Co-Impact, a philanthropy collaborative backed by Melinda French Gates and other prominent women donors, will provide more than $161 million in grants to health, education and gender equality-focused organizations across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Most of the grants it revealed on Wednesday will go to women-led, local organizations to “make systems more just and inclusive whilst advancing gender equality and women’s leadership,” Co-Impact said. The global organization, founded in 2017, advocates for social justice, systemic change, and equality.
The grants will be distributed through its two funds.
The first, the Foundational Fund pushes for expansion of the collaborative philanthropy model, where donors pool their resources to tackle world hunger and climate change, among other issues, with the expectation they will have a bigger impact collectively than individually.
Roughly $95 million of the total commitment will go to the Foundational Fund to support eight “long-term systems changes initiatives,” including a Brazilian literacy campaign led by the Lemann Foundation and India-based Foundation for Ecological Security’s research into the effects of environmental degradation on the livelihoods and income of rural Indians.
Foundational Fund grantees typically receive between $5-$20 million over a period of six years, Co-Impact said.
Another $66 million will be deployed to 26 initiatives through the Gender Fund, launched last year to raise $1 billion over 10 years. Those projects include efforts by Ghana’s Alliance for Reproductive Rights to improve gender disparities in the country’s health care delivery systems and Red de Abogadas work to get more Mexican women into the legal profession.
An additional $1.6 million in grant funding will go to initiatives that expand research and learning on women’s leadership and gender equality.
Co-Impact provides “large, flexible, and long-term grants” to organizations in the global south to help address the root causes of inequities, according to its website.
“Many systems around the world fail to deliver on their promises because discrimination against women, girls and other marginalized groups is baked into their design,” Olivia Leland, Co-Impact’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.
“Our program partners work with governments to fix this, dismantling barriers to inclusion in public and market systems and using proven innovations to help millions of people access greater opportunities and live with dignity,” she said.
The Gender Fund seeks to specifically support women-led organizations and has the backing of an international group of women funders and Co-Impact members, such as megadonors French Gates, MacKenzie Scott, and Tsitsi Masiyiwa.
French Gates recently touted donor collaboratives as potentially having greater impact than even large foundations like The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which currently has a $53.3 billion endowment.
“Collaboratives are a great way to formalise partnerships, share knowledge and deploy resources at scale to help us take on the biggest, toughest challenges,” she told The Financial Times earlier this month.
The Gates Foundation gave $50 million to help launch Co-Impact’s Gender Fund last year.
Masiyiwa, co-founder of the Higherlife Foundation and Delta Philanthropies with her Zimbabwean billionaire husband Strive, leads Co-Impact’s African Gender Initiative. She recently told Devex that through her work with Co-Impact, she hopes to encourage more African women to enter philanthropy, which has traditionally been dominated by men.