On the 8th October 2024, Womankind Worldwide hosted our first ever flexible funds convening with Kenyan partners and groups. The meeting brought together current recipients of the three Womankind flexible funds: Her Voice Fund, focused on provide flexible advocacy funding to grassroots organisations & movements driving the feminst agenda; Movement Strengthening Fund focused on strengthening the relationships and systems that contribute to strong movements; and Strategic Parter Support Grants, which provides core funding to sustain feminist organisations.  

The convening offered an opportunity for Womankind staff and partners to build relationships, deepen our shared feminist networks and movements, share knowledge and experiences, and of course celebrate our work through feminist joy.  

Participants discussed the challenges to feminist movement building, what we are learning from flexible funding and our aspirations for the future of feminist funding. Participants shared their advocacy initiatives that have enabled them to address urgent issues, sustain long-term strategies, and respond effectively to changing social and political landscapes. They also provided essential feedback to Womankind on how we can continue to improve our funding to make it more accessible and responsive to the needs of feminist organisations and movements. We met with over 16 representatives from a range of intersectional feminist organisations to unpack their experiences of flexible funding in partnership with Womankind Worldwide.  

Key Learnings

• Wellbeing must be centered in advocacy funding. Partners and informal groups emphasised a need to ensure passion is fostered in grassroots advocacy, not only through financial investments but by centering collective and individual wellbeing as part of this process.  

• Womankind partners and informal groups emphasised the importance of providing long-term funding to sustain their advocacy and movement work.

Feminist movements are facing unprecedented challenges. Well-funded and politically connected anti-rights groups are undermining progress on gender equality and infiltrating institutions. Additional funding is urgently needed to shore up women’s rights organisations and prevent further backsliding. 

Feminist movements have diverse values and priorities and often must compete for limited resources and political space. This can exacerbate exclusion and lead to the further marginalisation of certain groups, including youth, Disabled women, LBTQ+ folks and those living at the intersection of these identities.  

Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) face significant risks in both the personal and private spheres. Their security must be ensured and prioritised at home, in public spaces, and online, including through proper consent for how their data is used and by whom.  

Feminist movements are confronting and responding to these challenges. They are exploring and implementing alternative organising models and structures.. They are fostering transformative change by introducing inclusive decision making, new leadership models, decolonising feminist spaces andcentring afro-feminism. and focusing on those things that bring movements and communities together around shared values and goals to collaborate more effectively. 

Movements are also prioritising the safety, security and wellbeing of WHRDs by developing policies and systems to address these needs, including around self and collective care. 

Key Recommendations

Flexible funding is essential to strong, sustainable feminist movements. Partners and grantees emphasised the importance of Womankind’s flexible funds, but also shared the challenges they have faced implementing these grants and made recommendations for how they can be improved. Some of the key recommendations that Womankind will be taking forward include: 

• More notice of funding windows and longer application timelines to ensure that partners have sufficient time to think about what they want to fund and put together relevant applications. 

• Longer implementation cycles to ensure they have time to generate impact with the funds received. 

• Facilitation of network-building with other funders so partners can create direct access and develop donor relationships. 

• Partners and grantees also emphasised that more flexible funding is needed to sustain and scale up their work around advocacy, movement-building and the sustainability of their organisations through core grants. 

Why does Womankind provide  flexible feminist funding?

With nearly four decades of experience working with women’s rights organisations and movements, we know that  flexible funding is essential for advancing gender equality.  Unlike traditional funding models, which often come with restrictive contractual conditions and extensive reporting requirements, feminist funding trusts local women’s rights organisations to allocate resources where they are needed most, responding swiftly to shifting political, legal and  social challenges. This model of funding provides resources for collaboration with  grassroots groups to strengthen  their work, implement innovative solutions that address the root causes of gender inequality and ultimately, build and sustain strong and diverse feminist movements. 

Womankind recognises that local activists and organisations are the experts on their contexts and have the solutions to the challenges they face. By offering flexible funds, Womankind strengthens the feminist movement globally, allowing women and marginalised groups to drive transformative change.