Our grant application process for new grants reflects our participatory grantmaking ethos. This means that we have shifted decision-making about our grants from our staff to the communities we aim to serve: namely women, girls, trans people and intersex people who are creating a more just and joyous world.
All applicants who apply during our grantmaking window from our Resilience Fund will be invited to participate in helping us to set some of our priorities for the year’s round of grantmaking. This input will be part of your application form and these priorities will inform the grantmaking decision making process. Mama Cash will continue to set the criteria for eligibility, and staff will screen all of the applications to ensure only applications by eligible groups will be sent to the Community Committee, our participatory grantmaking decision-making body run for and by activists. After the applications have been screened, a committee reflecting the communities we aim to serve will review the applications and make the final decisions on who our new grantee-partners will be.
We are excited to have developed this model, which we believe will enable us to not only gather meaningful input from our partners, but also hand back decision making power to the feminist activists and movements that we aim to serve.
