(Offre en anglais) Mama Cash’s 2017 grantmaking window lance son appel à projet عودة إلى الفرص

About Mama Cash

Mama Cash was conceived around a kitchen table in Amsterdam in 1983. Since then, we have grown from a group of five feminist activists into an international fund that supports women’s, girls’ and trans people’s movements around the world.

Mama Cash was the first international women’s fund in the world. Today, we fund and support women’s rights initiatives around the globe that challenge the root causes of injustice. Activists and donors join with Mama Cash to advance social change that starts with gender equality and respect for the human rights of everyone.

Mama Cash’s 2017 grantmaking window is open from 15 March to 15 May

Mama Cash supports ambitious feminist and women’s rights organisations and initiatives led by and for women, girls and trans people. We advise groups wishing to apply to consider the Mama Cash selection criteria and priority. The Letter of Interest format will be available from 15 March 2017.

Mama Cash is a fund with limited resources. More groups apply for funding than we can fund. In 2016, we received 2113 funding requests of which we could approve 31 (1.5% of all requests) to be new grantee-partners in our portfolios of Body, Money and Voice.

Because we have limited resources, we have to make difficult decisions on which groups we can support. The Mama Cash selection criteria and priority lead our decision-making process. For 2017, we expect to approve grants to approximately 15 new groups, in addition to the planned renewal grants to current grantee-partners.

The application window is not relevant for current grantee-partners wishing to apply for renewal during the course of 2017. 

Mama Cash moved from having a rolling application system when groups could apply at any time of the year, to having a time-limited application window, in 2014. Please consult our section with Frequently Asked Questions about our grantmaking cycle for background information on this change.

Mama Cash is helping to build a strong global architecture of women’s funds so that local and regional women’s movements can grow in scale, influence, and collective power. The women’s funds we support:

• build the emerging movements of the most invisible and marginalised women and girls
• develop local leadership, activist networks, and donor communities
• bring international attention to local and regional issues
• respond quickly to urgent local needs
• build the infrastructure of the international women’s movement

Mama Cash provides step-up support to a select number of women’s funds. Step-up support includes:

• financial support to help women’s funds progress to a new stage of development
• partnering to develop policies, procedures, best practices, and to build local donor communities
• collaborating to share learnings and fundraising strategies
• using Mama Cash funding to leverage new income from non-women’s fund donors

Please read each of the sections below before beginning the process. We recommend that you first read Mama Cash Women’s Funds Framework.

Mama Cash prioritises groups and initiatives that:

Have an annual budget below 200,000 euros

Mama Cash may partner with larger groups through our Accompaniment portfolio (formerly known as our Strategic Partnerships Portfolio) but will not prioritise providing financial support to them through our thematic portfolios (Body, Money and/or Voice)

Who & What does Mama Cash support?

Mama Cash makes grants in most countries of the world. Even though contexts are significantly different, we have found that the concerns of some specific groups of women, girls and trans* people tend to be unaddressed and/or contested in most societies (and social movements). So these groups are often found among our grantees.

Mama Cash focuses on three broad thematic areas – Body, Money and Voice – and we support groups whose work falls within them (for further information, see here).

For example, Mama Cash supports groups that work on:

• Forced sterilisation of women living with HIV and AIDS
• Exclusion of Indigenous women from decision making over their land
• Labour rights of women and trans* people in sex, domestic or industrial work
• Rights to water, food, and a clean, safe, and healthy environment
• Confronting legal and social discrimination against lesbian and bisexual women, or against migrant and refugee women
• Sexual rights of women, girls and trans* persons living with disabilities
• Decision-making for girls and older women (65+) about their lives (education, health, relationships)
• Political and public participation for women, girls or trans* persons from ethnic or religious minorities

This list is merely indicative. Mama Cash is open to supporting groups organising on other issues that are relevant for their context and have not been mentioned, provided they meet our criteria.