Palestine at the Center: Donor Organizing as Movement Work

Article updated on January 22, 2026.

This article is part of NPQ’s series, Money in Movements: The Role of Donor Organizing. Co-produced with Solidaire Network, this series offers firsthand narratives from donor organizers deeply embedded in justice struggles to illuminate how individuals with wealth can authentically align with grassroots movements.

As the president of a small, unstaffed family foundation and member of two progressive donor networks, Solidaire Network and Women Donors Network, I have devoted my work to exploring how donor organizing can strengthen movements for justice, with Palestinian liberation at the center of that project.

It’s almost unthinkable now—after more than two years of daily, livestreamed devastation in Gaza—that there was a time when Palestine was barely discussed even in progressive philanthropy.

The United States is the largest funder of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

About five years ago, after the brutal murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked a surge in the Black Lives Matter movement, I noticed a pattern. My progressive donor network colleagues were funding and discussing critical justice movements—Black liberation, reproductive rights, defunding the police, and Indigenous landback—all essential and urgent struggles.

Yet amid that energy, there was a striking absence of any conversation about the effects of Israel’s 75-year war on Palestinians. At that time, it was possible, even acceptable, to be what some call “progressive except Palestine”—in other words, to halt one’s otherwise universal commitment to human rights at the Israeli border.

When Philanthropy Fuels Genocide and Occupation

The United States is the largest funder of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, with government aid to Israel ($318 billion) almost 29 times more than aid to Palestine ($11 billion). Before the attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel could count on $3.8 billion in US military aid each year. Since then, it has received an additional $18 billion in military aid. In the year following the attack, Jewish Funders Network estimated that $2 billion flowed to Israel through US charitable organizations.

It is more difficult to track dollars to Palestinians, but Funding Freedom has estimated that $100 million has been raised by US philanthropic organizations. The same report indicates that individual donors have sent $190 million from crowdfunding platforms to the region, which could include funds going to Israelis. The fact that informal donations nearly double the contributions of organized philanthropy lays bare both philanthropy’s failures and the overwhelming popular support for Palestinian human rights.

Becoming a Donor-Organizer

In 2020, I wondered if my progressive colleagues were silent because they didn’t know the history of Israel and Palestine and—as I, raised in a Jewish family, once did—instead relied uncritically on false and misleading Zionist narratives that are meant to erase the reality of colonization and apartheid.

During this time, I was fortunate to meet Rebecca Vilkomerson, previously of Jewish Voice for Peace. I asked her if she would develop a curriculum on Palestine and the progressive left.

It was the first time I had used my foundation’s assets to fund a project that didn’t already exist within another organization. This challenged the culture of my community and my own belief that donors should not be the ones deciding where their funding goes or directing recipients of grants to create new programs. Not knowing anyone else who was providing this kind of political education to the donor community, I overcame my reluctance and committed the funds.

People of wealth who are committed to collective liberation need to move our money in service of movements, but we also need to organize our community—and show them how to do this with integrity and humility.

I offered a study group on Vilkomerson’s course “Palestine and the Progressive Left” to my fellow members at Solidaire. Donor networks are not just clubs for wealthy people and foundation professionals; at least that is not what they are supposed to be. At their best, donor networks are spaces to organize and push against limitations.

Like me, my peers needed political education, just like people do in any base building organizing project. Looking back, I see now that this was my first tangible experience as a donor organizer.

Donor Organizing for Palestinian Liberation

The course examined the obstacles and possibilities of supporting Palestinian rights within progressive and left movement building, politics, and philanthropy.

The first session explored anti-Semitism—its rise under White Christian nationalism; the nuances and disagreements within the Jewish community; and the ways it has been weaponized against calls for Palestinian rights, impacting both Jewish and non-Jewish communities, especially communities of color.

The second session examined Zionism as both a religious and political project, highlighted the outsized influence of Christian Zionism, and explored anti-Zionism from Jewish and Palestinian perspectives.

The final session focused on the phenomenon of “progressive except Palestine” and what it would take to fully integrate Palestinian rights into broader struggles for justice, and the role of donors and funders in the movement for Palestinian liberation.

The study group response was enthusiastic. Our continued conversations about educating funders to increase philanthropy’s awareness and support for Palestinian liberation led to Vilkomerson writing Funding Freedom: Philanthropy and the Palestinian Freedom Movement.

Published in 2022, the report offers a comprehensive look at the barriers to healthy and sustainable funding for organizations that support Palestinian rights, while proposing tools and strategies to address those barriers. The goal is to create a roadmap for funders to give sustainably, consistently, and without engaging in colonial philanthropic violence that, as Soheir Asaad, co-director of Funding Freedom, describes, has been too common. As Asaad told NPQ:

Rather than aligning itself with Palestinian liberation, philanthropic funding—especially since the Oslo [Accords] era—has been weaponized to undermine it. Grants are often politically conditioned, punishing organizations aligned with liberation frameworks while rewarding those that conform to sanitized, NGO-ized models. This has not only depoliticized Palestinian civil society but actively fragmented it, transforming collective political work to project-based survival. Grassroots infrastructure grounded in community self-determination has been systematically dismantled, replaced by a donor-driven culture of dependency.

The reception and impact of the political education series and the subsequent report encouraged us to create Funding Freedom. The organization is dedicated to uplifting Palestinian liberation in philanthropy by both expanding long-term commitments and exposing and interrupting the philanthropic practices that harm Palestinian liberation.

Led by Asaad and Vilkomerson, Funding Freedom continues to offer political education and convene cohorts of donors and funders to practice collective learning and act in support of Palestinian liberation and cross-movement solidarity. As a lead donor, I committed to covering the organization’s expenses for two years and was able to raise half of this budget from other Solidaire colleagues who had attended the political education series.

At first, I was concerned that using my foundation’s funds for a project I had founded was self-indulgent, but Vilkomerson reassured me that my commitment was supportive of the movement for Palestinian liberation. She said, “It would be impossible to overstate the importance of not having to dedicate substantial portions of our time to fundraising. It frees us to spend just about all our time on our actual work and translates into an impact far beyond what you would usually expect from a relatively small project. Not having to worry about how we raise our budget offers a clarity and peace of mind that is sadly unusual in the field.”

Resilience in the Face of Retrenchment

In 2025, Funding Freedom released the report Repression, Retrenchment, and Resilience, which maps the shifting conditions facing movements and funders in the wake of the genocide in Palestine and subsequent historic global mass mobilizations and a groundswell of solidarity with Palestinians.

After October 7, some progressive funders—who are generally the only funders who support Palestinian human rights work—began policing grantees’ responses to Palestinian liberation or withdrawing funding altogether. Organizations in other sectors, including reproductive, climate, and racial justice, that expressed solidarity with Palestinians also faced backlash from funders, exposing the deep political fault lines within philanthropy.

“Some in philanthropy proactively responded to these threats by creating funds to support security infrastructure, legal defense, and urgent security needs,” the report noted. Groups like Kataly, Women Donors Network, Rise Together Fund, and Solidaire, which have long defended our right to protest and supported movement security and Palestinian rights, stepped up and expanded their efforts.

One bright spot in US philanthropic organizing is Funders for a Ceasefire Now: Philanthropy Open Letter for Humanity and Justice, which gathered 1,300 funders and donors as signatories. In another powerful effort, 200 Jewish donors and philanthropy professionals issued an open letter calling out funder retaliation and launched the In Our Name Campaign, which raised $5 million in support of Palestinian rights and organizing.

One of the boldest efforts to hold philanthropy accountable for its complicity in oppression comes from within Palestine. The Owneh Initiative organizes Palestinian civil society organizations to reject politically conditioned funding, which ultimately prolongs the exploitation of Palestine.

“History teaches that they only come after you when you’re foiling their plans. Risk has always been the precursor to meaningful change.”

Drawing on a long history of Palestinians returning aid that came with weaponized conditions, Owneh models what it looks like for grassroots groups to set the terms—and flips the traditional power dynamic between funders and movements on its head.

Facing Retaliation and Building Solidarity

One of the most significant recent shifts is that funders—alongside student organizers and grassroots groups—are now squarely in the crosshairs of attacks on Palestinian liberation work.

“Funders are understandably nervous because they’re not used to being on the front lines with the rest of us,” Vince Warren from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) informed NPQ. Funders are being targeted by right-wing institutions and media, subjected to congressional investigations, threatened with the loss of nonprofit status, and accused of anti-Semitism and supporting terrorism.

Warren continued, “I would invite them to the front of the stage because action—not passivity—helps us build greater strength and greater solidarity to win in this political moment. History teaches that they only come after you when you’re foiling their plans. Risk has always been the precursor to meaningful change.”

Warren’s words ring true for me. Some of my colleagues received harassment and threats for their work funding Palestinian liberation—offering a glimpse of what grassroots organizers face. After the 2024 election, Tema Okun and other Solidaire members organized me—reminding me that donor organizers need organizing too—to “resist profiteering from authoritarianism” by significantly increasing my giving.

I doubled all my grants and made the largest grant I’ve ever made to CCR’s work. CCR faced harsh retaliation for its advocacy, losing some of its largest donors, yet went on to play an instrumental role defending our civil rights by representing Mahmoud Khalil and other key figures who have been detained and threatened with deportation.

I know my resources are only a fraction of what large foundations command, but I am able to magnify my impact by using my networks, skills, and voice to help organize philanthropy. This is the power of donor organizing and expresses the moral imperative that I feel, in this desperate moment, to support the Palestinian people’s liberation.

For those of us with the privilege to turn away from the horrors of injustice in Palestine and beyond, hope lies in those who refuse to look away. When we choose courage, we find our place in a community that confronts the institutions profiting from suffering and attempting to disrupt our connections to one another. My Palestinian solidarity work is driven by the urgency of the genocide, my proximity to perpetrators who share my Jewish religion and claim to act in my name and for my safety, and my complicity in funding their violence with my tax dollars.

At its best, donor organizing is movement work. It means aligning resources and relationships with justice and standing in deeper solidarity with the people and grassroots movements leading the struggle for liberation.

As the Israeli government, army, and settlers—with the support of the majority of the Israeli public—continue to murder Palestinian children and families with bombs and starvation, I find inspiration in the writings of Palestinian author Hala Alyan, who called this steadfastness “ungendered mothering”—the act of not turning away, of continuing to show up even in impossible circumstances because you believe that a better world is possible, even if you don’t get to see it.