Fenomenal Funds takes an ecosystem approach by resourcing and supporting the 44 autonomous and international women’s funds who are members of the Prospera INWF. Guided by Feminist Funding Principles developed by Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Fenomenal Funds is using a participatory grantmaking model that centers the voice of women’s funds in decisions about the distribution of resources. Our grantmaking processes are designed by our Advisory Committee, which makes all grantmaking decisions. The Advisory Committee is made up of five women’s funds and two private foundations. The Prospera INWF Secretariat serves on the Advisory Committee as a non-voting member.
Fenomenal Funds is a feminist funder collaborative where private foundations and women’s funds share power –about who gets funding and what gets funded — in order to strengthen the organizational infrastructure of women’s funds. The underlying premise of the collaborative is that investing in women’s funds supports them to become more resilient, enabling them to adapt to unexpected challenges, rise to meet new opportunities, and continue to fulfill their mission to claim more and better resources for gender justice movements.
Our grantmaking portfolio consists of two funding streams:
The collaboration grants support women’s funds to connect and collaborate in order to solve shared problems. The Advisory Committee designed a Collaboration Labs, a process to facilitate the design of the collaborations. Curated by a community of skilled facilitators and documenters, the process provided a safe and courage space for women’s funds to connect, discover, dream, and define the work they want to do together.
A successor of the Solidarity Grants launched in 2020, the Resilience grants support women’s funds to invest in their organizational infrastructure. Women’s funds define their own priorities based on their immediate needs and long-term goals. These non-competitive multi-year grants support women’s funds to invest in their people, assets, systems, and organizational development in order to build resilience.