Who We Are

Winning grants can be an enormous challenge for movement building organizations. Few funders understand or value grassroots organizing, and too many impose the kinds of restrictions that make equitable movement work impossible. These challenges are often especially pronounced for organizations led by BIPOC and other marginalized communities.

If any of this sounds familiar, I am here to help!

My name is Susan Zakaib—I'm the Founder and Principal of Fund Your Movement, which supports community organizations to grow their revenue and build their capacity for securing grant funding. In addition to writing and editing grant materials, I provide coaching, training and support to help you strengthen your grant work in the long run. My goal is to help you build a grants program that provides you both the funding and the flexibility required to organize effectively.

I’m currently based in Dublin, but I work remotely with organizations throughout the United States and Ireland.

Our Values

I aim to conduct all of my work in accordance with the following values:

  1. I believe in equitable fundraising practices, and I’m committed to advancing the principles of Community-Centric Fundraising.

  2. I believe that moving grant funding to social movements—especially to organizations led by marginalized and oppressed communities—is urgent and necessary. All such organizations should have access to the tools, skills and support required to resource their work.

  3. Philanthropy has a long history of molding and undermining social movements. My priority is to help you avoid this pitfall of institutional funding, and grow your revenue without compromising your values and strategies.

  4. To protect my clients’ data as well as the environment, I do not use generative AI tools to create fundraising materials.

  5. As a member of the Grant Professionals Association, I am committed to upholding the GPA Code of Ethics.

Experience

I am a seasoned grant writer, trainer and coach with more than a decade of grants experience. I’ve been working with movement organizations specifically since 2016.

After learning to write proposals for both academic work and nonprofits during my PhD studies, I decided to make grants my full-time career. As a grant writer for Workers Defense in Austin, Texas, I learned the hard way that grantmaking processes aren’t designed for movement building organizations. Although it was frustrating to have to squeeze the organization’s incredible work into funders’ restrictive boxes, I loved the challenge of developing a grant program that scaled revenue while also remaining true to the organization’s values.

I founded Fund Your Movement in 2020 so that I could address these same challenges on a broader scale. Since then I have provided grant writing, coaching, training, and infrastructure development services for movement organizations all over the United States. I have worked on grants across multiple issue areas, including the criminal legal system, public education, voter engagement, racial justice, reproductive rights, climate change, housing justice, and more. I have experience working with nonprofits of all sizes, ranging from national networks and foundations to tiny grassroots organizations.

I moved to Ireland in 2022 — and while I continue to primarily support U.S.-based nonprofits, I am also looking to bring my grants expertise to charities in my new adopted home. Contact me to find out how I can support your fundraising goals!