Global Fund for Women - Conference Call: October 27, 2004

A discussion of the growth of women's funds in Africa, Mongolia, Mexico, India, Ukraine and Nepal.

Welcome! Wonderful to have all of you on the call. This is our 5th Inspiration Partners conference call and we are so thrilled to have your support. We have over 150 Inspiration Partners now, throughout the country.

Today we wanted to talk about the growing movement of International Women's Funds around the world. The Global Fund for Women has played an important role in seeding this movement and there are now 16 Women's Funds, raising and giving away money in Africa, Mongolia, Mexico, India, Ukraine, Nepal, just to name a few, and more on the way.

The Global Fund for Women was founded with the idea that everyone can participate in philanthropy, that giving money and sharing resources is not limited to a few, or to the wealthy, but that all of us, whatever our resources, can be a part of supporting social change. We continually strive to create what we call a "network of equal partners", a network that holds both our grantees and our donors as valuable participants and partners in a worldwide movement to advance women's rights.

Our Inspiration Partner program reflects this philosophy of fundraising, of philanthropy. You don't have to give $10,000 to become an Inspiration Partner, it is not about the amount of the money, it is about the commitment of making a stretch in your giving. So we have Inspiration Partners giving $250 who stretched from $25 and Inspiration Partners giving $5,000 who stretched from $1,000 or $3,000.

And we have grantees who have become donors. We were amazed a few years ago when Oral Ataniyazova from Uzbekistan came to our office to deliver a $5,000 check. She had just been awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work and she came to give us this check because, she said, "the Global Fund supported me when I needed it the most and I want to be able to offer that same support to other women."
Fostering Social Change Philanthropy

Providing our grantees with the opportunity to be donors in their own communities and countries was a tradition started at the Global Fund's 5th Anniversary and continued at our 10th and at our 15th. For these anniversaries we awarded Partnership Grants to a few of our grantees to develop skills in grantmaking, fund new groups in their countries and cultivate local traditions of giving. From these Partnership Grants some of the organizations have become full-fledged women's funds in their own right.

In 1990 we gave a grant to a group of women in Mexico who wanted to start a women's fund in Mexico. They named their organization Semillas—which means seeds in Spanish—and today they have become a key player in the women's rights movement in Mexico and have given out over a $1 million to support women's rights groups in Mexico.
Visit Semillas' website.

In 1995 Tewa was formed in Nepal by the chair of the Global Fund Board of Directors, Rita Thapa. After Beijing +5, Rita had the idea for an independent fund in Nepal with less dependence on foreign donors. Rita gathered her friends together to share her idea and they said, "Who is going to provide the funds? We don't have money." And Rita took off one of the gold bangles on her wrist and said, "But sisters, we do have these bangles, which belong to us. We can each give a bangle and start from there." Tewa is now 60% supported by local philanthropy. And Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Read more about Tewa.
Visit Tewa's website
The International Network of Women's Funds

Seeding and strengthening women's funds in other countries has been a priority for the Global Fund over the past ten years and will continue to be in the years ahead. We see our support of these funds as a proactive, long-term strategy to help women around the world implement solutions to the challenges they face and to help build the long-term capacity of grassroots organizations and movements for mobilization and social justice locally and internationally.
Visit the International Network of Women's Funds website.

Q&A

Q: Are the women's funds in other countries seen as competitors?

A: A feminist model of philanthropy focuses on collaboration over competition. We try to reframe the question so that it is not one of a limited pie, where the pieces for each fund just get sliced smaller. I think the concern is not that there are "too many" women's funds but that so few of the resources go to support these funds, to support women. I think it is a positive thing for donors to have various ways that they can support these efforts and invest in women. If they are passionate about Africa, they can support the African Women's Development Fund in Ghana or Wheat Trust in South Africa.

Last year the Global Fund launched a fiscal sponsorship program to encourage our donors to give directly to the various women's funds and to enable those funds to receive donations from donors in the U.S.

We believe it is crucial to strengthen institutions in their own countries and context. To have a myriad of women's funds does not diminish our ability to do our work but widens and strengthens it. We work in close collaboration with the other funds and ally our grantmaking strategies to ensure that we are funding in the areas we can be most effective. For example in Latin America the women's fund can focus on economic justice or the environment but politically or legally perhaps it is harder for them to focus on funding the decriminalization of abortion or sexual rights and lesbians rights. But the Global Fund can support these areas—we can partner in this way.

Q: Yes, it sounds like you are expanding the pie. Are there other ways in which you support the women's funds beyond financial support?

A: Part of our strategic plan is to focus on supporting the capacity building of the International Women's Funds. As part of this plan we are working on an 'Institute of Learning and Exchange' with the funds where we offer technical assistance and support.

We are also partnering with the Women's Funding Network, here in San Francisco—they are a network of U.S. based women's funds and their capacity building expertise is deeper and more extensive than ours. We are working with them around curriculum and training and we fund the travel of the international participants of their "Women of Color" fundraising trainings. We also help the international funds connect to donor bases here in the U.S.
Visit Women's Funding Network website.

In addition we support the funds around their policy efforts to help them get laws in place that encourage giving and local philanthropy.

Q: How do you work with the Center for Global Women's Leadership?

A: Charlotte Bunch, the director of the Center, is a new member of the Global Fund Board of Directors. For those of you who don't know of her, Charlotte Bunch has a 25+ year history in the women' human rights movement and is the one who coined the "women's rights are human rights" phrase. Her center is organizing activities around the 10th anniversary of Beijing +10 and we will be partnering with them around some of these.

Visit Center for Women's Global Leadership website.
Global Fund for Women Organizational Updates from Kavita:

We will be having our board meeting in November. The board just came out with a statement about peace which you can read on our website.

Also, we are in the midst of a 20 million dollar campaign and our Board will be talking about how best to use the Now or Never Fund money which will generate $1.7 million more than our annual fund. Our focus will be on strengthening reproductive rights, grants for bringing women together for strategic convening, grants to help strengthen the infrastructure of the women's movement. We want to infuse multi-year grants to the organizations that are the vanguard of the women's movements in their countries, to give larger grants of $50,000 to $150,000 and also to be more proactive providing information to the world community about mobilizing efforts to advance women's human rights.

In the spring of 2005 we will have an outreach trip of board, staff and a few donors to the Middle East/North Africa, with our board meeting being held in Cairo in May.

Q: I'm really inspired by the work the Global Fund does, and I'd like to find ways to get more involved. What else can I do to support your work?

A: One of the best ways to support us is to help us build our network and strengthen our financial resources. You can organize a House Party and invite your friends and family to learn more about the Global Fund. Contact Ginger Daniel our event coordinator if you are interested in receiving our "House Party Kit".

THANK YOU for joining the call today!

October 27, 2004

Women's Funds: A New Model of Philanthropy

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