Deadline: 20-Dec-21
Co-Impact is excited to announce its Open Call for Country-level Grants to advance gender equality. They envision a gender-equal world where all people can live fulfilling lives—where systems and societies are just and inclusive, and women and girls1 are leading at all levels.
They recognize that there are multiple ways to advance gender equality. These include technical engagement, advocacy efforts, strengthening governance and accountability mechanisms, tackling deep-seated social norms, and other ways of challenging the status quo. At its core, they are looking for partners who take the view that enduring and positive change needs feminist approaches that tackle root causes of structural injustice, question who holds power and how it is exercised, address restrictive and discriminatory norms, and deepen inclusion.
Accordingly, in this open call they seek to:
- Support organizations that address root causes and foster systemic change.
- Provide flexible and longer-term funding, including dedicated resources for organizational strengthening.
- Ensure that 100% of their grants will go to Global South organizations and at least 75% of their grants will be to women-led organizations
- Prioritize an intersectional lens throughout their process—during the review, diligence, and selection.
- Respect that the organizations they partner with are in the driver’s seat and best placed to decide what the best approaches to achieve enduring change
Types of Grants
- Anchor Grants: These grants will support systems change initiatives that aim to improve gender-equitable outcomes and women’s leadership in the health, education, and economic opportunity sectors.
- Domain Grants: These grants will support initiatives that focus on institutional change to advance women’s ability to enter, rise to, and thrive in leadership positions in the academic and professional domains of law and/or economics.
- Catalytic Grants: These grants will nurture promising initiatives that are either in the Pre-Anchor stage (focusing on health, education, and/or economic opportunity) or Pre-Domain stage (focusing on domains of law and/or economics).
Funding Information
- Anchor Grants: Each Anchor Grant will support proven ideas to be ‘adopted at scale’7 to benefit at least one million people over a 5 to 6-year period. The estimated range of Anchor Grants is between US $5-20 million over the entire grant period.
- Domain Grants: Each Domain Grant will support transformative organizational and institutional practices in the key institutions in Law and Economics. The estimated range of Domain Grants is between US $2-4 million over the entire grant period of 5-6 years.
- Catalytic Grants: Each Catalytic Grant will support initiatives that show potential to be adopted at scale in the systems of health, education, or economic opportunity, or institutional change in the key domains of law or economics. The estimated range of Catalytic Grants is to reach US $1-3 million over the entire grant period of 3-4 years.
Geographic Focus
To enable them to build a deeper contextual understanding and take an ecosystem approach to their grant-making and relationship building, they invite initiatives that will focus on countries:
- Africa: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa
- Asia: India, Indonesia, Philippines, and Sri Lanka
- Latin America: Brazil, Mexico, and Peru
Eligibility Criteria
- They recognize and appreciate the critical role feminist movements and women’s rights organizations play in challenging the status quo, shifting power, and addressing structural barriers to gender equality. They also understand these organizations often face challenges of not having adequate, long-term, and flexible resources, including core support for the organizations.
- As part of the Gender Fund, Co-Impact has made a commitment that at least 10% of their funding will be directed to feminist movements and women’s rights organizations (WROs). They reference the AWID Feminist Funding Ecosystem report for their definition of Feminist movements and WROs:
- Work from feminist and/or women’s rights perspectives;
- Are led by the people they serve;
- Have the promotion of women’s, girls’, trans and/or intersex;
- People’s human rights as their primary mission, and not just as the focus of part of their programs;
- Push for structural change;
- Work on issues that are marginalized and/or contested.
For more information, visit https://www.co-impact.org/gender-fund-how-to-apply/