Funding brief: Comic Relief is excited to launch this funding opportunity focused on strengthening women’s and girls’ movements.
They believe that the material and practical considerations of women and girls’ daily lives will only be significantly improved when they have full and equal power in decision making at all levels.
Studies have shown that women’s rights organizations bring the greatest long-term change to women’s lives, and they know that for women and girls to continue to drive change in their own lives, that of their families, communities and on a global stage, women’s rights organizations are essential. However, The World Bank estimates that funding to women’s rights organizations has fallen by more than half over the last 5 years.
The aim of this programme is to support a diverse range of women’s rights organizations to fight against systems which perpetuate the injustices they encounter in their daily lives.
They are therefore launching an open programme to find and support women and girl’s movements to seed, sustain and strengthen this change in the geographies they fund. Please be aware they expect this to be a competitive programme and so will be unable to fund in every country.
Comic Relief believes movements are made up of a number of constituents working collectively towards a shared long-term goal.
Constituents of women’s and girls’ movements that they might fund directly could include (though is not limited to):
● Advocacy or Campaigning organizations
● Service delivery organizations
● Research bodies
● Think tanks
● Registered community organization
● Women’s funds
● Trades unions or professional bodies
Constituents of women’s and girls’ movements that they might support indirectly, through partners/devolved funding:
● Individuals/activists
● Informal groups and organizations
● Small or newly formed organizations which do not meet our income threshold
What do they mean by power?
● The ability to define, decide and do….
● This can be individually about your own life, and collectively about structures and systems.
This includes being able to:
● have control over your own body, labour and narrative
● work with others to shape collective narratives, strategies and policies
● influence and make decisions on how and by whom these are implemented and adapted over time
This could include:
● Formal power: preparing women to stand for election in local or national representation, leadership programmes, mentoring, individual development for org/movement leaders
● The ability to organize (physically or digitally) to build collective power, i.e. to be able to influence and make decisions about community resources, or catalyze learning and incubate new ideas
● Coming together to develop strategic advocacy or ways of working together more effectively, i.e. building stronger long-term alliances, or establishing a joint response to a particular situation (such as policy or legislation change, or outbreaks of conflict or epidemics)
What they want to learn from this work: As well as learning about the specific work you are doing and the impact/outcomes from this, they are interested in demonstrating the broader learning about the value of women’s movements, and how funders can support them to create long-term change. They are therefore interested in working with people who are happy to engage in cohort and collective learning as part of this programme
Funding criteria: They want to work with amazing women and girl-led organizations, partnerships, consortia and women’s funds who are supporting women to have collective power, build movements and become change agents.
They are interested in hearing about the work that you feel is most important and appropriate to secure long-term change for women and girls in your context. They understand that change takes time, and so are interested in what your long-term goals are and who else you are working with to achieve these, either in formal partnerships, or informally.
They are interested in supporting the development of specific work (such as campaigns, advocacy and/or services) when it is part of this long-term change. They are also interested in supporting work which helps movement constituents develop a common agenda for change, such as developing and sharing analytic frameworks, learnings and research, and work that is focused on base building, such as growing membership and leadership, building/growing/supporting alliances and solidarity both between and within movements.
They’re inviting locally-rooted organizations to tell us what solutions you believe will work, demonstrating how your solutions are rooted in and informed by an understanding and experience of delivery, centring the experiences of those most affected by the issue. This is to ensure that lived experience and learning from doing are at the heart of the work. There is evidence that your work is already making a demonstrable difference, this is an exciting opportunity to expand, learn and influence from that work.
They are inviting applications from any of the geographies they fund in. Please be aware that they expect this to be a competitive programme and so they will not be able to fund in every country.
What they will fund
● Funding is available for 3 – 5 years
● Funding can be used to cover the core costs / overheads of an organization / partnerships, or specific projects and activities or a mixture of the two.
● They also welcome applications using digital or Sport for Change approaches. They are interested in the way that movements bring about change, approaches might include (but not be limited to):
● Strategic litigation
● Norm changing and behaviour change including with men and boys
● Grassroots or frontline delivery of services*
● Policy work
● Campaigns
● Advocacy
● Network/alliance building
● Research/building shared analytical frameworks
They are also interested in any number of issues as identified by those most affected, for example these may include (but are not limited to):
● Gender based violence
● Access to and control over resources, both within families, and over shared community assets (including land rights, water, protecting resources from extraction)
● Women and girls in detention
● Labour rights
● Rights of minorities or excluded groups, including BME, migrants, internally displaced people, disabled women, older women, rural women, sex workers
● Work on the rights of LBTQ
Donor Name: Comic Relief
Funding name: Power Up: resourcing women’s and girls’ movements for change
Deadline: 7th, December, 2018 at 12pm GMT
Funding details link: Click to view
Funding limit: Up to £300K for single applicants, or up to £500k for partnerships
They will be offering grants for 3-5 years for the following total amounts:
● Single organizations can apply for grants between £150,000 up to £300,000
● Those working in partnership (2 or more organizations), up to £500,000**
● For women’s funds or others sub-granting they may consider larger grants (up to £750,000).
Special Notes: Please contact with the donor directly for further clarification and understanding.
Project start date: Not found
Project duration: Funding is available for 3 – 5 years
Eligible organization: As below
Eligibility: This fund is for women and girl led organizations only.
For sub-granters who aren’t women’s funds, the following criteria MUST be met:
● Women and girls who are most affected by the issue being addressed must have a significant role in decision making about how the grants are distributed and what issues are centred
● The money must be re-granted to women or girls’ led groups or women or girls if supporting individuals
Eligible Country: No country bar found (Open to all regions)
Submission mail: Not found
Other important link:
● Register to apply: Click to view
● About: Click to view
How to apply: Interested applicant may apply through the website (Click to view).
Visit all Funding opportunities: Click to view
Visit all funding categories: Click to view
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