FUNDING CIVIL SOCIETY FREEDOM

Table of contents

Summary of key features across flexible funding models

Model
Key structural features
Scaling and replication
Model

Direct Champions

Key structural features

Sub-categories: Intersectional feminist funds, community-led funds, community (philanthropy) foundations, crowdfunding, membership and network funds, and in some cases Northern philanthropic funders.

Application processes

  • Most have specific funding windows, but some accept proposals year-round.
  • Most have open calls, while others reach out to applicants directly.
  • Common requirement that groups be self-led by the constituencies they intend to benefit.
  • Some form of light-touch written proposal usually required, alongside conversations with applicants where feasible, but all funders emphasise that plans can change.

Decision-making processes

  • Advisory or oversight groups that are representative of focus communities review applications and make decisions. E.g. advisory networks, committees and oversight bodies.
  • In networks and membership organisations, representatives from members make decisions.
  • Voting-based approaches, often in tandem with advisory or oversight bodies,where applicants can vote for each others' proposals.
  • In some forms of participatory grantmaking, no standard applications required – organisations themselves decide together how to allocate funds.

Grant management and reporting

  • Management and reporting processes are designed to be as minimal and flexible as possible, allowing organisations the freedom to pursue their goals.
  • Due diligence procedures are implemented in a way that reinforces trust and accountability.
  • Reporting requirements are simplified, and most funders encourage participatory approaches to monitoring, evaluation and learning.

Grants and accompaniment support

  • Grants are provided directly to grantee partners, generally ranging from $2,000 to $100,000, are multiyear, and can generally be used to support any type of activity (project-focused or otherwise). Direct Champions also provide non-financial accompaniment support, including training, wellbeing support, and movement-building opportunities.
Scaling and replication
  • The ability of this model to be scaled depends on the ability to access unrestricted funding (often from traditional donors, bilateral or philanthropic). Once this funding is in place, Direct Champions are able to mobilise large amounts of flexible funding - for instance, members of the Prospera Network mobilise an average of $120 million each year to women’s organisations across 172 countries.55
  • Direct Champions are often the first funder for a grantee partner, creating an opportunity for other funders to step in and scale up impact at the most local level.
  • Replication by others is possible. It requires organisational commitment and investment in an infrastructure that allows inclusive and equitable application, decision-making and management/ reporting processes to be set up. Once this infrastructure is in place, it can be replicated in other geographies, but requires some additional resourcing to ensure that these processes are robust and relevant to different contexts.
Model

Connectors

Key structural features

Sub-categories: Multi-country hub partnerships, single-country hub partnerships, and in some cases fiscal sponsors or hosts

Partner selection processes

  • No direct application process. Instead, Connectors select facilitating partners to issue calls for applications tailored to their specific contexts.
  • Different selection approaches exist, but the main criteria tends to be organisations that prioritise flexible approaches to funding and that are embedded in their community contexts

Due diligence and decision-making

  • Due diligence or vetting processes seek to balance their commitment to the values of flexible funding against the pressures from traditional donors in accounting for how the money is spent.
  • Facilitating partners then design a decision-making process that enables flexibility and inclusivity, similar to those of Direct Champions.

Support to facilitating partners

  • Connectors, who receive funding directly from traditional Global North donors, seek to bear as much of the reporting burden as possible. This frees up facilitating partners to support grantee partners in a similar way.
  • Connectors also seek to provide in-country partners and the ultimate grantees with accompaniment support and thought partnership throughout the duration of a grant, as appropriate to the given context.
Scaling and replication
  • The potential for this model to be scaled, either within a single country or across different countries, also depends on the ability to mobilise more resources - ideally unrestricted - from traditional donors (bilateral or philanthropic). Scale can be achieved either by working with additional facilitating partners in one country, or through working in additional countries.
  • The model can be replicated by organisations that are able to commit time and resources to develop flexible funding procedures and support facilitating partners with their requests and needs.
Model

Experimenters

There are no standard structural features across all Experimenters, given that each funder takes advantage of specific opportunities as they arise, and therefore they are free to adopt aspects of either the Direct Champions or Connectors models.

Other common features

  • Experimenters often conduct consultations with experts to assist in the design of a flexible funding channel or mechanism. Through this, there is often room for negotiation, for instance on the ability to use funds for core costs rather than projects.
  • Precisely because Experimenters frame their funding as ‘experimental’, they are often able to secure high degrees of freedom for their grantee partners, for instance by providing direct, multiyear and core funding.
  • By funding in this way, Experimenters often enable grantee partners to mobilise additional resources from other more ‘traditional’ funders.
Scaling and replication

The success of Experimenters is often tied to the leadership of internal champions and their ability to negotiate buy-in across the broader organisation. However, the model has the potential to be highly scalable if this translates to a large budget sign-off (for instance, the Dutch government provided €42 million in the first phase of the Leading from the South programme, (2017-2021) scaled up to €80 million in the second phase (2020-2025).56

Model

Convener- Advocates

Key structural features

Sub-categories: Flexible funding networks, advocates and knowledge producers

  • Convener-Advocates provide key spaces to nurture peer-to-peer influencing, especially among the more traditional bilateral and philanthropic funders.
  • Convener-Advocates do not typically fund grantee partners, but many offer funding to flexible funders to assist with organisational development and learning, including through peer-to-peer learning grants.
Scaling and replication
  • This model is highly replicable and, funding dependent, scalable – most Convener-Advocates operate either nationally or globally, and organisations considering this model should first seek to identify whether they can support existing networks and organisations.

55 See Prospera: International Network of Women’s Funds. Available at: https://prospera-inwf.org/member-funds/#:~:text=Each%20year%2C%20Pros-pera’s%20s%20members,women’s%20organizations%20across%20172%20countries.

56 See the LFS programme website: https://www.leadingfromthesouth.org/about-us

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