This is a critical turning point for women’s human rights around the world. Threats to roll back progress in every aspect of women’s lives -- personal, civil, political, economic, social, and cultural -- remind us that the stakes could not be higher, and “business as usual” is history.

Women are defining their course boldly through movements, marches, and campaigns such as #MeToo and Ni Una Menos. They are using their collective voices to resist violence and discrimination.

This is an extraordinary moment to make philanthropy work for women, yet we are aware that investments currently deployed to women’s organizing are truly inadequate.

It begs the question: Where is the money for women’s human rights?

How Women’s Funds Make an Impact

I believe the answer lies foremost in the power of individual philanthropists because they can act on their own convictions and experiences to make significant contributions.

I have been working with women for three decades. I know that women and girls are worthy of substantial investments and now is the right time to invest deeply in their rights. And I believe the best way to do so is through women’s funds.

Women’s funds mobilize and leverage resources by fundraising from many sources to create a bigger ‘pie,’ which makes a greater difference for social movements than isolated small funding. Women’s funds prioritize the women who are most often left out of traditional funding, they include grantees in decision-making, and they also offer a training ground for fund management, which is critical for the sustainability of movements.

Women’s funds in the U.S. and around the world have inspired donors to fund systemic, women-led change that benefit entire communities.

For more than 30 years, Global Fund for Women has partnered with individual donors and responded to unique moments by supporting and sustaining bold, grassroots women’s movements to achieve their goals.

As one of our long-time donors recently shared: “As you know, I have been funding women’s movement-building for some time, and the Global Fund for Women is my way of supporting not only the ideas and efforts of women on the ground, but is also a way to strengthen and sustain the infrastructure of women’s organizations.”

Global Fund for Women finds, funds, and amplifies the courageous work of women who are building social movements and challenging the status quo. We have made grants to nearly 5,000 women’s groups in more than 175 countries, investing in women who protest injustice, create trade unions, and dare to defend land and water.

And we have expanded philanthropy by seeding, strengthening, and partnering with 35 women’s funds in the global south.

Above all, we have built up a valuable asset with our grantee partners, sister organizations, movements, and donors: TRUST.

But the most important learning from our work is that in order to deeply invest in women and girls, we must invest in growing more philanthropy.

The urgent call, right now, is to fund women’s resistance and resilience. To me, these words denote the spirituality of not giving up, or simply put, “stubborn hope.” For me, hope is radical in nature – to hope for justice, you have to work for justice. It is this stubborn hope that fills me with passion and determination to work for women’s human rights. I love to engage donors and discover together how to create better futures for and with women globally.