María Palomares was the Executive Director of Calala Women’s Fund (Calala Fondo de Mujeres), an organization that mobilizes resources to support women’s and feminist movements in Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain. Over the span of 20 years, she has worked in different international organizations, including Equipo de Investigacion, Investigadora Especialista en Genero, and Tecnica de […]
As we embark on our final year of Fenomenal Funds’ journey, we are thrilled to re-introduce the Resilience Grants report, a testament to the power of collaboration, trust, and solidarity in feminist funding.
By Phoebe So, originally published on The Center for Effective Philanthropy, July 2, 2024 In the philanthropic sector, intermediaries and fiscal sponsors play a vital role. They are the critical links that connect resources from donors to historically overlooked causes and marginalized communities. Pooling funds, providing back-office support, and absorbing risk enable grassroots groups to […]
Emergent Learning Strategy Designing and Implementing the Fenomenal Funds’ Learning Strategy Recently Fenomenal Funds was approached to talk about how we developed our Learning Strategy and what we are learning though the process of its implementation. This got me thinking that perhaps there may be others also interested in learning about our work and looking […]
Table of Contents Introduction Methodology of the Learning Plan Learning Management: Ethics and Safeguarding Knowledge Dissemination and Application Introduction The Learning Plan you are holding in your “virtual hands” describes a journey that Fenomenal Funds is taking to identify the main learnings and deepen the understanding of the work that has been done since the […]
A note from KIT our learning partner Where Are We in Our Learning Journey? Since 2019, Fenomenal Funds, its stakeholders, and especially the women’s funds that are part of this initiative have embarked on a joint-learning journey. This journey entails engaging with innovative participatory grantmaking and shared governance practices, aiming at strengthening the individual infrastructure […]
Learning log by Shama Dossa, MEL Manager Acknowledgement: Fenomenal Funds would like to acknowledge the contributions to the article’s analysis from the following Learning and Evaluation Working Group members: Amy Arbreton (Hewlett Foundation), Diana Medina (Fondo Semillas), Nancy Akanbombire (Prospera Secretariat), Nina Madsen (Open Society Foundations), and Zanele Sibanda (Fenomenal Funds). “Learning something is […]
Through a collective conversation, we document our shared learning. We showcase three diverse cases in which we as feminist practitioners and the movements we support are attempting to disrupt oppressive MEL structures, tools, and language, and funder practices as profound acts of resistance.
Learning in the context of Fenomenal Funds is an emergent, adaptive, and co-evolutionary process. We see learning as an integral part of the grantmaking process in both the design and implementation phases. In our bold experiment as a feminist-funding collaborative that combines pooled funding, shared governance, and participatory grantmaking, the stakeholders involved are interacting in […]
Behind the scenes with Fenomenal Funds learning partner – the KIT Royal Tropical Institute team At Fenomenal Funds we see learning as an emergent, adaptive, and co-evolutionary process. In our experimentation as a feminist-funding collaborative, all stakeholders are interacting in a power-sharing process – responding and adapting to each other so that what emerges and […]