Mama Cash supports women’s funds with grants under two funding streams: the Resilience Fund and the Solidarity Fund. The Resilience Fund offers core, flexible, long-term grants, while the Solidarity Fund provides one-time grants for institutional strengthening. This year, for the first time since 2018, we will be supporting several new women’s funds through the Resilience Fund. Our focus the past few months has been on preparing for this and we are now developing the participatory process for decision making that will enable us to provide long-term support to several new women’s funds. A next round for the Solidarity Fund will be organised in 2025. Please find more details on both Funds below:
Resilience Fund:
The Resilience Fund provides core, flexible grants to women’s funds with the intention of renewing these grants over multiple years. According to our Strategic Guide 2021-2030, Mama Cash is dedicated to supporting new and emerging women’s funds. In the coming weeks, we will invite eligible women’s funds to apply to the Resilience Fund. We will reach out to new women’s funds established in the last 10 years that were either eligible for our Solidarity Fund or have contacted us since 2021, the start of our Strategic Guide, about funding opportunities. We will offer grants of 60,000 euro to five women’s funds with the intention to renew the funding for up to ten years. Our grant decisions will be made using a participatory approach.
After careful consideration, we have decided this year to invite eligible women’s funds to apply rather than organising a call for applications. One key reason in this decision is that it has been several years since we last supported several new women’s funds through our Resilience Fund, with the last time being in 2018. We believe it is more beneficial to proceed with a process that allows us to support five new women’s funds this year, rather than delaying it until we can facilitate an open call for applications. In line with our participatory grantmaking ethos, we want to be deliberate and intentional in designing a call for applications for women’s funds, which will take some time to set up. We also need to establish the processes required to review the larger number of applications we anticipate with a call for applications. Moving forward, our aim is to have a call for applications for new women’s funds every three years, transitioning from inviting women’s funds to apply to organising an open call for applications for new women’s funds.
Renewal grants for Mama Cash’s 12 current women’s funds partners in our Resilience Fund will continue as usual.
Solidarity Fund
The Solidarity Fund focuses on supporting the organisational needs of women’s funds. Since 2020, Mama Cash has held yearly open calls for this Fund. However, in 2024, there will be no call for applications for the Solidarity Fund. We plan to resume the open call for the Solidarity Fund in 2025.
For further questions, please contact wf@mamacash.org