2026 REV UP Movement Grants
Founded by grassroots disabled activists in Texas in 2016, REV UP maintains the core belief that change happens at the local level and that disabled leaders must be at the forefront of building an accessible democracy. REV UP’s commitment to providing community funding through initiatives like the REV UP Movements Grants helps ensure that disabled leaders have the resources and support they need to best reach their communities. In 2026, we are proud to be giving out $75,000 in small grants to 9 initiatives across 8 states. Read about this year’s Movement grantees below.
Black Star
State: Michigan
Organization Overview: Black Star is an Organizing Collective led by Black queer and disabled youth focused primarily on identity based civic engagement, political education, and mutual aid. We are a Pan-African movement with the goal of collective liberation and success of all people. We are researchers, organizers, disruptors, and builders. We use the stories and lived experiences of Black queer and disabled people to advance our movement. Our mission is to build the political power and social well-being of Black, Queer, and disabled students across college campuses, ensuring our movements are rooted in accessibility and community care. We firmly believe that the social is political & our mission is to decolonize minds, educate and organize the masses while centering our values; communal care over institutional rhetoric, intergenerational connection, theory + praxis, success defined by our terms, and nothing for us, without us.
Project Summary: Black Star’s “Social is Political” campaign builds the civic interest and collective power of youth. The work will include voter registration events, mutual aid to address food insecurity, teach-ins on civic topics, production of community zines, and training emerging leaders in their movement.
Missouri Justice Coalition (MoJustice)
State: Missouri
Organization Overview: Missouri Justice Coalition (MoJustice)’s mission is to educate, empower, and unite community members, transforming them into a powerful advocacy base. Through collaborative efforts, MoJustice strives to drive meaningful reforms within the Missouri carceral system, addressing the systemic injustices, inhumane conditions, and absence of accountability. We firmly believe that collective amplification and collective action are essential in building a statewide base of effective and sustained prison advocacy.
MoJustice is dedicated to serving as a unifying force across the state of Missouri, bringing together all communities impacted by the criminal punishment system. These communities include formerly incarcerated people, incarcerated individuals, their families, and concerned members of the public. Our work extends directly into jails and prisons, where we engage incarcerated people through advocacy, education, and civic participation efforts, including voter registration and rights education. By connecting these communities into a statewide network, MoJustice strengthens collective power and creates sustainable, community-driven prison advocacy rooted in lived experience and shared struggle.
Project Summary: MoJustice, through their Policy and Electoral initiative, will do outreach with individuals in jails, registering voters, providing nonpartisan civic education, and connections to community engagement and advocacy opportunities. The initiative will engage individuals with mental, intellectual, and physical disabilities. Currently, over 540 people in Missouri jails are waiting for placement and court-ordered evaluations, many of whom are held solely because they have not yet been transferred to appropriate mental health services. This prolonged detention creates severe health risks, civil rights violations, and civic exclusion, often spanning multiple election cycles.
Open Ears Open Opportunities
State: Oklahoma
Organization Overview: Open Ears Open Opportunities, Inc. is a disability‑centered nonprofit dedicated to empowering individuals with disabilities by helping them develop media, storytelling, and career skills. Our mission is to dismantle societal barriers and promote inclusivity through innovative training programs that allow disabled individuals to share their stories, build confidence, and pursue meaningful careers. Guided by a person‑centered philosophy, we focus on each participant’s unique strengths, goals, and communication styles. Our programs—including media production training and podcasting workshops—support independence, self‑determination, and full community inclusion.
Project Summary: In collaboration with disabled leaders and organizations throughout the state, this project will create accessible voter education videos and host hybrid community workshops and events. The project aims to empower Oklahomans with disabilities to become informed, confident voters through accessible multimedia education, community workshops, and peer‑led advocacy.
WEAN Charlotte
State: North Carolina
Organization Overview: Women Embracing Abilities Now (WEAN) Charlotte is a disability-led, Black-woman-led nonprofit based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our mission is to build leadership, equity, and civic power among women and young girls with disabilities, particularly Black and Brown individuals who experience intersecting barriers related to race, gender, disability, and economic access. We work to disrupt cycles of isolation and exclusion by creating inclusive spaces for leadership development, civic education, and community engagement. Through mentoring, arts-based advocacy, workshops, and public events, we support participants in understanding their rights, using their voices, and engaging in the democratic process.
Project Summary: Four voter registration and education workshops for a cohort of women and girls with disabilities, with a specific focus on Black and Brown disabled women and youth who have had limited access to civic education and voter engagement opportunities. The workshops will include storytelling and art creation, including developing a collective art zine centered on storytelling in activism and voting, highlighting disabled women and young people as informed, empowered voters and community leaders.
Tectonic Change, Inc.
State: Nebraska
Organization Overview: Our Mission is to be “Champion of Disability Truth” with a vision: “A society where judgments about disability are erased.” We reach Businesses in an attempt to remove barriers and myths related to the hiring benefits of people who experience disabilities
Project Summary: Four voter registration and education events, including two in rural Nebraska. Voter education events will also work to engage local candidates to provide an opportunity for candidates to learn about the issues disabled voters care about, and for voters to have access to accessible, nonpartisan information about what is on their ballot.
National Coalition for Latinxs with Disabilities
State: Based in Illinois, national reach and engagement
Organization Overview: The National Coalition for Latinxs with Disabilities (CNLD – Spanish acronym: Coalición Nacional para Latinxs con Discapacidades) is a national, cross-disability, community-led nonprofit organization affirming and uplifting Latinx communities with disabilities across the lifespan. Founded by disAbled Latin/e/a/o/x (Latin^) scholars, advocates, caregivers, and organizers. We were created to address the historic invisibility of Latin^ disAbled people within both disAbility rights spaces and broader Latin^ social justice movements. Our mission is to work in solidarity to affirm, celebrate, and collectively uplift Latin/e/a/o/x (Latin^) with disAbilities through advocacy, education, research, and community building. Through bilingual programming, accessible convenings, digital education platforms, leadership development initiatives, and policy advocacy, we build power at the intersection of disAbility, race, language, and immigration status. CNLD conducts nonpartisan civic engagement.
Project Summary: Centered & Connected: The Daisy–Cosmos Vote Chain is a culturally rooted, nonpartisan civic engagement initiative that places disAbled Latin/e/a/o/x (Latin^) voters at the center of relational organizing. Through a bilingual flower-pledge model (one center surrounded by four petals), participants commit to concrete civic actions: registering to vote, verifying registration, casting a ballot, or supporting another person in accessing the ballot. Each participant then recruits four additional individuals, generating an expanding chain grounded in trust, interdependence, and community accountability rather than transactional outreach. This project activates peer-to-peer networks across families, caregivers, and intergenerational households to multiply civic participation. Outreach integrates culturally responsive digital storytelling, social media amplification, and in-person engagement at the Mexican Independence Day Parade (one of the largest Latine celebrations in the Midwest, drawing more than 400,000 attendees with national television coverage) as well as the Disability Pilgrimage. Together, these strategies cultivate sustained civic momentum across Chicago, Elgin, and surrounding suburbs while strengthening disAbility-centered leadership within Latin^ and allied communities.
Alliance for Community Services
State: Illinois
Organization Overview: The Alliance for Community Services and our Humanize Long Term Care campaign is a coalition of people with disabilities, seniors, frontline public services workers working to protect, improve, and expand public services that meet human needs. Through organizing, leadership development, and direct action, Alliance leaders ‘speak truth to power,’ to save Medicaid, improve disability services, transform long-term care so people get person-centered care with autonomy and dignity, and build relationships between consumers of services and workers.
Project Summary: Persons isolated in institutional facilities, predominantly persons with disabilities, are among the least likely to participate in the democratic process, though public policy has a profound impact on their quality of life. Our primary target audience is the diverse disabled multi-marginalized residents living in six large nursing facilities. This project will develop leaders in the facilities to conduct voter registration, provide nonpartisan voter education, and engage in community organizing. The project will be led by disabled people with past and current experience living in nursing facilities.
Activate Disabled New York!
State: New York
Organization Overview: Activate Disabled New York! is a grassroots coalition led by people with lived disability experience and allies working to increase civic participation and reduce barriers to the ballot for disabled New Yorkers. Our mission is to directly engage and empower people with disabilities through accessible, culturally responsive voter education and outreach that increases voter turnout and strengthens democratic inclusion across New York State.
Project Summary: This project will increase civic participation among disabled New Yorkers by delivering fully accessible, culturally responsive voter education, hosting community-based outreach events, and providing ballot marking device demonstrations. It will equip DeafBlind, Blind, Deaf and multiply marginalized disabled voters with the tools, knowledge, and support needed to confidently register, plan, and vote in 2026 elections. The outreach will include providing co-navigators/support service providers (SSP’s) to DeafBlind voters, providing American Sign Language and Tactile American Sign Language, CART captioning, and making accessible nonpartisan voter education available in braille, English, Spanish, Bengali, Swahili, and Arabic.
Georgia ADAPT ‘Roll to the Polls’
State: Georgia
Organization Overview: A grassroots coalition of disabled, BIPOC organizers coordinating free rides to the polls (including wheelchair accessible) for voters experiencing barriers, particularly multiply disabled, immunocompromised, Deaf and DeafBlind, BIPOC, indigenous, and voters with mobility disabilities.
Project Summary: Going into its 6th year of providing free, accessible rides for disabled voters across the state, Georgia ADAPT ‘Rolls to the Polls’ plans to provide over 500 rides in 2026. The organizers work with partners across the state to connect with voters who need rides and secure volunteer drivers.