FROM RACHEL WICK, BLUE SHIELD OF CALIFORNIA FOUNDATION, AND SOJOURNER RIVERS, NEW YORK WOMEN’S FOUNDATION
JULY 2026

AFN Short Take is a blog series highlighting insights and perspectives from recent AFN programming events.

The dominant story of gender-based violence centers a single, crisis moment—a physical assault, an emergency call, a rescue. But survivors and the people who serve them tell a different story. The harm rarely ends there, and its deepest, longer-lasting damage is often economic. Economic abuse is one of the most common forms of such violence, and money is what survivors most need to reach safety. That reframe of gender-based violence as an economic issue, not only a crisis of physical and emotional safety, is broadening how asset funders understand their role. Because gender-based violence is so common, survivors are already present in nearly every community that economic-security funders serve, whether or not grantees name them.

On June 25, the Asset Funders Network (AFN) convened its network for From Surviving to Thriving, a webinar launching its new brief, Advancing the Economic Security of Gender-Based Violence Survivors. The conversation featured three field leaders working directly with survivors: Sonya Passi of FreeFrom, Rebecca Jackson of Community Forward SF, and Margarita Guzmán of the Violence Intervention Program.

The timing raises the stakes. Survivors are facing growing economic insecurity, diminished rights and protections, and funding cuts to the organizations that serve them, all at once. That makes this a moment for funders to listen and act—to see survivors clearly and invest in the economic security they need to get safe and stay safe.

Gender-Based Violence Is An Asset-Building Issue

As many as 99 percent of survivors experience economic abuse, making it the hidden engine of gender-based violence. In practice, that can mean a bank account a survivor can’t access, wages they aren’t allowed to earn, or debt run up in their name without their knowledge. On average, a harm-doer steals more than $1,200 a month from a survivor and leaves thousands of dollars in fraudulent debt behind each year.

The result is stark. Survivors have, on average, about $175 to their name and almost nothing in savings. Safety is expensive—it takes money and housing. “The number one reason survivors cannot get to safety is they cannot afford it,” Passi said.

The Survivors You’re Already Serving

Economic abuse and gender-based violence cut across every socioeconomic group; in the moment of seeking safety, Jackson noted, prior circumstances often level out. But the burden is not shared equally. Both risk and access to support are shaped by race, ethnicity, sexuality, immigration status, and disability. For survivors who are already marginalized, the harms compound—racism, housing instability, wage and wealth gaps, and criminalization stack on top of the abuse, so those with the least protection carry the heaviest and longest-lasting economic damage. One in two trans people experience gender-based violence, immigrant women are twice as likely as others to face domestic violence, and the financial toll lands on an already uneven base: the average woman holds about 32 cents for every dollar of a man’s wealth, and Black, Latinx, and Native American women far less.

Those disparities shape what survivors need. Rural survivors face geographic isolation and value privacy. Based on a survey of survivors by FreeFrom, immigrant survivors and survivors of color reported safe housing as a top need; survivors of color and those with disabilities reported asset protection; LGBTQ+ survivors reported community access. These needs are particularly acute at this moment; Guzmán described how immigrant survivors in her community now feel “hunted” and burdened with choosing between safety from intimate partners or safety from being detained by ICE. The rollback on protections for immigrant survivors erodes trust in government and institutions. This can have a chilling effect for survivors, making services that ask for any identifying information, like opening a bank account or applying for a tax ID, feel dangerous. Reaching these survivors takes culturally and linguistically specific, trauma-informed support that intentionally centers those most affected. That same support begins to undo the compounded harms.

Why Cash Comes First

For all the variation in who survivors are and what they need, one need is nearly universal: direct cash they can spend as they see fit. Survivors consistently report that it takes roughly $1,567 to make ends meet and stay safe for at least two months. Cash is the most powerful tool for closing that resource gap, and it works best as a primary strategy rather than a supplement. Additionally, direct cash assistance offers a lifeline for survivors who may otherwise be excluded from life-saving programs. Immigrant survivors are often ineligible for federally-funded shelters or may be fearful of government retaliation for accessing public benefits. Philanthropic support for cash assistance can offer another layer of support for survivors who have been pushed even further to the margins.

FreeFrom is the largest provider of direct cash and other programs to survivors, having distributed more than $8.4 million to nearly 11,300 survivors since 2020. A decade of its data shows that infusions smaller than a typical monthly guaranteed income payment move roughly 93% of survivors to physical and psychological safety. Community Forward SF saw the same result over two years of guaranteed income. Broader research points in a similar direction: Los Angeles County’s guaranteed income pilot recorded a significant drop in domestic violence among participants, though it was not designed for survivors.

Importantly, none of this requires inventing new tools. “We do not need to create new asset structures to support this population,” Passi said. “We just have to understand the nuances of harm and make the existing structures and products flexible enough to meet the needs.”

What it does require is patience and flexibility. Recovery is a long, non-linear journey—from crisis to stabilizing, to rebuilding, to thriving—and interventions that stop when the acute crisis passes leave survivors exposed to harm again. Guzmán lifted up business ownership and community-ownership models like survivor-run workers cooperatives as part of that continuum—not just income but healing: becoming your own boss, she said, rebuilds confidence and a sense of agency. “Short-term funding is the response that we’ve been doing on gender-based violence for decades,” Jackson observed, urging funders to think in horizons of five years or more.

Reimagine the Systems That Weren’t Built for Survivors

Even strong programs falter inside systems that were never designed with survivors in mind. Coerced debt wrecks credit and blocks housing. Litigation abuse turns the courts into a weapon. Joint tax-filing rules tie survivors to harm-doers. And the criminal legal system often compounds harm and undermines economic mobility rather than resolving it.

Passi put the economics plainly: each police response to domestic violence costs the state roughly $5,500, often for what amounts to a Band-Aid—or worse. “The math isn’t mathing,” she said, on why a criminal-justice response has crowded out the cheaper, more effective work of surrounding survivors with care before a situation turns deadly. In her framing, gender-based violence becomes a life-or-death issue only because the community takes no responsibility until it is lethal. Jackson described how dual-arrest policies send survivors to jail alongside those who harmed them, and how her organization’s under-resourced reentry program fights to keep that first arrest from shadowing a survivor for life. For survivors who are arrested and incarcerated for self-defense, various studies of women’s incarceration have found the majority of respondents disclosed experiencing sexual or domestic abuse. The economic toll of incarceration has rippling intergenerational impacts. For criminalized survivors, housing and employment discrimination coupled with insufficient re-entry options can trap survivors in lasting economic hardship.

Solutions already exist and are gaining ground—coerced debt relief, paid and protected safe leave, survivor-centered banking, survivor-led worker cooperatives, and rental protections. The momentum is real. Of the 720 survivor financial-security bills introduced across the states since 2021, 142 had become law by January 2026, reaching over 20 million survivors, and advocacy for paid safe leave alone has extended it to 300,000 more. FreeFrom’s National Survivor Financial Security Policy Map and Scorecard tracks how each state is doing and shows funders where advocacy can move.

Where Philanthropy Can Act, NOW

For funders ready to act, the brief offers six survivor-led recommendations:

  • Invest more in the movement. Fund survivor-led organizing and the ecosystems that resource survivors before and long after crisis, and provide bridge funding when public dollars fall away.
  • Prioritize flexible funding. Give trust-based, unrestricted grants, streamline applications, and drop documentation that forces survivors to relive trauma.
  • Provide long-term funding. Offer multi-year general operating support so that survivor-led organizations can hire and retain staff and build capacity.
  • Broaden who counts as a survivor. Race, immigration status, sexuality, disability, and geography shape both the harm survivors carry and whether support ever reaches them. Loosen rigid eligibility, ask survivors what they need, and draw on survivor-driven data.
  • Champion organizational well-being. Fund living wages and resilience for the staff, many of them survivors, who sustain this work.
  • Fund unrestricted cash programs. Treat direct cash as a primary strategy, and back advocacy to expand cash-equivalent public benefits.

Economic security is not a downstream concern for survivors; it is the gateway to safety and healing. As Guzmán reminded funders, survivors need their basic needs met before anyone can ask about thriving. The strategies exist, and survivors are leading the way.

Explore the webinar recording and the full brief, Advancing the Economic Security of Gender-Based Violence Survivors, here.