Our Grantmaking in 2025

DRF’s grantmaking in 2025 disbursed a total of $5.2 million (USD) despite a challenging backdrop of shrinking global human rights funding, with disability rights receiving a mere 2% of OECD human rights funding. Yet in this context of scarcity, the Disability Rights Fund and our sister organization, the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund (DRF & DRAF), achieved historic expansion by making a total of 165 grants in 42 countries across Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Caribbean. 

Since our inception, DRF has centered disability rights through participatory grantmaking, supporting people with disabilities to build diverse movements, advance inclusive development, and achieve equal rights. 2025 grantmaking demonstrates how this commitment continues evolving: we funded over 60 organizations for the first time, while deepening support to long-term grantee partners. 

Geographic Expansion Strengthens Voice 

In 2025, we opened a call for Letters of Interest to any Organization of Persons with Disabilities (OPD) in any country in sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, South- or South-East Asia or any of the Pacific Islands. It is the first time that we reached this broad geographic scope. We saw, through this opening, that geographic expansion strengthens rather than dilutes movement voices. Funding in 21 new countries exposes long-ignored exclusion while supporting fresh strategies. New grantee organizations are prioritizing grassroots economic justice and demonstrate strong cross-disability solidarity (80% organize across disability types). Meanwhile, long-standing grantees more often prioritized structural gaps in national policy frameworks, disability-inclusive budgeting, legislative reforms, and treaty body engagement. Both nascent, grassroots organization and more established organizations operating at national levels, strengthen the movement in complementary ways. New initiatives drive innovation at the grassroot, while countries where funding has been flowing for a longer period of time are more likely to have established organizations driving accountability at national and global levels. Geographic diversity becomes a strategic advantage. 

Gender Justice: From Participation to Power 

Gender justice remains the movement’s top priority, with 107 organizations (70%) selecting it as their primary focus.  The work goes beyond participation to power-building. In Africa, where 92 grants span 20 countries, women with disabilities lead on policy advocacy, political participation, and gender-based violence prevention. Some projects will strengthen women’s participation in climate policy while enhancing protection against climate-related violence. Emerging women leaders are organizing against violence in all its forms, while women with albinism continue to advance health and gender policies as their priority. Despite the heightened backlash against the LGBTQI+ community, people with disabilities of diverse sexual orientations and identities are increasingly claiming their rightful place and advancing inclusion at the intersection of disability and gender towards for the full recognition and protection of rights.  In 2025, five DRF grants have gone out to organizations explicitly working at the intersection of LGBTQI+ and disability rights.  

Climate Justice: Survival as Human Rights 

Fifty-five organizations (36%) funded in our 2025 round prioritize climate justice, with the highest concentrations in the most vulnerable regions: Pacific Islands (6 out of 12 or 50%), Haiti (5 out of 11 or 45%), and Asia (17 out of 38 or 45%). In Africa, 27 out of 89 grants (30%) contribute to climate justice.  

These projects integrate climate and disaster risk management into disability rights advocacy by mainstreaming disability into climate adaptation frameworks, strengthening women’s participation in climate policy, empowering children to lead climate advocacy, and promoting disability-inclusive disaster risk reduction. Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) are increasingly adapting local practices and resources to influence disaster response policies and build accountability mechanisms for climate-inclusive governance. 

The intersection of climate justice with Indigenous rights introduces another dimension of intersectionality by acknowledging the structural barriers disadvantage Indigenous communities face regarding land-based identity, and how climate change devastates their livelihoods and ways of life. This year, one regional grant in Asia and one national grant in Kenya support OPDs working at the disability-gender-Indigenous intersection. Rising sea levels, displacement, and livelihood loss justify the movement’s climate priorities, aligning with DRF/DRAF’s strategic goals. 

Building Diverse Disability Movements 

Youth Leadership: Building The Next Generation 

Four grants support youth-led and youth-focused organizations, while 58 OPDs (38%) across regions prioritize youth with disabilities in their interventions. Examples of youth engagements include youth with disabilities leading climate disaster preparedness, receiving training on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and national constitutions, advocacy for electoral inclusion, and implementing Global Disability Summit commitments. For example, through a new DRF grant, Deaf women and youth in Sudan will strengthen their advocacy skills and legal literacy. 

Economic Justice & Flexible Funding 

Seventy-nine organizations (52%) identify economic justice as their priority focus, particularly common among first-time applicants. Examples of projects supported in this grant round include advocacy for inclusive social protection mechanisms, documentation of unpaid care work, and influence economic empowerment policy. 

Nine organizations received core support to enable them to strengthen organizational capacity and define priorities guided by their own strategies. This introduction of core funding exemplifies the flexible, trust-based grantmaking at DRF/DRAF’s core, representing progressive transition toward the resourcing approaches movements increasingly prefer and require. 

Regional Solidarity Infrastructure 

Five pan-African grants strengthen OPD capacity to engage the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Committee on Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the African Court. One grant specifically supports Francophone women with disabilities’ leadership across Africa, addressing linguistic barriers that have limited organizing in West and Central Africa. This support to regional initiatives enables national organizations to leverage continental accountability while building cross-country solidarity and cementing peer learning approaches to advocacy. 

Looking ahead 

The 2025 grant round demonstrates the transformative power of centering trust, flexibility, and core support in funding decisions. We’re proud to have supported 64 OPDs for the first time across 21 countries we’re funding in for the first time, through our first open call in many years. The overwhelming response of over 2,000 Letters of Intent, of which only 152 grants could be awarded, speaks volumes about the immense interest and the vast unmet need that remains due to limited funds. We invite other donors who share our vision to join us by partnering with DRF or by channeling direct support to OPDs to help close this gap and sustain the growth of the movement. We look forward to continuing this momentum in the 2026 grant round.  

We invite you to explore our grantmaking further through our grants directory.