How we fund change
Turning Tides operates four separate, interrelated funds designed to work at different scales to support necessary enabling conditions, meet the different needs of our partners, and achieve complex, collective goals. Together, the four funds strengthen and sustain the agency, self-determination, rights and governance of rights holders in varying contexts.
Grassroots Fund
Turning Tides deploys the majority of its resources through the Grassroots Fund, supporting fisher peoples, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities to secure tenure and exercise their rights — from community-level organising and territorial documentation through to national legal processes, policy advocacy, and institutional change, within carefully selected geographies where conditions and opportunities align.
Civic Space and Capacity Fund
The Civic Space and Capacity Fund strengthens civil society ecosystems through movement-building, leadership and institutional capacity support, and protection of safe civic spaces. It enhances governance, supports leadership development, and strengthens organisational, programmatic and financial systems. Grants reach both grantee partners and the broader networks they belong to.
Knowledge Action Fund
The Knowledge Action Fund supports partners to challenge dominant narratives, elevate partner voices, and influence systems across six key arenas where fisher peoples', Indigenous Peoples', and local communities' rights are formally recognised but often undermined in practice. It aims to shift power in the systems that make decisions about their futures, ensuring those decisions are accountable to rights holders.
Rapid Response Fund
The Rapid Response Fund provides urgent, fast-moving support for legal, political, or physical threats in volatile contexts. It delivers emergency legal aid, crisis response, or bridge funding so grantee partners can continue to work safely and without fear of retaliation. Grants are up to US$10,000.
Our Partners
Turning Tides works with a diversity of grantee partners who are affecting governance - accross multipel levels - of oceans, coasts, rivers, lakes, climate responses, conservation and food systems. We collaborate most closely with local communities, fisher peoples, Indigenous Peoples, and their representative groups and allies. We also support ongoing efforts to build accountability, respect and awareness amongst governments, NGOs, funders and the private sector, ensuring rights recognition and tenure sensitivity in the policies and processes they employ.
Learn more about Turning Tides
Join us to fund Indigenous Peoples, fishers, and coastal defenders —or join collaborative efforts toward a sea change in how frontline communities are funded and supported