Report on the Seminar organised by the Women’s Trust Fund, London, 8 October 2001

Sources of Funding for Women and Women’s Project 

By Vérène Nicolas, Fellow of the Centre for Human Ecology

The overall purpose of the day was:

The day was also an opportunity to:

Participants’ Areas of Interest/Passions

People’s passions in relation to the day were very diverse. They include:

* Teenage girls;

* Women in prison;

* Social justice and change;

* Education and breaking the cycle of poverty.

* Leadership development of individuals, groups and communities.

* Emphasis on integrity, on changing things, questioning ourselves, which are all values of the women’s movement.

* Making sure that women and women’s ways of working are widely recognised as a force for social change

* Experience of people coming to this country from different cultures.

* Mental health issues.

* Women’s education in its fullest sense (not vocational training);

* Facilitating women’s confidence building and increasing their competence to challenge, act politically and socially, shape the public agenda, priorities and policies; * A better world!

* Rights for sex workers and lesbians.

* Violence against women.

* Refugee women and asylum seekers.

* Understanding intellectually the reasons for women’s status/position and how they effect social change (post-feminism).

* Women’s peacemaking work.

* Having a common language.

* Seeking genuine partnership, shared vision, values, developing trust.

* Discrepancy between the rich and the poor.

* Funding and development of women’s organisations.

* International support for women’s organisations.

* Structures for effective giving. Rural issues.

* Inclusion of back women on agenda and promoting racial justice.

Expectations for the day:

* How to give more effectively to more local/small organisations run by women?

* Can ‘bottom-up’ type funding for small-scale projects make a difference?

* Find out if there is common ground and shared vision as to how to further and inspire ourselves and other women and men to give to women and women’s projects.

* Like to see the seeds of today grow to the next step. Practical and realistic action points at the end of the day.

* Be able to better present the case for funding women’s projects to my colleagues and trustees.

* Find out how to support the most excluded women in creating real change in their local communities.

* Share experiences and frustrations of raising women’s issues at all levels and in different fora. But let’s come up with confident solutions.

* Balance/perspective/enlightenment!

* Share ideas about suitable projects to fund (HQ projects that effect political change)

* Publicise the needs of women prisoners or those in institutions like special hospitals, secure units, immigration detention centres.

* Get inspired about funding women’s oriented projects, especially after realising how badly funded they tend to be.

* Meet other practitioners in the field. Network and forge alliances.

* Understand what are the gaps in statutory funding;

* Share experiences and ideas as to how we can become more effective givers for women’s work.

* Connect with progressive donors in the UK who are interested in funding women’s organisations for social change.

* Want to find out about the kinds of women’s projects there are and whether this is a way in which I wish to direct my personal funding.

* I see the day as part of a strategic development to promote and make visible women’s contribution to social change and secure funding to facilitate this.

* Explore how to make projects self-sufficient

* Share Oxfam’s experience of funding of women’s organisations and gender analysis.

* A new, fresher, and more proactive vision of what the WTF could be putting money into;

Presentations

Vérène Nicolas:

In a way, the report doesn’t bring any significant revelation but confirms a tendency that was already highlighted two decades ago when funding for women started to decrease. This piece of research also provides a picture of the state of funding for women’s work from charitable sources in Britain. This picture is quite dull. Amongst nearly 4,300 trusts mentioned in FunderFinder, only 80 mention women, children, youth, or gender in their guidelines. 4 of the 33 trusts that sent the questionnaire back focus their funding on women. Only 6 of the respondent “mixed” trusts support women’s specific work. (see full report for more details).

A few striking points are worth highlighting for the purpose of today’s seminar:

1. Women are usually mentioned in the trusts’ guidelines, either because they are considered to be marginalised or through the trust’s equal opportunities policy. Women are very rarely included because they or their ways of working are recognised as contributing in a specific or unique way to the resolution of universal problems such as poverty, violence or the destruction of the environment.

2. Most funders that were interviewed recognise that women’s issues are grossly under-funded. The main reasons for that may be a backlash against feminism, the fact that, generally, women don’t get their voice heard and because of a certain scepticism about women’s ways of working.

3. It also seems that women’s organisations don’t manage to convince funders with hard evidence of the difference that women-led initiatives make in communities. This highlights a responsibility on the side of women’s organisations too. Therefore, on one hand, funders don’t include women in their guidelines because they don’t see the importance of their work in the wider context of poverty and injustice. But on the other hand, there also seems to be a lack of ability from women’s organisations to think strategically and “sell” their approach and contribution.

4. Only one of the major trusts interviewed in the research, has a Gender programme which is unique amongst charitable organisations in the UK. The overall strategic aim of this programme is “to enable women to specifically seek to achieve women’s equality and women’s rights in the creation of an equal and democratic society”. One of the three objectives set up to achieve this aim is “to provide project support for new ideas and strategies that promote improvements to gender equality and women’s rights on the political and public agenda with national impact”.

Interestingly, it seems that the “relevant” demand for this programme (i.e. applications that fit the criteria) hasn’t been as great as for other programmes of this trust.

5. The section on funding organisations working abroad shows that these trusts or foundations strongly recognised that women are a force for social change and that supporting women’s work is essential to create a just and sustainable society. In other words they believe that supporting women has a wider effect on society.

These organisations are usually innovative, they develop new models of philanthropy, and are involved in more than funding projects. In particular, they tend to attract funds from businesses, individuals and statutory organisations. They therefore act as channels of funds from various sources. They also organise educational events to raise awareness about women’s issues and the importance of supporting women’s projects. Lastly, they offer and deliver training for wealthy individuals to encourage and help them to give their money for social change.

British trusts appear rather conservative in comparison. They are reasons for this. We may want to have a discussion on these in one of the groups this afternoon. We may also want to look at whether or not some of these models could be applied in a British context.

A few questions to conclude:

1. What makes it worthwhile to fund women’s projects? Do we actually believe that women play a unique (catalysing?) role to bring about change in today’s society?

2. Organisations working abroad do recognise women as a force for social change. Why is it not the case in Britain? Are women in developing countries different? Do they play a more visible role in their community? How can we make women more visible amongst funders and policy-makers in Britain?

3. How can we set patterns and examples (to borrow a useful Quaker expression) to inspire other funders and give maximum effect to our input?

4. Can we develop new models of philanthropy that will gather more funding for women’s projects? Can we learn from initiatives working in the developing world? Can we inspire more wealthy women and men to give money to women’s projects?

5. How can we support women’s organisations in being more strategic and in being able to sell their projects better? How can we help them to make better gender analysis?

Siobhan Riordan:

Siobhan is an experienced fundraiser, a “voluntary sector consultant”, a trainer on leadership issues and a researcher within the University of East London.  Siobhan highlighted the connections between issues of funding, strategic thinking and research on women’s issues. She then talked of some of the findings from her research on women’s organisations.

The challenges facing women's organisations are not only because they are concerned with improving the status and situation of women.  Many of the challenges come from the fact that the majority of these organisations are found within the voluntary sector.  The voluntary sector is constantly struggling to create sustainable funding bases in the face of short-term contracts, one-year funding regimes, inadequate core funding and insufficient capacity. 

Research from across the world has demonstrated that the activists and principal agents of change in a community are women.  The community has long been the domain of women.  The problem lies with a failure to recognise this force for social change and to harness it into the policy agenda.  Siobhan gave an example of this kind of "policy exclusion" from the government's Neighbourhood Renewal Policy which mentions women only three times throughout the whole strategy. 

Consistently, research has demonstrated that when women are explicitly named as beneficiaries in public and funding policies, funds reach women's organisations.  When women are excluded women's organisations face particular difficulties in accessing funding opportunities.

This is because of the low status of women's issues, a failure to recognise the benefits of gender specific work and the isolation and marginalisation of organisations that represent women's interests, concerns and aspirations. 

There are two strategic issues to confront in increasing the power and influence of women's organisations:

Practical Needs

(1)         providing support to increase capacity and develop leadership within and between organisations

Strategic Needs

(2)     ensuring women become named beneficiaries in public funding opportunities and developing funding strategies targeted at women's interests.

At a strategic level, we need to establish:

(1) A National Database of women’s organisations

·        To breakdown isolation between women's organisations

·        Create evidence-based practice from the experience of women's organisations and women in the community

·        Demonstrate the value and contribution of women's organisations and women in the community.

(2) Participation opportunities

·        Leadership development within women's organisations

·        Capacity development to ensure organisations have the time and resources to participate in the policy arena.

(3) Women’s Strategic Funding Alliance

·        Pool resources between women with wealth

·        Support capacity & leadership development through creating funding opportunities

·        Support "naming" women as beneficiaries

·        Representing women's funding interests with other funders. 

Private funders can take a lead in establishing a strategic alliance to increase women's power and influence in public life.

Siobhan concluded her presentation by touching on findings from the survey that the University of East London is presently carrying out amongst 400 women’s organisations in the UK.  Further information about the research can be obtained from:

Riordan S (2000) “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - Public Funding of Women’s Organisations”, in Gender & Development, Oxfam, Oxford, UK.  Volume 8 Number 1 March 2000 pp 63-70.

Riordan S (1998) “Organisations of the Women’s Movement: Countering Invisibility” in Dimensions of the Voluntary Sector: Key Facts, Figures, Analysis & Trends, 1998 Edition, Charities Aid Foundation, Kent, UK.

Centre for Institutional Studies, University of East London, 020 8223 4203

Small Group Discussions:

Based on people’s areas of interest, four topics for discussion were offered to the participants: 1) Funding Effectively: Identifying the areas worth supporting as women’s projects; 2) Partnership: relationship between funder and funded - How to get it right? 3) Making the case for funding women’s work 4) Leadership, visibility and strategy.

FUNDING EFFECTIVELY: Identifying the areas worth supporting as women’s projects

This group focused on strategic benefits of funding women’s projects and the problems faced by funders in relation to funding women’s projects.

Women’s projects: a definition?

1. They are run by women for women
2. They are run by women for others
3. They are run for women and with women in control
4. They include a perspective of change for women (not just service provision)

Women have a) practical, b) strategic needs (education can be both). In projects, it’s really important to acknowledge women and men as different.

Funding programmes may need a different marketing to reach women properly. This includes making sure that the language is truly inclusive. Working with young girls was also recognised as important.

The problem of reinforcing stereotypes was raised by the group, e.g. women and health and it was felt that there is a real need to look beyond these stereotypes.

Parallels with development funding were also drawn:

The challenge for funders is to find suitable projects like Braendam Link (Glasgow) which is a women-led initiative to combat poverty and reaches mixed groups; Other examples included an arts project in prison, Fawcett, Kings Cross Women’s Centre.

These projects are usually found by word of mouth – This is true, for example, for the Women’s Budget Group that monitors national budgets from a gender perspective at Westminster and Scottish Parliament levels. Engendering Change in Scotland is another example of a project found by word of mouth.

Another challenge facing funders may be to initiate projects – no one has done this yet!

It was recognised that finding projects can be difficult. The Women’s Trust Fund advertise for projects. MamaCash goes out into communities. They are big enough to afford to do it and have also diverse staff. This means that they have “multiple ears”.

Monitoring projects was another issue raised by the group. MamaCash research the project and area of funding before deciding on a grant and do an in-depth evaluation afterwards. An idea may be to give very small grants and look for start-up groups and projects.

The group wished to start networking about the following issues:

… recognising also that this group needs to grow.

Many trusts are not able to fund strategically for women – it’s not in their remit. It is important to network with trusts that don’t have women in their guidelines or criteria. The group felt it needed to take responsibility to reach these trusts.

In brief, we need:

1)      To network information about projects and agencies;

2)      To define criteria to identify good women’s projects – strategic (impact on policy, move beyond stereotypes, look at structural issues);

3)      To actively look for projects; they don’t all naturally apply;

4)      To tap into established lists or organisations (ACF, DSC, CAF etc.) and use new technologies more effectively (Internet etc.)

PARTNERSHIPS: The relationship of funders + funded. How to get it right?

MAKING THE CASE

1)     A seminar for funders and fundseekers on women’s funds;

2)     Setting up a women’s fundraising network;

3)     Encouraging trusts to establish specific or ring-fenced funds for women.

LEADERSHIP, VISIBILITY and STRATEGY

The discussion of this group led to looking at setting up a “strategic network” based on the following principles:

1. Private funders have independence and therefore freedom to think strategically;
2. A lot more trusts and private donors need to be convinced of the effectiveness of giving to women. They also need help to identify gaps;
3. A strong rationale based on evidence is needed to improve funding for women (mainly through research and education). We can build on research at international level on the role of women as a force for social change;
4. Strong links need to be established between women’s organisations, between funders and between women’s organisations and funders; A national database of women’s organisations would be a very useful tool to advance the cause of women in the UK.
5. The propagation of information is seen as a key element to improve funding for women’s work;
6. A powerful strategic voice is needed to make sure that women are placed at the heart of relevant policies and funding programmes;
7. The dominant prejudice that “women are ok” needs to be challenged successfully;
8. Things don’t change so quickly: we need a long-term commitment to improving funding sources for women.

The “Strategic Network” was imagined as follows:

         1)     It would have a funding face;

2)     Its activities would be informed by research to give it credibility and be able to inform other trusts, decision-makers and public funders;

3)     It would have a strategic voice;

The steps to create a “strategic network”:

            1)     We have met each other today;

2)     We have established a common ground (we are sharing the same values and understand the issues at stake);

3)     Need to set up an email list;

4)     Send reports (research and day) to those who were interested but couldn’t make it today;

5)     Get commitments from the group;

6)     Set up a smaller group which task will be to organise a review meeting in 6 months time;

7)     And, eventually, set up “Funder Birds”, the Strategic Network?

Action-Plan

 Members of the Women’s Trust Fund thanked the participants for taking part in this inspirational day and wished that we would all meet again in 6 months time for a review day.