I’m filled with hope as we prepare to award grants to our latest cohort in 2025, especially as I reflect on the previous year.

In 2024, our 5th grantee cohort experienced DOF’s first-ever unrestricted funding opportunity, the Impact Grant for Deaf Organizations. They journeyed on the path of this newer trust-based approach to grantmaking with us, and we are grateful to these organizations for their feedback and partnership.

It’s an honor to share our 2024 grantees’ project accomplishments with you.

Atomic Hands: Produced four ASL storybooks and two mini-courses on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), engaging and supporting deaf youth, teachers in deaf education, ASL interpreters, and those who learn best via visual means. Two storybooks have been published, with the remaining storybooks and mini-courses slated for distribution in 2025.

Atomic Hands: Produced four ASL storybooks and two mini-courses on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), engaging and supporting deaf youth, teachers in deaf education, ASL interpreters, and those who learn best via visual means. Two storybooks have been published, with the remaining storybooks and mini-courses slated for distribution in 2025.

Deaf Equity: Hosted over 10 accessible community events in Minnesota; such events gave people unique opportunities to connect and hold space for the diverse array of cultural and disability identities within their communities, and led to increased attendance by DeafBlind community members.

DEAF, Inc.: Their Pink Wings of Hope program produced eight accessible videos on cancer, aiming to reducing severe barriers to complex healthcare information impacting deaf communities everywhere.

Deaf Spotlight: Hired an Operations Director to support internal operations ranging from grant activities, volunteer coordination, and office logistics, enabling the organization to provide more arts programming for members of deaf communities.

HEARD: Disseminated 500+ surveys to deaf/disabled people experiencing incarceration nationwide; the resulting data is helping the organization prioritize their advocacy efforts to center the needs of impacted communities.

Off-The-Grid Missions: Expanded infrastructure to better position the organization’s ability to adapt and respond in future crises; concurrently disseminated life-saving resources in high-risk and disaster-stricken regions including Lebanon, Haiti, Türkiye, Gaza, Syria, and the United States.

The work of deaf nonprofits and programs in service of our deaf communities is beyond measure and must be sustained. I also remain profoundly grateful for the support we receive from people like you. Please read on for what I am proud (and a little mindblown) to say is an overview of our first five funding cycles!

Nationwide Services:

• Asian Signers
• Atomic Hands
• Deaf Queer Resource Center
• Deaf Spotlight
• HEARD
• Health Signs Center
• National Black Deaf Advocates
• Off-The-Grid Missions
• Partners in Deaf Health
• Turtle Island Hand Talk

Regional Services:

• Arizona, Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind
• California, DeafHope
• Georgia, CaringWorks, Inc.
• Indiana, Indiana Association of the Deaf
• Massachusetts, Our Deaf Survivors Center, Inc. and The Learning Center for the Deaf, Inc.
• Michigan, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services
• Minnesota, Deaf Equity
• Missouri, DEAF, Inc.
• New York, Deaf Refugee Advocacy
• Pennsylvania, DeafCAN! - Christ the King Deaf Church
• Tennessee, Partnership for Families, Children and Adults
• Utah, Sego Lily Center for the Abused Deaf
• Washington, Northwest School for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children