Giving Compass' Take:

• The NoVo Foundation is a private foundation that focuses on providing funding for women and girls around the globe. The Radical Hope Fund is one example of the NoVo Foundation's initiatives which donated $34 million in grants.

• How can NoVo Foundation utilize the power of partnerships to help local organizations align with their mission? 

• Read about the ten toughest places in the world for women and girls to go to school. 

The NoVo Foundation is one of the largest private foundations to advocate for gender equality and has specifically focused much of its funding on reducing violence against girls and women globally.

In their most recent initiative, the Radical Hope Fund, the foundation donated $34 million in grants to 19 different organizations around the world. The Radical Hope Fund began as a response to the 2016 election. Seeing the increase in attacks on women and girls as well as LGBTQ  populations, immigrants, people of color, and refugees, the foundation felt compelled to take action in a new, bolder way. Thus, the Radical Hope Fund was born, initially pledging to donate $20 million to selected grantees, but eventually deciding to deepen that commitment to $34 million.

As Executive Director Pamela Shifman explains, “It’s an experiment — one that seeks to support new collaborations that are imaginative and focused on building the movements we need, not simply what we think is possible right now. Radical Hope aims for transformation rather than solely incremental change.”

Since inception in 2006, the NoVo Foundation has emphasized the way in which systemic change needs to evolve out of the communities affected by the problem. The NoVo Foundation reviewed over 1,000 applications to find the 19 best candidates for this new funding, particularly looking for organizations that are community-based and that bring transformational strategies to the table.

Read the full article about NoVo Foundation by Katrina Marek at Philanthropy Women