Proteus Fund Reports on Orlando Rapid Response Fund Grantmaking
After the tragic shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL on June 12, 2016, Proteus Fund quickly launched a Rapid Response Fund to support LGBTQ and Muslim, Arab & South Asian communities grappling with the implications of this massacre. We were grateful to see an outpouring of support, from across the philanthropic spectrum, to support the mobilization needed in the face of the homophobia, Islamophobia and racism being vented in the wake of this tragedy.
We sought to use our Orlando Rapid Response Fund to build the capacity for response of groups working at the intersection of LGBTQ rights and racial justice, with a particular focus on groups representing the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian (MASA) community. The Security & Rights Collaborative, a program of the Proteus Fund that makes strategic grants to protect and restore the civil rights of America’s Muslim, Arab and South Asian (MASA) communities, also used its rapid response grantmaking capacity to address the crisis at hand. Proteus Fund raised over $23,000 for the Orlando Rapid Response Fund, which enabled us to make three grants – to Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD), National Queer Asian and Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC).