Fenomenal Funds is pleased to announce the award of $5,247,744 to 13 collaboration groups formed by 37 women’s funds members of the Prospera International Network of Womenʼs Funds.

The Collaboration Grants support women’s funds to form deeper connections and stronger partnerships with each other. As they work to co-create solutions, they harness the community’s collective power, wisdom, and creativity to reimagine practices, systems, and strategies that advance their mission to resource gender justice movements. The Collaboration Grants were approved after womenʼs funds participated in a Collaboration Lab process supported by Fenomenal Funds.

Centering on the feminist values of connection and co-creation, the Collaboration Lab engaged the womenʼs funds in sessions where they created meaningful plans that drive toward transformational change. Facilitation teams curated the process, establishing a space for womenʼs funds to strengthen
relationships and express their bold imagination. In the process, the women’s funds had the opportunity to discover, dream, and define what they wanted to do together and how they would do it.

The whole process was a demonstration of the feminist values of hearing each other and creating valuable spaces for each other…. the decisions were made collectively and with a high engagement of all the members. I felt very much appreciated and heard.

Salome Chagelishvili
Women’s Fund in Georgia

I am passionate about how everyone in the group was involved in defining the plan so that each member felt responsible for the set goals and participated to the fullest extent possible in achieving them. This process allowed us to get to know other women’s funds and share their experiences. Through the facilitated discussions, I also gained clarity and understanding of the issues we are working on together. To me, the Collaborative Lab is a powerful process.

Nathalie Umutoni
XOESE The Francophone Women’s Funds

The Collaboration Lab process was designed and guided by the Fenomenal Funds Advisory Committee comprised of five elected women’s fund representatives of the Prospera INWF and two representatives of private foundations. Grounded in principles of equal power and shared decision-making, they reviewed the plans, offered their reflections to each collaboration, and recommended the approval of the grants.

By reading all the collaboration plans, I was reminded of how creative, bold, thoughtful, and political the Prospera network is. I also saw the importance of making spaces for womenʼs funds to connect, talk, and leverage ideas, actions, and strategies and how important it is to have flexible resources that can support this process. Another key learning for me is that to build relationships, trust, and agreeing on issues together takes time and a big effort from those providing the accompaniment. There is always space for discovery.

Anisha Chugh
Womenʼs Fund Asia (Advisory Committee member Asian Women’s Funds Representative)

The 13 collaborations of 37 women’s funds that emerged from this process are funded for 24 months. The collaborations connected a diverse range of women’s funds tackling significant cutting-edge issues, including collective care, feminist grantmaking and participatory learning, resource generation and financial resilience, and organizational development and transformational leadership.

We are thrilled to announce the recipients of the Fenomenal Funds Collaboration Grants. These exciting collaboratives underpin the long-term development of feminist philanthropy and sustain important links among women’s funds working in the Global South and Global East. These strategic partnerships will significantly raise the ability of women’s funds to tackle our shared global challenge of gender inequality and find solutions through innovation and creativity.
We look forward to following and supporting the journey of these outstanding collaborations. We believe that the knowledge, policies, and practices that will emerge from these collective efforts will inspire and strengthen the women’s funds within the Prospera community – as a vital force in resourcing the global movements for gender justice and human rights.
Even more importantly, we appreciate how this work will impact the grassroots movements they support.

Djurdja Trajkovic and Maitri Morarji
Co-Chairs of the Fenomenal Funds
Steering Committee