Global Fund for Women
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"Up" is the number of experts who agree that the nonprofit has had the most impact in the
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Headquarters Location: San Francisco, CA
Founded: 1987
Mission: The Global Fund for Women plays a leading role in advancing women’s rights by making grants that support and strengthen women’s groups around the world. We mobilize and redistribute resources that enable women to develop creative solutions to local, regional, and transnational challenges. We bring grantees and donors together in an international network that promotes women’s action for social change, equality, peace, and justice worldwide.
Tags:
violence against women, gender, equity, foundation, grantmaking, capacity-building, women, girls, access to education, civic and political participation
Summary
Stories
Expert Reviews
Leadership
From the Nonprofit
Leadership
Musimbi Kanyoro.
Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro hit the ground running as our new President and CEO. During her first meeting with the full staff, she honored and offered deep appreciation for the nearly 25-year legacy of the Global Fund for Women: its grantees, donors, board, staff and the leadership of her predecessors, Anne Firth Murray and Kavita N. Ramdas. Musimbi embarks on a…
See full bio.
Financial Data
Overhead Ratio:
22.18%
Total Revenue:
$12,137,100
From the Nonprofit
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Contact Info
Website:
E-Mail:
info AT globalfundforwomen.org
Phone:
415-248-4800
Facebook:
Address:
222 Sutter Street, Suite 500
San Francisco, CA 94108, USA
Twitter:
Story:
Pondering Her Power
Marceline Mwamuye had a busy weekend. On top of planting maize and tending to her farm animals, she worked with local fishery experts to dig a pond on her half-acre of land in Kilifi County, an arid region along the coast of Kenya. Marceline will fill the pond with water, and place sacks of manure along the edges to provide nutrients so algae will grow and support a thriving fish population.
The fish in her pond won’t just benefit her household; she wants to use her new fishpond to teach others in her village to do the same. In Marceline’s community, most families rely on farming and fishing from the ocean for their livelihoods. However, with declining wild fish populations due to pollution, overfishing and climate change, they are forced to find alternatives.
“There used to be fish in the ocean, but now there is nothing,” said Marceline, who grows a variety of crops, raises chickens, goats and now, fish.
Through her involvement with Global Fund for Women grantee, Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood (GROOTS), Marceline uses her own farm as a demonstration plot to teach women about indigenous plants and organic farming methods that can reduce the cost of production, improve productivity and increase household income.
Building Resilience
While women produce 80 percent of food in Africa, they make up 60 percent of the hungry. And although African women are the primary food producers, due to entrenched patriarchy and political mismanagement, they are rarely able to shape the policies that determine their own food security or their continent’s agriculture. Marceline’s demonstration pond, however, gives ordinary women the tools to build some resilience to these and other challenges, including overcoming gender discrimination to gain access to land.
As a Global Fund grantee partner since 2003, GROOTS believes that women can become “masters of their own destiny through direct participation in decision making processes.” Since their establishment in 1995, they have increased women’s representation as village elders, provincial administrators and managers of educational institutions. The network has mobilized over 2,000 women-led grassroots groups across 12 counties in Kenya.
Speaking Their Mind
The Global Fund partnership with GROOTS is part of a larger initiative to support rural women’s groups in Burkina Faso, Kenya and Uganda working in sustainable agriculture and the promotion of women’s rights. Twenty-two groups have received a total of $400,000 to improve agricultural activities and document the knowledge and aspirations of rural women on food systems.
Over 50 percent of Global Fund’s grant-making in Sub-Saharan Africa supports initiatives led by and for the empowerment of rural women, like Marceline, who are vital to the revival of African agriculture and the strengthening of the women’s rights movement. Global Fund staff met Marceline this October as GROOTS was launching its grant project.
“I’m not afraid to speak my mind,” said Marceline, who is also a retired teacher and volunteer district education officer. “I will keep speaking until everyone who needs to hear something has heard it.”
Expert Reviews of Global Fund for Women
Evidence of Impact Summary:
Global Fund for Women (GFW) works with grassroots organizations to identify and fund solutions for issues surrounding violence against women. By funding women's organizations of all sizes around the world, GFW has an impact on local, national, and international levels. One expert points out that their impact is made stronger by the fact that they provide support according to what communities identify as their need; not according to their own agendas.See expert comments.
Organization Strengths Summary:
Experts agree that Global Fund for Women's strong leadership is an asset to the organization as well as the its well developed global network of partners and organizations. GFW is also strong in relationship building making their grantee and partner relationships blossom. Part of what makes their granting process such a success that grant applications are accepted in any language or format; lifting a huge burden from small organizations.See expert comments.
Areas for Improvement Summary:
Many experts would like to see Global Fund for Women expand its partnerships and collaborations with other funders in order to increase impact. Others believe that the organization could benefit from evaluation and strategic analysis. It may also be beneficial to extend funding to organizations that is specifically for internal evaluation and tracking to help those organizations grow.See expert comments.
Expert Comments: Evidence of Impact
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Needed Support for Women's Organizations |
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Their impact is supporting women globally. I have worked in three of the regions where GFW support women's groups who fight violence against women. All groups have expressed a shared opinion that GFW have contributed the most for changes on the ground as they support according to the needs identified by the groups (not their own agenda). They support long term, and therefore give sustainability to the work and they support grassroots. That contributes most to changes of attitudes and cultural patterns. | ||
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Global Fund for Women has supported a great many organizations in many countries that are doing wonderful work in the violence against women area. Without their support, these small organizations could not have had the impact they have had. GFW has been able to identify organizations that are small but are really having impact in many countries. This is one of their greatest strengths. | ||
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They are the biggest foundation funder for work on violence against women (VAW) over the past 20 years. Many projects on VAW would not have survived without support from the GFW. I know this from their literature and from personal experience talking to groups. | ||
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The impact of the GFW is multiple: it strengthens grassroots organizations by investing in them over the long-term, supports the development of women leaders, links organizations across themes and regions, and contributes to the advancement of women's human rights globally, regionally, and locally. | ||
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Global Fund for Women is the largest non-profit funder of women's human rights globally. As a grant making organization to women-led organizations around the world, it has funded almost $100 million in its 24-year existence to 4,500 groups in 172 countries. Approximately, one in four grants is explicitly to address issues of gender-based violence (GBV). Many other grants, for instance those dealing with economic justice or political participation, help empower women and indirectly (but importantly) reduce GBV. Those grants that deal specifically with GBV are based on grant requests from women-based organizations, and address the specific GBV issues the women on the ground face. In other words, these may be a focus on female genital metallization in certain countries, domestic violence and marital rape in others, and GBV in conflict zones and refugee settings in still others. The Global Fund supports groups that work at all levels (local, national, regional and international) to change structures, policies, and practices that encourage and support GBV. | ||
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GFW provides operating and travel funds to a wide range of women’s rights organizations around the world and has (relatively) recently begun to focus on the issue of militarism and its relationship to violence against women (VAW). I think their support of organizations that address such systemic sources of violence, even when it’s not necessarily about specific types of VAW is commendable. | ||
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Combating violence against women (VAW) requires a sustained effort, with deep roots at the community level as well as advocacy at the national and international level. The issue of VAW and the 'activity' of advocacy are two of the most under-funded elements of social change internationally. The Global Fund for Women has made VAW a priority for its funding of women's NGOs large and small for over 20 years, and has worked passionately with larger foundations and donors to persuade them to take up the same torch. It has taken years of resilient effort and saber-rattling and some losses of support as they held this ground, but in the past 5 years the global philanthropic community has seen the light. | ||
Grassroots Connection |
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The GFW has been funding grassroots groups around the world for over 20 years and has pushed this issue to the top of many agendas in the philanthropic community. They fund new start up ideas in the arena and then share the results with many other partners. They fund leadership and were early funders of the three most recent Nobel Peace Prize winners. | ||
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They work at the grassroots level. listening to the women on the ground, and supporting the solutions those women pose. That is, they use a bottom up approach which I believe to be much more effective that a top down, externally developed solution. | ||
Expert Comments: Organization Strengths
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Strong Leadership |
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They have strong leadership, committed staff, global reach-out, a strong global voice, and networking | ||
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They have displayed leadership, flexibility, collegiality and a willingness to take risks in their grant-making. I'm a big fan. | ||
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The Global Fund for Women provides the vision, leadership and resource mobilization for thousands of women's organizations working on combating gender violence around the world -- in almost every country! They have strong new leadership in Dr Musimbi Kanyoro and a deeply engaged Board made up of top-level women leaders. They have a well organized Advisory Network in every region as well as fiercely committed Program staff who dedicate themselves completely to making tough decisions and championing critical work. They have championed a new perspective on the links between militarism and gender based violence. GFW has improved their communications tremendously. I still wish they could get more media attention for their crucial work. They are the backbone of the global women's movement and could continually improve on getting that message out there. Many organizations working on gender based violence receive their very first grant from GFW. | ||
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Their strengths are leadership and the ability to identify excellent organizations. | ||
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They have had strong thought leaders as their CEOs and continue that tradition with Musimbi Kanyoro most recently. They have strong donor support and have grown their fundraising yearly. They support many new and up and coming leaders in this field. | ||
Raised Awareness |
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Global fund for Women has done a lot to raise awareness of the suffering of women outside the United States. | ||
Well Developed Network |
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GFW strengths are that it works with groups on the ground all over the world, has unique credibility with the women's movement globally, has strong new leadership, and has experienced and dedicated staff. | ||
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GFW's strengths lie in their innovative leadership, staff that are from the regions where the GFW works, advisor network across the world, supportive donors, and extensive network of grantees. | ||
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The Global Fund for Women has developed strong and effective relationships of trust and accountability with grantee partners and advisors around the world. This network helps provide information that is often difficult to access even in this internet age. By funding core institutional expenses as well as program costs, GFW grants facilitate capacity building. Because GFW also funds with an eye toward movement building, many of its funds have impact in challenging gender-based violence in countries and regions around the world. As a board member who has visited grantee partners from Bangalore to Nairobi, I can personally attest to the strength of the model of funding women-led organizations to address issues of violence in very different settings. | ||
Accessible Application Process |
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They accept grant applications in any language, have fast turn-around of grant-making, and they use regional advisors rather than the expense of putting employees on location. | ||
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GFW does a great job of communicating with its network. It also makes the grant application process pretty manageable (which really helps small grassroots groups). | ||
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The Global Fund for Women is beloved to the grassroots women's groups and NGOs worldwide for always providing general support, accepting proposals in any language and any format, and not requiring formal legal status. Few donors can occupy this niche, and without GFW thousands and thousands of essential and organic women's rights endeavors would have withered before they had the chance to bloom. | ||
Expert Comments: Areas for Improvement
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Transition Leadership |
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GFW should move to a new era of leadership as well as face and overcome the consequences of the financial crises. | ||
Support Grantee Evaluation |
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Their due diligence on grantees is spotty and needs to be strengthened. | ||
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I would like to see GFW and other donors incorporate support for evaluative and strategic learning processes within the organizations it funds. Many organizations have limited (if any) reliable ways to measure their own impact and when they do, it’s often to meet abstract donor requirements rather than to engage in a process that helps THEM learn what they’re doing well and what needs work. I’ve been pleased to see such large donors as the Hewlett Packard Foundation really investing in advocacy evaluation and support to nonprofits who are willing to accept help from evaluation experts provided to them by the Foundation. GFW would do well, I think, to get involved in this movement among donors (if it hasn’t already – and I don’t know whether it has for sure, but I haven’t seen evidence of it if they have) | ||
Expand Collaboration |
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GFW needs to focus more specifically on identifying which are the most strategic areas for work on violence against women today. It can also expand on its collaborations with other funders. | ||
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I would like to see more focus on strategic grant making and linking groups locally and globally. | ||
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Of course, the Global Fund could be more effective if it could increase resources. As it is, it funds only a fraction of the grant requests eligible for funding. And while GFW regularly brings together leaders of organizations regionally to share issues and strategies, I think it would be worthwhile to devote some resources towards figuring out better ways to network its grantees and advisors using the internet to share information and strategies. | ||
Increase Evaluation |
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Their impact evaluation system could be stronger. | ||
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The Global Fund would benefit us all if it had more staff to step back and do longitudinal analysis of the shifts in gender inequality around the world over the past 20 years. | ||
Leadership
Musimbi Kanyoro
Chief Executive Officer, Global Fund for Women
Chief Executive Officer, Global Fund for Women
From the Nonprofit
The nonprofit has not added any comments yet. If you are a representative of this nonprofit and would like to leave a comment, please email us at
feedback@myphilanthropedia.org
with your request.