Grantmaking

Moving money—and power

When billionaires flourish, but our movements are starved for resources: We move.

At the Equality Fund, we robustly resource women’s rights organizations and feminist movements worldwide by partnering with organizations, coalitions, and networks focused on building power with women, girls, and trans people, especially in the Global South. We ground our work in mutual trust, respect, and collaboration.

What we fund

We recognize and celebrate that we are one part of a growing ecosystem of feminist funders. Our goal is to complement and accelerate the vibrant expansion of this space, exponentially increasing investment in women’s rights organizations and feminist movements working from the grassroots level to the regional and global stage.

We are introducing a total of four grantmaking streams through 2024 to support such organizations, both emerging and well-established, working all around the world.

Catalyze

To provide direct support to women’s rights organizations

Activate

To support women’s and feminist funds

Connect

To support funding coalitions, consortia, and networks

Prepare, Care, and Respond

To provide flexible and urgent emergency funding in natural disasters and conflict zones.

To stay informed about funding opportunities, please sign up to receive updates.

How we fund

At its core, transformative grantmaking is about much more than shifting resources—it is about shifting power. But for too long, funders have harmed movements by keeping money and control at the top, creating competition for short-term, heavily-restricted funding, and assuming expertise and vision come from outside movements, rather than from within.

At the Equality Fund, we are building new and better philanthropic practices that are rooted in trust. In partnership with the Canadian Women’s Foundation (CWF) and Community Foundations of Canada (CFC), we have released Principles for Feminist Funding, a document that outlines our vision of feminist donor partners working to undo patriarchal and colonial structures and build new relationships and movements.

And we’re not alone. We gain inspiration from so many others in the feminist funding ecosystem who are building powerful new visions for philanthropy—from our sister women’s funds to the Astrea Lesbian Foundation for Justice to Gender Funders CoLab, and many more.

Finally, we recognize that moving money is just one of the ways that we can help to shift lasting power to our grantee partners. We also work together to strengthen shared capacity and knowledge, advance joint advocacy efforts, and build new relationships and alliances across our growing movements.

Where we fund

In this first chapter of our growth, funding for the Equality Fund comes primarily from Global Affairs Canada to support our grantmaking in countries eligible for Official Development Assistance (ODA).

These and all other funding criteria are clearly outlined each time we release a call for proposals. Sign up for our mailing list to be notified of new funding opportunities in the future.

In the Caribbean, we fund women’s rights and LBTQI+ organizations through our Women’s Voice and Leadership – Caribbean program.

Across Africa, we work closely with the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), a member of the Equality Fund collective that supports women’s rights and feminist groups throughout the African continent. Organizations based in Africa should apply to AWDF directly. Please note that AWDF accepts grant applications year round, but only processes applications twice a year.

At present, we are not funding organizations in Canada. We work closely with two Canadian members of our collective, Community Foundations of Canada and the Canadian Women’s Foundation, who have a long history of supporting women’s organizations across Canada.

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Our Grantee Partners

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