Turning Tides is a Re‑Granting Facility
We move flexible, multi-year funding to fisher peoples, Indigenous Peoples, and their chosen partners — supporting their work to secure tenure and build lasting recognition of their rights to lands, waters, and resources.
Our approach to Grantmaking
Turning Tides practices and advocates for liberatory grantmaking. We work alongside Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and small-scale fishers and fish workers to change the systems and power structures that create barriers to tenure security. In practice, that means multi-year flexible funding, streamlined processes, and partnership support that extends beyond the check.
What we practice
- Power-sharing in strategy and grantmaking
- Partner-centered grantmaking processes (Language justice, reducing administrative burdens, and integrating partner feedback)
- Rights-based safeguarding and ethical engagement (Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), data sovereignty, and respect for cultural protocols)
- Multi-year flexible funding with partnership support that extends beyond financial resources
- Collaborative learning and reporting grounded in dialogue and reflection — not compliance
THEORY OF CHANGE
How Change Happens
Self-determination, meaningful participation, and locally led action become possible when the rights of Indigenous Peoples, fisher peoples, and local communities arerecognized. Moving toward secure tenure and recognized rights means centering these peoples in resourcing and action.
Turning Tides funds a diversity of partners working across levels — local, national, regional, and global — to build the conditions for tenure security and rights recognition. We support work that improves access to services like facilitation, negotiation, documentation, and conflict resolution; builds accountability amongst governments, NGOs, funders, and the private sector; diversifies the knowledge systems shaping decisions about lands, waters, and resources; and challenges the legal, economic, and social conditions that undermine tenure and rights. Together, these conditions make it possible for Indigenous Peoples, fisher peoples and local communities to lead on stewardship, climate response, and inclusive economies — grounded in their own rights and relationships to the sea, lands, and waters.
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