What we fund

In the Issues Affecting Women Programme (IAW), we have two strategic priorities:

Movement Building and Ending Violence Against Women. Within the first pillar, we fund initiatives that promote movement building through women's funds, "anchor” women’s organisations and networks. Within the second pillar, we focus more specifically on: human trafficking and exploitation; intra-familial violence; and violence against women that takes place in situations of crisis.

Where we fund

We fund largely in the Unites States, Mexico, Central America, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, India (Jharkhand and West Bengal) and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The movement-building pillar of the programme has a broader geographic focus. Please see examples of our grants in the Grant Database.

Priority Areas

Pillar 1: Movement Building

The movement-building pillar of the programme helps to create strong, visible, and effective women’s movements that are unified by rights-based principles and that work to ensure the physical, social, economic, and political rights of women.

A major component of this portfolio are women’s funds, which are international, regional and national grantmakers that support groups working towards women’s empowerment. These funds invest in women and in women-led solutions and build the leadership of grassroots groups that address the issues of women and girls within their context. Through their flexible grant-making processes and their strong local knowledge, women’s funds can identify the grassroots groups who, with a small amount of funding, can push beyond the status quo to develop strategies that bring about fundamental changes for women in their communities. Women’s funds also contribute to the development and empowerment of the groups they support through capacity-building activities related to the planning, budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation of projects from a gender and diversity perspective. Although women's funds are primarily financed by grants, they are set apart from other donors by their theory of social change as well as the role they play as change agents in their respective communities.

In addition to our support for women’s funds working in the Global South and East, IAW is also committed to supporting “anchor” women’s organisations and networks that are visible, active, and vocal champions of the women’s rights movement. These organisations work at a local and/or international level and are explicitly dedicated to promoting engagement, catalyzing innovation, and advancing legal frameworks and standards that strengthen women’s rights and support human rights movement building. Many of these organisations are also at the forefront of innovations in organising including through social media and technology that can further galvanize a robust constituency in support of women’s rights.

As part of our commitment to women’s rights movement building, we also works to increase resource mobilisation for women’s organizations both at a global philanthropic level, as well as by funding the development of local philanthropy in the contexts in which we work (for example through our support of women’s funds)  to encourage local participation and investment in women and women’s rights issues.

Pillar 2: Ending Violence Against Women

Within the broad spectrum of the ending violence pillar, the programme focuses more specifically on: human trafficking and exploitation; intra-familial violence; and violence against women that takes place in situations of crisis.

Trafficking and Exploitation:  We recognise that human trafficking is fuelled by complex and interconnected factors and believe that a rights-based approach is fundamental to combating human trafficking and ensuring justice for trafficked persons. We also recognise the importance of supporting women who experience various forms of exploitative working conditions in informal or unregulated industries, but who may not qualify as a victim of trafficking under the legal definition of the Palermo Protocol. Our primary concern is the well-being, recovery and empowerment of women and girls who find themselves in all kinds of exploitative situations where their rights are being violated.

We provide financial support and seek to strengthen the institutional capacities (including the sustainability) of those organisations and networks that adopt or strive to adopt a rights-based approach to providing comprehensive, coordinated and client-centred services to victims of trafficking and exploitation. This rights-based approach encompasses an engagement with victims that promotes the agency and empowerment of survivors. It also informs advocacy for the adoption and effective implementation of anti-trafficking legislation and policies that place a trafficked person’s priorities and best interest at the centre of anti-trafficking work and recognise the need to protect and assist the victims of all forms of trafficking.  We further support survivors and groups likely to be affected by anti-trafficking policies.

We are also committed to supporting initiatives that prevent trafficking and exploitation by:  creating greater awareness of trafficking patterns through education, research, training and outreach, engaging with and empowering groups of women at risk of trafficking such as women migrants, asylum seekers, sex workers and domestic workers, and broadening the understanding of the factors of vulnerability that lead to patterns of trafficking and exploitation. One such factor is the violence and abuse a woman may experience in childhood and/or in previous intimate relationships. Another factor of vulnerability is the migration process itself as women now constitute half the international migrant population and are often compelled by economic factors to migrate via unsafe routes and in hazardous conditions to forge a new life for themselves and their families.

We are also working to link organisations and networks that are active in countries of origin, transit and destination to promote the creation of formal connections, allow the exchange of information to inform prevention and advocacy activities, and improve the effectiveness of services to women victims of violence through the sharing of lessons learned and best practices. To date, we have already promoted this kind of networking and coalition building between the U.S., Mexico & Central America and in the Balkans between Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia.  We have also begun supporting transnational projects that include multi-national stakeholders and advocacy strategies. Finally, our programme supports evidence-based research and innovation in the field—for example, deconstructing the relationship between trafficking and masculinity to improve our understanding of the psychological, cultural, social, and economic motivations of men that participate in the trafficking of women and girls.  

Intra-familial Violence:  We define intra-familial violence as any violence that affects women in the private sphere including violence stemming from the family, culture, religion or tradition.  We commit our resources to strengthening organisations that meet the needs of victims of violence through services that are coordinated and comprehensive and which promote the agency and self representation of survivors within a rights based framework. To that end, we also support these organisations and their networks in advocating for the effective adoption, implementation and enforcement of domestic violence legislation including ensuring the sustainability of their services through public funding.  We are further committed to addressing the root causes of intra-familial violence by creating greater awareness of their rights among women and girls, promoting positive models of masculinity, and offering services to violent and abusive men who want to change their behaviour.  Finally, we support research and learning that advances innovation and promotes best practices in the field.

Situations of Crisis: The smallest of the specific programmatic objectives in this pillar includes violence against women that takes place in conflict, refugee and immigration settings. Our funding in this regard is intended to provide flexible and responsive support in crisis zones where violence against women is systemic and stands in the way of rights based recovery.