Call for applications: African Women’s Development Fund grants

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is issuing grants for feminist change makers with ideas that advance women’s rights and create systemic change. Organisations founded by female creatives including musicians are encouraged to apply.

The pan-African AWDF is a grant-making foundation that supports local, national and regional women’s organisations working towards empowering African women and promoting and realising their rights.

The AWDF will accept projects under the themes below:

• Economic Security and Justice.
• Body and Health Rights.
• Leadership, Participation and Peace.

The AWDF supports organisations that meet the following criteria:

• Women-led, with a majority of women staff and board.
• A stated commitment to supporting women and/or advancing women’s rights/gender equality in their mission/vision.
• Organisations registered in any African country and working at the local, national, sub-regional or regional African levels.

Project implementation could take the following forms:

• Campaigns to advance specific women’s rights agendas and law and policy change.
• Training to build core social change and activist skills.
• Action research and knowledge production.
• Alliance and movement-building activities.
• Interventions to change public attitudes on key women’s rights issues.
• Services to advance women’s rights (including legal aid, violence support services, counselling and free medical services for HIV, cancers and other women’s health concerns).
• Income generation activities, which include a focus on increasing women’s understanding of their rights and/or building their social and political leadership.

Requirements

Interested applicants are required to:

• Submit proof to show that they have been in existence for at least three years.
• Submit a write-up to show how the funding proposal fits into the organisation’s overall strategy for the area of work or community in which it is located.
• Submit a write-up to demonstrate how their work fits into either a local, national or regional strategy for African women’s empowerment.
• Have basic systems and structures in place – for example, a constitution, strategic plan and financial reports.
• Have a clear evaluation plan for the project – including what they aim to achieve and change, and measures to track progress.
• Highlight plans for sustainability, including raising additional or further funding to keep the initiative going.
• Be able to demonstrate that they can manage funds and transparently account for them.

Applicants should note:

• Organisations applying for grants of more than $20 000 will be required to provide an audit report conducted by a reputable auditing firm.
• The AWDF will only consider grants amounts less than 50% of an organisation’s annual income, as evident in the latest yearly audit statements.
• The AWDF is not able to transfer funds to organisations based in Sudan, South Sudan or Somalia. However, it supports organisations based in other African countries that are implementing initiatives in these countries.
• Organisations applying to the AWDF for the first time, and past grantees who have not received a grant from the AWDF in the past three years, should send a reference letter and the name and contact information for an additional referee who knows the organisation’s work. Referees may be donors and other organisations, including grantees of the AWDF.

The application deadline is 11 April.

Access the application form here.

View the original call here.