2022

Sowing Our Collective Growth

Annual Report

Looking Back, Looking Forward

In a world that continues to grapple with collective challenges, we witnessed the power of collective action this year. From partners who dared to take on big corporations to donors who are using their power and resources to transform the sector, we are pleased to share some of those stories with you. 

Because of supporters like you, we were able to deepen and expand our work to record levels. This is just the beginning. The scale of the unprecedented problems we face today require an equally unprecedented scale of response from philanthropy. We thank you for accompanying us this far, and we know we will continue to go further, together.

Solomé Lemma

Executive Director

FLOURISHING MOVEMENTS

Thousand Currents is proud to accompany movements that are building a just and equitable future for all of us.

They fight for dignity, defend their rights, self-determine their needs, and create strategic responses to multiple compounding challenges. Last year, they took on big challenges and delivered promising solutions in their fight for climate, food, and economic justice.

Nourishing Our Planet

Our movement partners are demonstrating what it means to live in harmony and balance with Mother Earth.

Pacific Network on Globalization, Fiji, works on improving policies in favor of the planet and its people through their collective of economists, lawyers, scientists, activists, political analysts, and regional experts. Last year, they made their voices heard in fighting to protect the Pacific Ocean and surrounding coastal areas from seabed mining, waste dumping, and nuclear testing.

Pacific Network on Globalization

Health of Mother Earth Foundation

For over 10 years, Health of Mother Earth Foundation in Nigeria has been advocating for climate justice and food sovereignty throughout the African continent. When a 2021 Dutch court case found that a Nigerian subsidiary of Shell Corporation was responsible for environmental degradation, HOMEF worked closely with the litigants and their communities to train and share knowledge on environmental monitoring.

La Red Nacional de Mujeres Productoras de la Agricultura Familiar, Peru, brings together 19 women-led organizations to share wisdom on how to overcome environmental challenges. Last year, they facilitated learning exchanges on climate mitigation experiments, organized workshops on food sovereignty strategies, and provided start-up materials that contributed towards the creation of over 100 greenhouses across Peru.

La Red Nacional de Mujeres Productoras de la Agricultura Familiar

Nurturing our Food Systems

Across the world, our movement partners are transforming food production methods, building healthy ecosystems, and working towards agroecology.

In Nepal, Forest Action's grassroots approach brings together environmental activists who are working to save Nepal’s ecosystem. In 2021, their evidence-based reports pushed for safer and more sustainable food production, and their work to reform local agricultural policy will ensure more dignified livelihoods for rural communities.

Forest Action

Zimbabwe Smallholder Organic Farmers’ Forum

Zimbabwe Smallholder Organic Farmers’ Forum works to make self-determination possible through the lens of food, land, and environmental justice. Their farmer training last year uplifted the importance of community-led seed sharing, raised awareness about legal seed-saving restrictions, and cultivated the leadership of smallholder farmers in four different provinces.

The Asociación de Mujeres Ixpiyakok

The Asociación de Mujeres Ixpiyakok is creating a pipeline of Indigenous women leaders who are learning how to advocate for more just food practices and policies in Guatemala. In response to water shortages and increased waste last year, ADEMI worked with Indigenous women in 33 communities to find creative ways to conserve resources, reuse materials, and produce household items with natural ingredients.

Our movement partners are advancing a new economic system that centers dignity and the wellbeing of people and planet over profit.

Creating Just Economies

Pan-Asian think tank Focus on the Global South uses research and analysis to offer alternatives for just social, economic, and political change. Last year they successfully influenced public opinion through targeted outreach of their published articles on agrobiodiversity, small-scale fishers, and corporate capture of our food systems.

Focus on the Global South

Muyissi Environment

Muyissi Environment envisions a world where multinational corporate activities do not force displacement and exploitation of Indigenous communities. Their 2021 report with the World Rainforest Movement analyzed the impact of zero-deforestation pledges made by oil palm companies, and fought back against government and multinational processes that deplete the environment of natural resources.

Coordenação das Associações das Comunidades Remanescentes de Quilombos do Pará

In Malungu, Coordenação das Associações das Comunidades Remanescentes de Quilombos do Pará defends land and resources for 200 Afro-descendant Quilombola associations in Brazil. During the ongoing pandemic, they enacted solidarity campaigns to distribute more than 10,000 food baskets, 40,000 hygiene kits, and 200 face masks to Quilombola communities—while also co-creating a national plan to protect Indigenous communities from the lingering effects of COVID-19.

TRANSFORMING PRACTICES

Thousand Currents is working to shift the philanthropic landscape to meet this moment of compounding challenges.

We are watching in real time how the movements we support are responding to the various crises at hand with knowledge, respect, and ingenuity. Last year, we continued to create a more enabling environment for our movement partners within the sector.

Thousand Currents Climate Academy

The Thousand Currents Climate Academy became our first-ever training course focused exclusively on funding climate solutions and unpacking climate philanthropy, adding eleven new graduates to our growing alumni network. Since our first offering in 2014, this flagship program has offered resources and programs for donors and philanthropic institutions to shift their behavior and practices towards solidarity-based philanthropy.

A collaboration between Global Greengrants Fund, Grassroots International, Thousand Currents, and Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights, The CLIMA Fund surpassed its goal of raising $10 million for grassroots movements last year. Supporting the disbursement of over 300 grants to grassroots groups in 71 countries, CLIMA continues to give influential funders a simple way to invest in grassroots climate change movements. CLIMA also continues to invest in on-the-ground leaders who are working towards the most sustainable and effective solutions to our global climate crisis.

The CLIMA Fund

The Buen Vivir Fund

The Buen Vivir Fund (BVF) spent the year in an intentional reflective period due to the pandemic repercussions on the different communities that the Fund serves. Learning from the global pandemic and economic uncertainty, BVF is reimagining the future of Thousand Currents’ investment work and the role it can play in creating a more enabling environment for the movements that are advancing systems change.

Africans in the Diaspora

Our program Africans in the Diaspora (AiD) focused the past year on more donor organizing activities centered around the experiences of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. Their ‘Practicing Liberation’ series explored African solutions to global problems, showcasing what resourcing could look like when the leadership and strategies of Black, African, and Afro-descendant peoples are centered.

The past fiscal year was our most successful fundraising year to-date, putting us in a more secure position to move more money than ever before.

EXPANDING RESOURCES

$8 Million

raised from foundations

We raised over $8 million from foundations and $4.4 million from individual giving contributions, allowing us to redistribute more funds to movement partners in the Global South.

$5,678,666

moved directly to our movement partners

Some highlights were our year-end appeal "Remember, Refuse, Reimagine," which brought in a record-breaking $2 million, and our climate justice giving circle for Resource Generation members raised $550,000, surpassing an original goal of $340,000. In this ongoing pandemic, grassroots groups and social movements have taught us about strong leadership and how to create sensible solutions. Last year, we are proud to have moved $5,678,666 directly to our movement partners in 24 countries as well as adding catalyst partners in 5 new countries. 

Collective

learning spaces virtually

Learning has always been at the core of Thousand Currents’ ethos, and we continued that journey with a new internal political education series to facilitate more shared knowledge on climate, food, and economic justice. On the heels of our new strategic direction, we are now building a new learning and evaluation framework that will center the lessons we have learned from the movements that we support.

2 year-long journey

reimagining our identity

Finally, Thousand Currents has also been on a two-year journey to update our identity. Along with a new website, revised logo, and an energetic color palette, we changed our tagline with words that we believe capture the spirit of global solidarity. Collective Power, Collective Change is an affirming reminder that we really can change the world—together.

The last fiscal year was a time period of tremendous growth at Thousand Currents, both internally and externally.

TAKING ROOT

Our core staff expanded to 27 people across the globe, 10 of whom joined us this past year alone. Together, we are working together to advance our organization's vision and mission with an annual budget that grew from $9M to $15M.

Fiscal Year 2021

Revenue

*

Individual
Contributions (24%)

Foundations (70%)

Other (6%)

Expenses

Program (98%)

Management & Operations (1%)

Fundraising (1%)

*Our 2021 numbers include fiscal sponsorship

Fiscal Year 2022

Revenue

Individual
Contributions (13%)

Foundations (87%)

Other (0%)

Expenses

Program (76%)

Management & Operations (10%)

Fundraising (14%)

The Journey Continues

After nearly 40 years of supporting movements in the Global South, Thousand Currents is just getting started. In the next year we'll be moving more money than ever before to the groups who are building a more just future, while also continuing to transform philanthropic practices to focus on trust and equity. It's an exciting time to be a part of an organization that continues to experiment, create, and reimagine the world we all know is possible.

The currents of change are powerful, and because of supporters like you, they will continue to get stronger!

Shilpa Alimchandani

Board Chair

GRATITUDE

13   

Our core strength lies in our staff of over 25 people…

+

nationalities

25  

languages spoken

85%

+

identify as Black, Indigenous and/or a Person of Color or multi-cultural

92%

identify as women or gender non-binary

Our deepest gratitude to our board and donors, who continue to accompany Thousand Currents’ vision for the future.

350 

nearly

individual donors

  35

institutional donors and foundations

We also thank all our movement partners for trusting us with their stories, photographs, and narratives that have been repurposed for this annual report.

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