengthening this ecosystem, including: Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism, Mobilize Power Fund at Third Wave Fund, Movement Protection Fund at Solidaire, Block and Build Rapid Response and Defense Fund at Southern Vision Alliance, Piper Fund at Proteus Fund, Abortion Bridge Collaborative at Women Donors Network, Immigration Frontlines Fund at Four Freedoms Fund, and Emergent Fund, to name a few.

The question before philanthropy is not whether rapid response is vital—we already know it is. The question is whether our philanthropic efforts to resource ecosystems can rise to meet the needs of organizers in this moment. We have an imperative to coordinate investments with shared organizing strategies for long-term transformation.

The author acknowledges Sherrie’Anne Hart, co-director of movement building at Emergent Fund, for their contributions to this article.