The Collective Future Fund Is Expanding Its Long-Term Work to End Gender-Based Violence

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The COVID-19 pandemic saw a dramatic increase in gender-based violence worldwide. According to information from UN Women, the United Nations’ organization dedicated to gender equity and women’s empowerment, approximately 243 million women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 have experienced physical or sexual assault per year, most often from an intimate partner.

That was before COVID. Since the pandemic, these numbers have surged, with the number of calls to help lines increasing five-fold. A report from the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice found that incidents of domestic violence in the U.S. increased by 8.1% during the pandemic. 

It bears noting that less than 40% of women who have experienced domestic violence have sought support, and less than 10% sought help from the police. The U.N. refers to this as a “shadow pandemic.”

Violence against transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people has also increased. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which tracks the number of violence-related deaths of transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the U.S., reported that 44 trans people were killed in 2019, up from 27 in 2019. In 2021, the number rose to 57, falling to 34 in 2022. This is especially alarming as this increase in violence is happening at the same time that anti-transgender bills and policy changes have been proposed and implemented across the U.S. 

Since 2018, the Collective Future Fund (CFF) has been on the case. The pooled fund is one of the few existing funds focused on ending gender-based violence in the United States. It prioritizes work led by Black, Indigenous, and women of color, as well as queer, trans and gender nonconforming people of color, immigrants, and disabled people of color.

In 2019 and 2020, CFF awarded $3 million and $4 million in rapid-response grants, respectively. “We thought it was really important in a time of unpredictability… so [grantees] can both plan and pivot during the poly-crises that have been happening in the past couple of years,” said Aleyamma Mathew, CFF’s executive director. 

In 2021, CFF began shifting its grantmaking to multiyear commitments. The fund also upped its grantmaking, awarding $11 million to 25 organizations to help them better support staff and to pay for things like cyber security and physical safety. 

Last fall, CFF announced the next phase of its multiyear grantmaking, which totals $3.4 million over two years to 29 organizations that center survivors. According to CFF, these grants will provide general operating support to let grantees plan beyond immediate crises, align day-to-day work with future goals, and deepen relationships in the field.

Grantees from this latest round include the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a women farmworkers’ organization that works to end the exploitation and abuse of campesinas — female farm laborers, most of whom are immigrants or refugees. There’s also Reclaiming Our Own Transcendence, Black Girls Restored, HEAL Project, In Our Names Network, Matahari Women Workers Center, National Black Women’s Justice Institute, South Asian SOAR, Trans Resilience Fund and Vida AfroLatina. 

CFF is fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Funders include Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Ford Foundation, Libra Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Unbound Philanthropy and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. CFF has also received support from Melinda French Gates through her funding vehicle Pivotal Ventures, as well as an undisclosed amount from MacKenzie Scott. Meanwhile, one of CFF’s original backers was Peter and Jennifer Buffett’s NoVo Foundation, a longtime major funder in this space that infamously wound down its support back in 2020.

Pivoting to long-term funding

Like many other organizations, CFF began awarding rapid-response grants in the early days of the pandemic, but has since begun pivoting toward long-term support for grantee partners, as well as increasing the overall grant dollars it awards.

“Living in violence and ultra-violence has certainly been a part of the news stories that have been a part of our lives and the backdrop, and I think that organizations and leaders who have been working at this threshold around violence have an attitude of how to understand it and think about it,” Mathew said, citing one of the reasons behind CFF’s pivot.

One of the challenges CFF has faced as it seeks to increase its funding is a lack of long-term philanthropic support for organizations fighting gender-based violence. Instead of focusing on the work that needs to be done, both immediately and in the long term, grantee organizations have had to focus on staying afloat. This has also affected funding intermediaries like CFF. 

The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, an initiative to provide funders with the tools and frameworks necessary to deepen their work to create an equitable and impactful sector, has noted that flexible, multiyear funding lets organizations allocate resources where they’re most needed and will have the biggest impact. This offers stability to grantee organizations and encourages risk-taking and innovation in their work. 

“I think if philanthropy as a whole had longer grantmaking cycles, especially in periods of crises, it gives us as well as our grantee partners the ability to think beyond just two or five years… and have the ability and flexibility to pivot,” Mathew said. 

Vanishingly small” philanthropic support

Data has shown that organizations focused on equity for women and girls receive a small fraction of all philanthropic dollars awarded. That number is even lower for organizations led by and dedicated to women and girls of color. A report from the Ms. Foundation for Women noted that philanthropic funding for women and girls of color is less than 0.5% of the total amount philanthropies award each year in the U.S.

“There’s an implicit or explicit gender bias that exists at the intersection of gender and race within philanthropy,” Mathew said. “And so, oftentimes, women of color and gender-expansive people are kind of locked into the gender portfolio at an institution if they have one. And usually, the gender portfolio gets the least amount of money in the larger institutional space.” 

Meanwhile, a 2022 report from the U.N. found that a “vanishingly small” portion of total donor funding went to organizations working to end gender-based violence. Only 0.0002% of the $26.7 trillion of donor support around the world went toward this work.

Mathew thinks one of the reasons gender-based work remains underfunded is that philanthropy tends to be siloed. Grant dollars for gender are typically siloed from racial justice funding, LGBTQ funding and labor rights funding, for example. In addition, Mathew said, “There aren’t many philanthropic funds that actually make such a large investment around safety and security and ensuring an end to gender-based violence.”

CFF’s next grantmaking cycle will begin in the spring of 2023. According to Mathew, CFF hopes to begin providing transnational grants to groups that look at both diaspora organizing and how gender-based violence affects women and gender-expansive people who participate in labor migration. It’s also hoping to build increased learning and solidarity between organizations working in this space in the Global South.

“The Collective Future Fund is currently one of a handful of funds that are solely dedicated to gender-based violence work, so we certainly need more support for CFF and our grantee partners that are doing this work,” Mathew said. “But it also means that other philanthropic institutions have to better integrate gender-based violence into their portfolios.”