A Pooled Fund Takes on Gender-Based Violence—and Aims to Close Longstanding Funding Gaps

Sundry Photography/shutterstock

Sundry Photography/shutterstock

Less than a year into Donald Trump’s presidency, the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse, harassment and violence exploded in the United States and other parts of the world. Scores of women and trans people took to the streets, courts, media outlets and social media to share their stories and protest the gender-based violence they faced in their everyday lives, having been silenced or dismissed for years.

While the most high-profile cases focused on public individuals in powerful positions, such as film producer Harvey Weinstein, actor Kevin Spacey and television news anchor Matt Lauer, the movement spanned survivors from all walks of life. 

In the wake of this moment, the Collective Future Fund (CFF), a pooled fund that supports organizations working to end gender-based violence, was launched. Its goal is to bring together social justice moments, survivors and donors in order to create a collective future that is free from all forms of patriarchal violence.

“We really saw an opportunity at the time to be able to leverage the momentum of #MeToo to expand the amount of resources… available for ending gender-based violence,” said CFF Executive Director Aleyamma Mathew.

The fund is fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and has 12 donor institutions supporting it, including CBS, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. 

Now, CFF has announced an $11 million, multi-year investment in survivor-led organizations working to end violence. The fund has already raised the full $11 million. The first round of grants from the investment went out earlier this year to 25 organizations. Recipients include Black Women’s Blueprint, the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, Justice for Migrant Women and the National Women’s Law Center. 

In addition to the new $11 million fund, CFF previously awarded $3 million in 2019 and an additional $4 million in rapid-response grants in 2020. 

“Our mandate at CFF is not only to fund movements that are working to end gender-based violence,” said Mathew, “but it’s also to raise the visibility of the ways that violence is used as a strategic tool within larger patriarchal and white supremacist systems.”

Lack of funding for women-led organizations

As CFF has pointed out, nonprofit organizations led by women of color typically receive far less funding from both philanthropic institutions and public grants. A report by the Ms. Foundation for Women found that although women of color have historically led “nearly every impactful grassroots movement” in U.S. history, philanthropic giving to women and girls of color is less than 0.5% of the $66.9 billion given to foundations annually. 

Additionally, organizations that are led by women of color are “more likely to experience barriers to foundation funding.” The report also found that most of these organizations have an annual revenue of under $250,000. 

“There is an implicit bias of funding at the intersection of gender and race that shows itself with the underfunding of these communities and their work,” Mathew said, adding that another reason for this historic underfunding is that philanthropy tends to operate in a world of silos. 

According to Mathew, the lack of an intersectional approach in philanthropy often relegates gender and violence to a category within larger funding efforts for racial and criminal justice, which in turn means that organizations focusing primarily on safety get little to no funding.

“I think the impact of this type of... historic oversight within philanthropy has been that the organizations that center women of color and are working on safety don’t have the time and space to build power and shape their work in a very dynamic and changing context,” said Mathew.

One of the major currents running through philanthropy right now is the growing call for sustained funding following the last extraordinary year. As others have noted, a crisis is often followed by a temporary surge in funding, which then fades once the moment is over. For example, there may be a significant uptick in funding in the wake of large-scale social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, which then dries up once national attention shifts elsewhere. 

“If you look at the history of funding around safety over the past 50 years, it’s like feast or famine mode,” said Mathew, adding that it’s important for organizations like CFF to demonstrate to the rest of philanthropy that organizations working for change need sustained, abundant funding in order to be successful. 

A history of violence

Violence, CFF notes, is never just an act against a single individual, but is rather something that is interconnected with many systems, and affecting entire communities, even across generations. CFF seeks explicitly to name the problematic forces that are pervasive in U.S. institutions and that perpetuate violence: white supremacy and patriarchy. 

“We’ve inherited very violent systems that have profiled Black, brown and Indigenous communities,” said Mathew. These legacies of violence stem from settler-colonialism and slavery, and have in turn created entire generations of people who have survived trauma. 

The legacies of violence continue to impact us today, Mathew points out, making their way into schools and governments, into our media and military, and into our workplaces. They also exist in the form of policies that incriminate communities of color. For Mathew, however, it’s equally important to highlight that while there are legacies of violence, so, too, are there legacies of resistance. 

“I think we both want to problematize these legacies of violence and see how they show up institutionally and culturally, but we also want to really lift up these legacies of work, movement-building work toward equity, by centering violence,” she said.

A new approach to grantmaking

CFF has also been working to develop a grantee engagement strategy that requires staff to be proactive in building deep relationships so grantees don’t feel like they have to do the heavy lifting. For example, CFF wants to ensure that grantees don’t feel anxiety when reporting something that didn’t go well with their organization. 

“CFF believes organizations, especially the ones that are working feverishly with very little resources, shouldn’t be tasked with additional things to do around grantmaking,” said Mathew. 

CFF is also awarding multiple types of funding, including rapid-response grants, multi-year general operating support, and project funding. In September, for example, CFF will be doing another round of grantmaking focused on supporting innovation. 

Like other grassroots initiatives, CFF operates on the principle that those most impacted by policies, procedures and violence are those closest to the solutions. “Historically, we’ve never listened to survivors,” said Mathew. “We’ve often felt that survivors weren’t survivors; they were victims of a system that required protection.”

CFF wants to flip that script and center survivors, changing the framing and language from one of victimhood to one of power. In addition to changing narratives around survivors, CFF is also looking to shift the narrative around philanthropy and risk. Despite their history of success, funders often associate organizations that focus on women of color and trans individuals as being risky grantees to support.

“It’s not risky to fund them; it’s actually what we need to do in order to see the type of social change and equity we want to see in the world,” said Mathew, adding that the continued practice of underfunding these organizations not only puts communities at risk, but democracy, as well. 

For CFF, it is a matter of urgency to increase funding for organizations focused on ending violence. Mathew has called for philanthropy to be held accountable for this historic oversight, and posed a crucial question: Will 2021 and beyond finally be a turning point for philanthropy to focus on gender-based violence and dedicate significant resources to ending it? Or will things continue as they have been?

“I think in order to make change happen, it’s not just funding robustly… but it’s also encouraging ecosystems and partnerships that can help leverage the best assets that organizations bring, whether it’s expertise around policy or organizing for power,” said Mathew. “Philanthropy must adopt mainstream intersectional approaches to grantmaking as a way of getting out of our silos in order to address root causes.”