Impact

The Global Fund for Women has played a vital role in catalyzing women's rights movements around the world. And for nearly 25 years, Global Fund grantees have demonstrated the power of these movements and the impact of holistic, community-based, women-led initiatives for social change.

Kenyan women celebrate their new well

We have mobilized over $88 million dollars to support the innovative work of over 4,300 women-led civil society organizations in 172 countries.
We have built a broad, global network of more than 20,000 supporters, 4,300 grantee partners, and over 1,000 advisors. Each member of this network is a powerful voice for change in her or his community.
We support approximately 600 grantee partners each year - collectively these groups directly benefit over 125,000 women and girls annually. However, many grantees work on "root causes" of issues, working to pass new laws that may, for example, criminalize domestic violence or ensure women have a right to own property. Ultimately, these kinds of concrete changes have benefited millions.
Being a leading edge funder enables us to tackle complex issues early and help increase their visibility with larger donors. For example, GFW funded girls' equitable access to education years before it became a staple of mainstream philanthropy. In the mid-90s, GFW convened a donor learning and advocacy circle on sex trafficking that proved to be an early effort in US philanthropy to confront this issue. We funded the first ever hotline for women experiencing domestic violence in China, the first march for lesbian women's rights in Mexico, and some of the earliest efforts by women's groups to tackle environmental issues in Central Asia.
We have the networks and capacity to reach grassroots organizations and particularly marginalized populations. Over 80% of all grants reach women and girls who live in rural areas or who are especially marginalized, including women living with disabilities, adolescent girls, members of ethnic or religious minority communities, LBTQI women, and refugee women and girls.

Rural Women Welfare Organization at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a community school in Pakistan. Photo courtesy RWWO

More broadly, global women's movements have played critical roles in securing major changes in women's lives. Over the past quarter century:

The average percentage of parliament seats held by women worldwide has risen from less than 12% to over 19%.

The maternal mortality rate has fallen by more than one-third

Globally, literacy rates for girls have risen from 55% to 74%

We routinely review, evaluate, and learn from our programs and our grantee partners. We have commissioned and published several assessments and evaluations of our work in the form of impact reports, which include: