Mama Cash launches Resilience Fund

Deadline: 17-Mar-2024

The Mama Cash invites applicants who are not current Resilience Fund grantee-partners to submit their Letters of Interest.

Because self-led feminist groups demand the freedom to act on their own visions and strategies

• In every corner of the world, courageous feminist activists are working together to build collective power, claim justice, and create, sustain, and revive ways of living that are just and fair. The Resilience Fund – the largest grantmaking programme – aims to resource, support and connect the collective activism of women, girls, and trans and intersex people around the world.

Lasting change comes from the collective activism of those who are structurally excluded, marginalised, exploited and stigmatised

• The Resilience Fund supports feminist groups, collectives and initiatives that are founded, led, and/or run by people who belong to the communities whose rights they seek to advance. They are working to advance their own political and social agendas, to build connections across issues and borders, and to strengthen feminist and other social justice movements.

Movement building and structural change take time!

• Unrestricted funding and longer-term support are crucial for enabling groups to organise, and to take advantage of or respond effectively to important opportunities and changes in their contexts. That is why the Resilience Fund provides long-term, flexible, core support grants. First-time annual grants are made with the intention of renewing them for multiple years, and Mama Cash typically supports partners for up to ten years.

Powerful movements tackling under-addressed or contested issues often start small

• The Resilience Fund gives priority to smaller and emerging groups that are doing critically important work but have limited access to funding. In addition to funding registered, formal organisations, they are open to funding informal or unregistered groups of activists, as well as networks or coalitions. The average grant size under the Resilience Fund is €35,000.

Accompaniment ensures that grantee-partners are equipped to fulfil their missions

• Mama Cash also provides accompaniment to all Resilience Fund grantee-partners. Accompaniment can include both financial and non-financial resources. Grantee-partners can use these resources to obtain, improve, retain, build, and sharpen their skills, knowledge, and networks. The accompaniment support they provide corresponds to the specific organisational needs and plans identified by the grantee-partner.

Funding Information

• Value of grant
  • €5,000 – €50,000 per year, average grant size €35,000

Eligibility Criteria

• Work from a feminist, women’s, girls, trans rights and/or intersex rights perspective
• Self-led by the women, girls, trans people and/or intersex people they serve
• Promotion of women’s, girls’, trans people’s and/or intersex people’s human rights as primary mission
• Push for structural and fundamental change
• Focus on issues that are under-addressed and/or contested
• Mama Cash prioritises groups or initiatives that have an annual budget below 200,000 euros. Mama Cash does not prioritise providing financial support to larger groups, and very few of their grantee-partners have annual budgets over 200,000 euros.
• Women’s funds are eligible to apply for long-term core funding under the Resilience Fund.

Ineligible

• Mama Cash does not fund the following types of groups, initiatives, or activities:
  • Groups whose mission and/or primary focus are not the promotion of women’s, girls’, trans people’s or intersex people’s human rights;
  • Groups whose work focuses primarily on improving the lives of individual women, girls, trans people and/or intersex people without addressing the conditions that give rise to the injustices they face;
  • Groups that actively seek to deny the rights of certain women, girls, and trans or intersex people, based on who they are, the work they do, or on their position in society;
  • Groups whose primary purpose is development work, humanitarian assistance, or service delivery, such as:
    • Income-generating activities and credit programmes
    • (In)formal education, literacy programmes, and traditional skills training
    • Providing social, legal, or health care services
  • Groups led by cis-men;
  • Groups based in the Global North that are executing programmes in or are leading partnerships with groups based in the Global South and East;
  • Groups that are led by, or are structurally or economically dependent on, political parties, government agencies, or religious institutions;
  • Businesses.

For more information, visit Mama Cash.