Feminist groups need additional $6B in philanthropic support: Report

Philanthropists should invest about $1.5 billion annually in women’s rights organizations if they want to support feminist movements worldwide, according to a new report from nonprofit advisory firm The Bridgespan Group and Shake the Table, a group that connects donors to organizations focused on social and economic justice.

In recent years, feminist movements have advanced reproductive rights in Argentina, Ireland, and Mexico and organized protests against police abuse in Nigeria, the report said. But they have received “minimal” support from philanthropists, it added. Women’s rights groups received less than 1% of total foundation giving in 2017 and about 1% of gender-focused international aid in 2018, according to the report.

Bridgespan and Shake the Table said philanthropists should direct at least $6 billion more to feminist organizations by 2026. That amount would be most beneficial if distributed as unrestricted, multiyear funding to groups in the global south, as well as those led by women, girls, and nonbinary people from Black and Indigenous communities globally, report said.

The document defined feminist movements as “organizations, leaders, and networks working together to change power structures that reinforce gender and other inequalities.” It said that such work tends to take “an intersectional approach,” challenging “the compounding factors of discrimination” related to race, religion, caste, and class, among others.

The target amount of investment was calculated based on several considerations, said Swatee Deepak, a founding partner at Shake the Table, in an interview.

Current funding levels for feminist movements were compared with their needs and with amounts of high net worth wealth globally, she said, adding that $6 billion over the next few years is the “bare minimum” that these groups should be provided.

“We feel that it’s really urgent, given where we are in the world at the moment. Leaning in at the minimum of $6 billion is really important … just to get us into a space where we’re able to fight back against growing rollbacks,” she told Devex.

The report referred to data from Global Philanthropy Project showing that between 2008 and 2017, aggregate revenue climbed to $6.2 billion for “anti-gender” groups opposed to certain rights for women, girls, and nonbinary people.

It is critical that feminist organizations receive the funding they need for staffing and other resources, as well as to prepare for the “headwinds” to come, Nidhi Sahni, a partner at The Bridgespan Group and the head of its U.S. advisory services, told Devex.

To create the report — which outlined steps that philanthropists can take to support organizations engaging in advocacy as part of feminist movements — Bridgespan and Shake the Table spoke to six institutional funders, 27 high net worth individuals and the people leading their giving, and 10 leaders of feminist movements and funds in several countries.

Potential donors should consider directing money to feminist funds that can act as intermediaries between philanthropists and grassroots leaders, the report said. They can also support feminist movements by educating themselves about power structures that enable gender inequalities, among other things, it suggested.

Bridgespan is well known in the philanthropy world for advising nonprofits, philanthropists, and impact investors. Billionaire MacKenzie Scott is among its high-profile philanthropy clients. Approximately 60% of the recipients in Scott’s latest multibillion-dollar round of grant distriubtions are women-led organizations.

Bridgespan also has received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which last year pledged $2.1 billion to promote gender equality globally over five years. The Gates Foundation and a philanthropic investment company created by one of the foundation’s co-chairs — Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures — are among the funders of the report.

Bridgespan said that its research with Shake the Table “has taken us on a learning journey of our own into the brave and critical work of constituency-led feminist movements.” Specifically, its previous “focus on programmatic measurement, scalability, and ‘what works’ as a predictor of future success may have led us to overlook feminist movements,” it said. Some philanthropists see these movements as risky because they are “often far from the powerful networks of Global North philanthropy,” Bridgespan said.

Shake the Table is newer to the sector. It was first established under the name Feminist Imaginations in 2020. All of the organization’s leaders have worked at foundations or as advisers to individual donors and families, according to Deepak, who was previously the director at Stars Foundation. Collectively, the group has helped direct more than $1 billion toward feminist movements, she said.

The plea for more philanthropic funding for feminist groups comes as reproductive rights groups worry about the global ripple effects of abortion bans that may soon begin in the U.S.

The report was published just days after news broke of an initial draft majority opinion that was leaked from the U.S. Supreme Court, which revealed that the court may overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that established federal protections for access to abortion.

The ruling is not yet final, but the draft opinion has sent shock waves through the abortion-rights community. International sexual and reproductive rights advocacy group Fòs Feminista said a reversal of Roe v. Wade would threaten progress on reproductive rights worldwide.

“In Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Kenya, we’ve seen historic strides to protect and expand sexual and reproductive rights, thanks to a global movement of activists,” read a statement from the group. “The United States would be heading in the opposite direction of democracies across the globe if Roe is overturned, and that threatens the tremendous progress we have seen in Latin America and Africa.”

Deepak and Sahni said they also worried about the global impact of potential abortion bans and reversals of reproductive rights in the U.S. They likened the situation to former President Donald Trump reinstating and expanding the Mexico City Policy, also known as the “global gag rule,” which prohibited U.S. global health funding recipients from providing abortions or offering information on the procedure. The policy was later rescinded by President Joe Biden.

“When you look at a lot of the rollbacks on reproductive rights or LGBT rights, they all copy one another. It is a playbook, because so many of these leaders often follow one another. And the U.S. is a big influencer in terms of its policies and its work globally,” Deepak said.

Overturning Roe v. Wade would bolster a “detrimental” view of women’s rights around the world, so feminist movements in the U.S. and globally need to be resourced, Deepak said.