Resourcing JVP’s Organizing

Resource distribution & movement-building: How do we build and fund powerful movements under capitalism?

We live in a time of extreme inequality, when a small set of billionaires hoard enormous resources while most people struggle to have enough. Governments are overwhelmingly beholden to corporations and the wealthy, actively working against the interests of the vast majority of people and the planet which we inhabit. Weapons manufacturers and other industries profit from war and destruction, including the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

Given these realities, it can be difficult to grapple with the role of money in our people’s movements for justice — movements that seek to fundamentally transform the conditions of our society and economy but do not yet have enough power to do so. But if we are serious about building power for our movements, we have to be ready to face the contradictions of organizing under capitalism, including the need to organize money & resources as part of building durable people power.

Those contradictions are real and challenging — the non-profit structure was created to channel and control movements working towards liberation, and we have all seen organizations limit their politics or narrow their scope to secure or maintain funding. At the same time, we have seen movements of working people consistently innovate to fund their organizing and movement-building, which always require material resources (whether or not an organization has paid staff). Organizers and those who study social movements have dug into these questions and the histories that shape them -- here are a few recommended articles that offer more context and perspective within the U.S. context.

In the face of the artificial scarcity created by capitalism, these tensions get ratcheted up: organizations feel that they are competing for a limited pool of money, or different types of urgently-needed work get pitted against each other (community organizing vs direct service vs political advocacy vs supporting individuals in need). In reality, our movements and communities need it all, and the resources do exist to fund them. That is exactly why integrating fundraising into organizing is essential across movements, especially those with the most access to wealth, in ways that expand access to these resources across the board.

At JVP, we’re proud to have a grassroots membership model that integrates organizing and fundraising, ensuring that the organization’s politics remain independent and rooted in our principles. JVP is deeply committed to using our own resources, fundraising systems, and relationships with donors, foundations, and Palestinian-led partner organizations to more fully resource the Palestinian liberation movement as a whole. JVP members have also collectively raised over $700,000 for Palestinian-led direct aid organizations, and are committed to continue integrating solidarity fundraising and movement resourcing into our organizing.

JVP’s mandate and role in the movement for Palestinian liberation

JVP takes seriously the absolute necessity of continually interrogating our role, our mandate, and our reason for existence. As the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization in the world committed to Palestinian liberation, we work to answer the call of Palestinian civil society. We are building a massive, grassroots base of U.S. Jews until we have enough power to counter the specific role that Jewish Zionist organizations play in upholding the U.S.-Israel alliance and enabling genocide, apartheid, and occupation. That is the core of the mandate we receive from Palestinian partners and foundation of JVP’s work.

We understand that our voices and actions are currently needed because the Zionist movement and the state of Israel purport to speak for and act on behalf of all Jews. We maintain accountability by centering this understanding and let it guide our work as anti-Zionist Jews taking responsibility in and for our communities.

In doing this work, we remain open to criticism of our goals and methods, and a willingness to change our actions, tactics, and plans in response. We build and maintain close relationships with local, national, and international Palestinian leadership of the movement for Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality, as well as with our partners in the US movement for justice in Palestine. In our daily organizing with our partners, we strive to identify and address unequal power dynamics and remain vigilant in navigating the privileging of Jewish voices. As a Jewish organization in a Palestinian-led movement, we continually ask ourselves if, when, and how our work is needed, and to take action consistent with our principles and structures of accountability.

At the present time, we continue to receive the call from our Palestinian partners on the ground and in the diaspora to organize as anti-Zionist Jews towards ending the genocide and contributing to the movement for Palestinian liberation.

JVP’s funding as a grassroots membership organization

JVP is proud to be funded by donors and members who support our shared vision of a world that guarantees safety and liberation for all. As of June 2025, JVP is funded almost entirely by individuals, with an average donation of $50. What’s more, in 2024 96% of JVP’s 31,000 individual donors gave under $500, and 68% were first-time donors. This grassroots support, which comes primarily from U.S. Jews, has built JVP into the world’s largest Jewish organization standing in solidarity with Palestine.

The remainder of JVP’s operating budget comes from grants, primarily from small family foundations and foundations and funding networks that share JVP’s progressive values. JVP does not receive funding from corporations or government entities.

As a result of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, millions of people around the globe have become aware of and joined movements for Palestinian liberation for the first time. This has therefore been a time of tremendous growth for JVP, including a massive increase in new dues-paying members committed to advancing JVP’s organizing. We’ve seen proportional growth across all donor levels, from grassroots to major donors, with the majority of donors coming in at $5/month or the $18/year level.

How JVP uses resources to build power towards ending US enabling of Israeli apartheid and genocide

JVP uses the resources and funds named above in service of our core strategies —eroding the financial, political, and cultural pillars of the US-Israel alliance from our particular role as a US-based Jewish organization. These strategies were most recently refined through a multi-year strategic planning process that ended in 2023, and included deep consultation with Palestinian partners, the organization’s membership broadly, and local JVP chapters.

To carry out those strategies, JVP uses our growing resources to build towards mass people power: growing an enormous base of predominantly Jewish Americans, developing our skills together across the membership, and taking collective action to end the genocide and build towards a future of justice and liberation. Our opposition includes governments (such as the U.S. and Israel) and private institutions that have seemingly endless resources to attack and undermine our movements. One of the primary strategies they use is the false conflation of antisemitism with the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Therefore as an American Jewish organization, we understand that we have a particular role to play as a bulwark against them. To be effective, we need to continue to build our size and power alongside our Palestinian partners.

The most recent annual report provides a breakdown of some highlights of JVP’s work as well as the organization’s financials. Specifically, the bulk of JVP’s spending since October 2023 has gone towards the following work to strengthen our organizing and meet the political moment with everything we have, including:

• Many hundreds of mass protests and actions across the country -- which were one part of generating mass refusal, making it impossible to say that Israel’s actions were for Jewish safety, and building narrative and political pressure against those enabling the genocide
• Grassroots divestment campaigns (at campus, city, and state levels) to materially expose and weaken the chains of capital and industry profiting from violence against Palestinians
• Training and leadership development for JVP members, including in-person gatherings to build analysis, skill, and relationships together so that we can carry out the work across the dozens of JVP chapters leading the work locally
• Staff to support the organizing — JVP has maintained and grown our staff so that all the above is possible. JVP staff support local chapters, develop member leadership, organize mobilizations, trainings, and in-person gatherings, hold together the systems that keep the organization going, and serve as critical relational & communication tissue inside and outside of JVP. We’re proud to have a unionized staff through the Washington Baltimore News Guild.