The Gender Fund is Co-Impact’s second fund, aiming to raise and grant US $1 billion and provide predominantly women-led locally-rooted organizations, in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with large-scale, long-term, and flexible funding. This method of funding is integral to creating more just and inclusive systems and shifting harmful gender norms that prevent progress. The Fund’s design and development was informed through consultation with our program partners, the gender community, as well as our funders, advisors, and other experts.
The objectives of the Fund are:
- To transform systems to be more just and inclusive so that at least 100 million people will have better healthcare, quality education, and the opportunity to thrive – regardless of their gender, class, ethnicity, or race.
- To advance women’s power, agency, and leadership, so there are more women leading at all levels -from the household and community to institutions and government – influencing decisions that affect their communities and society.
- To shift harmful gender norms that prevent progress.
Co-Impact offers different grant types through the Gender Fund to support a broad ecosystem of actors working to advance gender equality and women’s leadership, while seeking to shift harmful gender norms that limit progress. We support partners to strengthen key organizations and institutions, and to generate and disseminate evidence on how to support gender equality.
- The Fund provides a range of grants up to $20 million over a period of three to six years, depending on the needs of the initiatives being supported.
- The Fund prioritizes partners’ knowledge and expertise of the regions in which they work.
What We Support
- Systems change to achieve gender-equitable outcomes in health, education, and economic opportunity
- Institutional change to advance women’s leadership in the fields of law and economics
- Dismantling structural barriers and discriminatory gender norms holding women and girls back
- Advancing women’s and girls’ voice, power, and agency
- Amplifying scale and impact by investing in and advocating for evidence-informed solutions
The possibility of change today is limited because women are not at the table, not involved, and not heard. The Fund focuses on women’s leadership so that women are not only the beneficiaries of programs, but become equal drivers of these initiatives. This means equal representation, inclusion of lived experience, and diverse perspectives informing policy, programs, and funding.
Where We Fund
The Gender Fund has selected 13 focus countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, based on their demographic and social contexts. These countries include Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Senegal, South Africa, and Sri Lanka.
Over the life of the Fund we expect to concentrate our support in four to six of these countries.
Who We Fund
Eligible Gender Fund program partners could be civil society groups, think tanks, academic institutions, professional associations and networks, women’s rights groups, or feminist and allied movements. We understand that deep-rooted change requires a variety of actors. This is why we aim to support a broad, cross-section of actors working to advance gender equality and women’s leadership at all levels – to tackle issues by addressing the multiple systems that they are embedded in.
Since the Fund was announced at the Generation Equality Forum on 30 June 2021, Co-Impact has made progress on its commitments. We finalized an open call for applications that ran from 30 September to 20 December 2021.
We are actively making grants, including those that will be awarded following our Gender Fund open call for concept notes, and will be pleased to share the details of the program partners’ work that we are supporting. This list will be updated at least monthly.
We also expect to make a limited number of practice-focused research grants in 2022 and 2023, and we are currently sourcing for aligned partner organizations. We are sharing this for transparency purposes only as we will not be accepting unsolicited proposals for this round of funding.
