At 4 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 29, leaders of the 10 nonprofit organizations participating in Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields Music Festival stood huddled in the corner of a hangar, arms linked. Sonya Passi, founder and CEO of FreeFrom, said the group, which had spent the day operating a booth inside the facility to introduce its work to festival goers, was told to gather for the presentation but was given no other context.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, leaning so they could hear the news over the noise of the fans inside the hangar. Melinda French Gates matched the $10 million raised by the event, according to members of Rodrigo’s team. This means FreeFrom and other nonprofits, including Planned Parenthood, Baby2Baby and Black Mamas Matter Alliance, will each get $2 million, double the amount announced at a press conference the day before the festival.
“We were all crying,” Passi, 38, said, adding: “As a founder and CEO, I always have to balance my time between raising money to do my job and getting the job done. With that $2 million in hand, I can now focus more on my work…and think further ahead about building a longer-term and ultimately more effective strategy.”
FreeFrom is a nonprofit organization that works to end gender-based violence through economic intervention. The organization provides funding to survivors of abuse through career-building grants, savings matching programs, and emergency cash programs and supports statewide and federal policies that support survivors’ financial security. Passi said the $2 million donation will go toward current and future efforts, including cash-based programs and a 600-member survivor group.
“This $2 million means we have raised the amount we need to break even this year,” Passi said. Since its founding in 2016, FreeFrom has always ended the calendar year in the black, she said, adding that “some years that moment didn’t come until the end of the year.” This is standard for many nonprofit organizations, which often rely on donations to keep the organization afloat. Nonprofits received 37% of all 2025 online revenue in December, according to the annual report from M+R Benchmarks, a nonprofit database that includes 180 nonprofits.
Passi at the FreeFrom booth at the festival.
Courtesy of FreeFrom
Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields Music Festival, which donated all proceeds to non-profit organizations and included performances by musicians such as Chapel Lawn and Doechie, was modeled after Lilith Fair, a touring music festival co-founded by singer Sarah McLachlan in 1997 and featuring exclusively female artists. Rodrigo told Rolling Stone on September 3 that she was inspired to start her own festival after seeing girls and women connect in the audience at concerts. “Also, I’ve always been passionate about women’s rights and reproductive health, so this felt like the perfect thing to do.”
Some data shows that Gen Zers (Rodrigo is 23) are more likely than older generations to participate in philanthropy. According to a 2026 survey conducted by Giving Tuesday and GoFundMe of more than 10,000 respondents from January 2025 to January 2026, more than 70% of Gen Z Americans said they had “given in some way” in the past week through donations, volunteering, fundraising, or advocacy. By comparison, about 65% of seniors said they had donated within the past week.
Passi, who became an activist at age 16, founded Free From 10 years ago after realizing how much money plays a role in helping survivors become independent. Survey data from more than 1,800 women analyzed by Michigan State University researchers found that three-quarters of women who called the National Domestic Violence Hotline reported staying with a dominant partner longer because they were worried about supporting themselves or their children. FreeFrom’s research found that survivors need an average of $1,567 “to make ends meet and stay safe,” but they only have $10 in savings on average, and less than $300 per person.
Passi said he was in complete shock when he heard that Rodrigo’s team contacted Free From in June and asked if Passi would be willing to join a Zoom call with Rodrigo himself.
“We were really lucky…I don’t know how they found us, but we’re thankful they did,” Passi says.
At the festival, FreeFrom’s booth was located in the northeast corner of the event venue, past a Yoko Ono-inspired wish tree and an Etsy-sponsored jewelry bead fountain. Passi and other nonprofit representatives went to one of the stages at 8 p.m. to hear Rodrigo and French Gates announce their latest $20 million donation to the crowd, then spent the evening listening to music, she said. Rodrigo performed with guests such as MacLachlan, Alanis Morissette, and Stevie Nicks. Ten giant, vintage-style buttons, each representing a participating nonprofit, appeared to be fixed to the top of the stage.
“What we heard again from Olivia and her team is that they want people to feel joy, and that’s very much in line with what FreeFrom is all about,” says Passi. “We want to keep the conversation around gender-based violence focused on possibility and the joy of survivors, because I know that’s how we build movements.”
