Turning power on its head, a reverse call for applications

Amanda Hodgeson, FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund

In November of 2010 eight young feminists from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States and Eastern Europe gathered in Beirut, Lebanon to envision what would become FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund. Brought together by Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) and the Central American Women’s Fund, these young feminists gathered to share ideas, discuss, debate and work together to refine the vision, mission and primary goals of a new fund that would serve the needs of young feminists globally. Fifteen years on, FRIDA remains committed to grantmaking that is rooted in the long-term sustainability of young feminist movements across the global majority. Sustainability, however, keeps proving itself to be a bit of a moving target. As we spotlight shrinking civil space and access to resources for the sector, it would be disingenuous to assert that access to resources for radical and overtly anti-capitalist-patriarchy social justice movements has ever been easy. As the geopolitical landscape continues to shift further and further to the right (wing) it is becoming urgent for us to interrogate why social movements have struggled to find true ally-ship in the philanthropic sector, or, more accurately, why the philanthropic sector has faltered in its role as a radical, risk-absorbing ally to movements, and what we can do to change that.

Feminist funders, African philanthropy, liberation movements and the like have often held a critical mirror to traditional Western philanthropy. We have witnessed this in discourse and advocacy around:

• Trust-based philanthropy: Traditional Western philanthropy has proven itself to be inherently distrustful of black and brown activists.
• Movement driven philanthropic strategies: Traditional Western philanthropy has paternalized movements, often deciding on their own what movements need.
• Core funding vs project funding: Traditional Western philanthropy prioritizes project funding and log-frames over the people doing the work.
• Participatory grantmaking: Traditional Western philanthropy relies on its own privilege and understanding to decide where funds, obtained directly because of the exploitation of global majority (also referred to as the Global South) communities by the global minority / Global North.

Traditional Western philanthropy is not an uncontested paradigm, these efforts at equalizing power in the sector are proof of this. Yet Western philanthropy frameworks continue to dominate and therefore determine how foundations, intermediaries, bilaterals, etc. conduct the business of grantmaking.

This is an excerpt of a blog. To read the piece in its entirety, head to the #ShiftThePower Treehouse.

By: Amanda Hodgeson, Communications and Advocacy Manager at FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund