Resources on fundraising

Last edited: January 03, 2012

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As of mid-2010, the most recent and comprehensive guide for fundraising on VAW campaigns is part of the 2010 activists’ kit for the global Sixteen Days of Activism Campaign. It includes practical tips and short briefs on major donors for women’s human rights campaigns. 

The short Global Fund for Women’s Women’s Fundraising Handbook (updated 2007), available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese and Russian, provides comprehensive advice and useful links. It is mainly directed at small and medium-sized organizations focusing on women’s rights advocacy, but it many of its tips are fairly generic.

The CIVICUS guide on Writing a Fundraising Proposal includes an overview of the advantages and challenges linked to different donors.

Women Thrive Worldwide offers a comprehensive Fundraising Guide for Women’s Community-based Organizations. It includes extensive guidance on cultivating donor relations, and short profiles of some 25 donors, some of which are known to provide significant grants to campaigns and medium-size organizations (i.e. not only to community-based groups).

AWID’s WITM Compilation of Resource Mobilization Tools gives an overview of online good quality manuals, toolkits and guides produced by various organizations on how to mobilize and access funding.

ELDIS (a service of the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex) provides information on fundraising for NGOs, and funding sources for gender equality and women-focused projects.

Donor directories include the following (from AWID/WITM, 2009):

International Network of Women’s Funds. The INWF is a democratically organized network of “Northern” and “Southern” donors. It is organically linked to the feminist movement. Currently the INWF has seventeen members committed to expanding the resources available to women's rights organizations around the world.

Women’s Funding Network. The Women's Funding Network is made up of more than 130 organizations that fund women's solutions across the globe, to transform ideas into lasting change, in every critical area from combating poverty to achieving advances in healthcare, education and human rights.

AWID: Second FundHer Report: Financial Sustainability for Women's Movements Worldwide. Annex 2 of the report lists contact details of women’s rights funders.

MENA Donors Directory. This directory of funders was compiled by AWID and the Global Fund for Women (GFW) as a resource guide for women's rights organizations in the Middle East and North Africa.

The Funders' Network for Afghan Women (FNAW). FNAW is a coalition of foundations and grant-giving organizations, as well as advocates, policy-makers and other agencies funding Afghan women's groups. The Network addresses common problems faced by grantees, with an emphasis on sustainability, advocacy and capacity-building.

International Human Rights Funders Group. The International Human Rights Funders Group (IHRFG) is an association of grant makers devoted to supporting efforts to achieve the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the treaties and laws it has generated.