Feminist activists have the vision and the power to transform the world. But they often lack the funding, supportive networks, and access to learning opportunities they need to maximise the impact they have and transform their communities and nations. Mama Cash’s mission is to fill that gap.
Mama Cash provides funding and accompaniment support to courageous and inspiring feminist activists worldwide. We make grants to groups and movements that have the conviction and tenacity to speak out, tell their stories and demand justice, no matter the obstacles. We are building the power and strength of the international women’s funding movement by supporting sister women’s funds worldwide.
Leading their own movements
We aim to put resources in the hands of activists who are advancing their own rights and building their own movements for social change. We prioritise groups led by people working together to address issues they experience directly, like domestic workers who are collectively organising for decent work, or trans people who are building a movement to secure bodily autonomy.
Our Funds
We provide all of our grantmaking through five participatory grantmaking Funds: The Solidarity Fund, The Resilience Fund, The Revolution Fund and the Radical Love Fund.
- The Resilience Fund is our largest grantmaking program and will provide core, flexible grants to self-led groups, collectives and organisations of women, girls, trans people and intersex people who work to build collective power, claim justice and create, sustain or revive ways of living that are just and fair. Grants will be made with the intention of renewing for multiple years, whenever possible. Renewal grants to Women’s Funds will also be made from the Resilience Fund. Additionally, our accompaniment grants will continue to provide grantee partners with opportunities to strengthen their skills, knowledge and networks. The Community Committee (COM COM), Mama Cash’s participatory grantmaking decision-making body run for and by activists with experience in feminist movements, makes the decisions about who receives funding from the Resilience Fund.
- The Revolution Fund is a new fund that supports timely, one-off initiatives that respond to or create an opportunity for change, enable a reaction to an urgent need, or seed a new project or idea.
- The Radical Love Fund is a new fund that will support individual feminist activists with grants for up to two years to do feminist activism by coordinating or catalysing projects. Funding may be related to personal-political work, creative enterprises, learning and documenting feminist histories, facilitating networking that strengthens bonds across other groups or movements, and building just realities and futures through practice and sharing. As the Fund is still in development, more information will be shared later in 2022.
- The Solidarity Fund: the Solidarity Fund was built with, for and by our peer women’s funds to strengthen and support the feminist funding ecosystem by providing flexible funding to the global community of women’s funds to build their institutional knowledge, skills and resources.
- The Spark Fund provides grants to strengthen the bold work of communities of women, girls and trans and intersex people working on contested issues in the Netherlands and the ABC and SSS islands.The Spark Fund will be open for applications from 1-31 August, 2022. Please follow this link for more information.
Better funding
Mama Cash is committed to providing better funding. That means flexible, core and longer-term funding that enables groups to plan ahead, and respond to new challenges and opportunities. We believe in the wisdom of the groups we support. We respect their knowledge, understanding and assessment of their own situation. We give them the space to use their money as they see fit. We seek to accompany them as they evolve and learn.
