On April 11, 2026, hundreds of community members gathered in Northampton, Mass. to celebrate 35 years of the Rosenberg Fund for Children and our collective support of generations of activism and resistance. The program acknowledged our nation’s current reality, in which authoritarianism is flagrant and increasingly normalized, anti-ICE protesters face draconian sentences amounting to life in prison, gender-affirming care and reproductive rights are under attack, and the current administration wages war.

We completed that spring granting cycle at the end of April, awarding almost $220,000 in grants to more than a hundred children. The 82 grants we funded this spring brought the total awarded in the RFC’s history to $10,092,186! That total is remarkable to me. The first RFC grants in 1991 were for just over $800 and sent children from two families to a pacifist summer camp. Fast forward 35 years and we’ve awarded over $450,000 each of the last three years.

In our most recent granting cycle, the RFC welcomed six new children from four new beneficiary families as we awarded almost $220,000 in spring grants, supporting 163 children from all over the U.S. Recent grants include: summer camp for children whose parents are currently in prison for protesting ICE or have lost their incomes after speaking out for justice; computer engineering and coding equipment for a homeschooled teen activist studying the impact of AI on the environment; aerial arts for a burgeoning young acrobat and a new drum set for a dedicated young jazz musician; membership in a youth symphony orchestra and basketball team membership for twin siblings; DJ equipment, instruments and recording software as beneficiaries learn to produce and perform their own music; and more.

The RFC mourns the passing of Bob Winston, a life-long social justice advocate. In the 1970's, following a screening of a documentary about the Rosenberg Case, Bob introduced himself to Robert Meeropol; what followed was a friendship lasting more than 35 years. And when Robert started the RFC in 1990, he chose Bob to become the first Chair of the Board of Directors.

There are two recently published books which RFC Executive Director Jenn Meeropol thinks will be of particular interest to our community. The first, "Dangerous, Dirty, Violent and Young," is Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s exploration of his experience growing up as the child of 1960s radicals Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. The second book, Harriet Clark’s novel "The Hill," follows a young girl as she grows up visiting her mother, a political prisoner, in a jail “on the hill.” Harriet Clark’s mother, Judith Clark, served more than 35 years in prison for her alleged role in the 1981 Brinks robbery.

We asked activist parents ... What types of community engagement would you like to see in the future? Here's what they shared with us.

“I’m sending you a donation from my retirement account. I consider myself very lucky to be able to send these funds to an organization whose mission speaks to me and supports those fighting back against some of the worst abuses of the current administration.” This note, and others like it, accompanied recent Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) donations of all sizes to the RFC. RMD represents an important and growing source of support for us. Clearly, a reliable source of donations is invaluable to the RFC, but RMD can also be enormously beneficial to donors.