Challenges

Despite overwhelming data that demonstrates the importance of investing in women’s health, education, and leadership, few resources are allocated for women’s rights. In the United States, only 7.3 percent of total private foundation dollars are given to programs that address the rights of women and girls. Rarely are these dollars directed towards groups that empower women at the grassroots level. The situation is worse in many parts of the world where it is immensely difficult for women’s groups to access any resources, whether from international or local donors.

2nd Annual Meeting of International Network of Women's Funds, Oaxaca, Mexico

GFW Accomplishments

Over 24 years, the Global Fund for Women has

• Helped to launch and sustain 27 women’s funds based in 21 countries, sowing a network of indigenous, women-led philanthropic organizations advancing women’s human rights and leadership in each major geographic region.

View all GFW grants supporting social change philanthropy »

Vision

GFW is helping to shape a world in which significant community and global resources are mobilized and directed at promoting gender equality and social change. We believe in putting money directly into the hands of women’s groups working for human rights and social change – action that will achieve justice and transform systems, institutions and cultures that are at the root of injustice.

Recognizing this reality and the unequal dynamic that exists between the “global north” and “global south”, GFW has been both seeding and supporting indigenous women’s funds in every continent around the globe. Since 1990, we have awarded over $5 million dollars to 21 women’s funds. Women’s funds literally sustain thousands of women’s organizations worldwide. Research on 1,000 women’s organizations by Association of Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) found that women’s funds are the main source of income for the majority of these organizations, many of which have annual budgets of less than $5,000.

Country and region-based women’s funds are uniquely situated to mobilize resources from their regions and sustain women’s rights organizations and movements. GFW has played a key role in supporting the establishment of local women’s funds around the world, partnering and mentoring them as they grow to play leadership roles in the women’s movement in their communities. We partner closely with women’s funds to leverage support for groups that have difficulty accessing resources, such as indigenous women, rural and poor women, lesbians, young women and women with disabilities.

Our Grantmaking

We respect women’s expertise and their strategies by giving them general support grants, which allow groups to determine their priorities and utilize this unrestricted funding where it is most needed, such as for operational costs, programmatic work, or urgent campaigns. General support gives groups autonomy in decision-making, independence from external agendas, space to strategize, plan, and network, and flexibility to respond to emerging needs.