Nonprofits in Africa, Asia and Latin America are among the first 15 grantees of a $1 billion gender equality fund launched by collaborative philanthropy group Co-Impact. The fund is backed by a circle of high-profile businesswomen and philanthropists that includes Melinda French Gates, Tsitsi Masiyiwa, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, and MacKenzie Scott.
Co-Impact first announced its plan to raise and deploy $1 billion over 10 years through its new Gender Fund in June. Specifically, the fund aims to increase funding for women-led organizations, which Co-Impact said currently receive only 1% of gender equality funding globally.
Co-Impact revealed its list of initial grantees this week. They include the Indian Institute of Technology, the Institute for African Women in Law, Nossas Cidades in Brazil, EQUIS Justicia para las Mujeres in Mexico, and the International Association of Women Judges. All of the organizations are focused on gender equality and women’s leadership in the global south.
The Gender Fund’s ultimate ambition is to help provide more than 100 million people with “better healthcare, quality education, and opportunity to work and thrive … regardless of gender, ethnicity, caste, or race,” according to a press release. Co-Impact also wants the fund to help ensure more women are in leadership positions at all levels of society and to shift perceptions of gender norms.
“Women-led organizations have just been historically under-resourced and under-supported, and so we want to course-correct for that. So, at least 75% of our country-level grants will be to women-led organizations,” Yasmin Madan, Co-Impact’s director of programs, told Devex.
She added that Co-Impact wants to provide “relatively large, flexible” funding to these groups. The need for such support is clear, she said, adding that Co-Impact received more than 1,100 applications for this round of funding. About 90% of those applications were from women-led organizations and 100% were in the global south, according to Madan.
The fund is being supported by individual donors such as French Gates and Masiyiwa — whose husband, Strive Masiyiwa, recently joined the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s board of trustees. Scott, who has given away billions of dollars to charity since divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, donated to the fund with her current husband, Dan Jewett. Malhotra, another donor, is the chairperson of India’s HCL Technologies.
Several major foundations also contributed, such as the Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and Thankyou Charitable Trust.
Co-Impact said it eventually wants to grow the Gender Fund to support initiatives in 13 “focus countries”: Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.
