Today, we are excited to share one of our biggest projects to-date: a report and roadmap grounded in first-of-its-kind data on how race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and disability status shape survivors’ experiences and needs.
In November 2020, we launched the second round of our Safety Fund and prioritized distributing grants to queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx survivors. We sent $534K in cash to more than 2,100 survivors across the country and surveyed them to learn about what they need to get and stay safe, heal, and thrive.
We detail what we learned in our latest report, Support Every Survivor: How Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability Shape Survivors’ Experiences and Needs. The report expands the available data on:
- survivors’ finances, particularly how the pandemic impacted them;
- how survivors’ intersecting identities affect their experiences and the harm they’ve been subjected to; and
- survivors’ needs, their goals, and what resources will enable them to achieve success, including what alternatives to police would most help survivors feel safe and supported.
We also have an audio version of the full report available on:
Here’s What We Learned:
- 92.3% of survivors reported being subjected to economic abuse, and 36.5% reported that the economic abuse they’ve been subjected to got worse during COVID-19.
- Survivors’ financial well-being is in the bottom 10th percentile for adults in the U.S.
- The median amount of money survivors report having is $175.50, and the median savings they report having is $0.
- Survivors who are not cisgender reported being subjected to an average of 9.5 types of harm, compared to survivors who are cisgender who reported an average of 6.1 types of harm.
- Disabled survivors are subjected to almost 2x the types of systemic harm that survivors without a disability are subjected to.
- 80.1% of queer survivors have been subjected to sexual assault, a rate that is 2.1x that of heterosexual survivors.
- 82.6% of survivors who are genderqueer/genderfluid reported they put off seeing a healthcare/healing practitioner due to COVID-19, a rate that is 1.8x that of cisgender survivors.
- 44.9% of Indigenous survivors and 32.5% of Black survivors have been subjected to police harassment/brutality, rates that are 2.7x and 1.9x that of white survivors, respectively.
- Only 38.5% of survivors would call the police in a moment of crisis or danger involving their harm-doer. When asked who they would call in a crisis, the number one response was a family member or friend (62.8%).
Before and Beyond Crisis
Today, we are also launching Before and Beyond Crisis: What Each of Us Can Do to Create A Long-Term Ecosystem of Support for All Survivors, a roadmap for expanding our society’s response to gender-based violence beyond short-term crisis support. The roadmap makes survivor-informed recommendations for how every pillar of our society–from banks, hospitals, and schools to policymakers, employers, and other stakeholders–can help build a new ecosystem of support that addresses the reality of how GBV shows up in survivors’ lives.
We all have a role to play in building the ecosystem. Whether you are a policymaker, employer, landlord, lawyer, funder, nonprofit employee, or community member, there is something for you to do. Read the roadmap to find out how you can contribute. #EveryoneHasAPartToPlay
We also have an audio version of the full report available on:
Get Cash to Survivors
On average, survivors need $1,567 to make ends meet and stay safe. You can join the ecosystem of support for survivors by making a gift today to sustain our cash assistance program. All the money we raise on GoFundMe goes directly to survivors.