OUR
ACTIVITIES
The Alliance is the only pooled fund focusing on gender equality in Europe. The initiative emerged from broad consultations with the women’s sector, including women’s funds, civil society organisations, and corporate and private donors. We engage a diversity of funders, whether they have experience giving to gender equality or not and facilitate collaboration, mutual learning and increased impact.
GRANTMAKING
The Alliance implements regular calls for proposals and their focus is discussed and agreed by members.
Supporting long term structural issues of gender equality in Europe such as gender-based violence, access to economic resources, access to education and training, environment and listening to the field to identify emerging issues.
Ensuring a geographic distribution of grants across Europe to underscore that there is a need to improve gender equality in all regions while responding to specific geographic needs.
Focusing on small, frontline organisations working on gender equality led by people with lived experiences who are acknowledged experts in the field. We believe this approach help us engage with previously overlooked actors who are close to the problems they seek to address.
Where needed, providing unrestricted core support to increase organisational development, resilience and sustainability.
Using streamlined and flexible processes to adapt to the capacity of small organisations and to reduce barriers to participation.
Complementing the work of other funders working on gender equality in Europe and to address gaps.
LEARNING
The Alliance is committed to being a learning organisation engaging with the sector to strengthen our impact.
This commitment unfolds with the following activities :
FUNDING +
The Alliance wishes to support its grantee partners beyond grant making and by:
• Connecting grantees amongst themselves, with other CSOs working in the field and with the Alliance funders
• Inspiring grantees through dedicated spaces and moments for peer-learning on organisational development or on gender equality trends in Europe
• Building capacity of grantees with trainings on organisational development or on gender equality trends in Europe or other thematic needs that can emerge.
• The Funding+ activities are needs-driven and reflect the priorities and needs expressed by grantees.
LEARNING, MONITORING & EVALUATION FOR SYSTEMS CHANGE
The Alliance applies a system change approach to Learning, Monitoring & Evaluation composed by the following characteristics :
• Organised around nearer- term learning questions that would help the team make progress on the dilemmas it’s facing now, with a much lighter focus on pre-set, long-term outcomes that are likely to take many years to come to fruition.
• Capture data about both expected and unanticipated signals of change (or lack thereof).
• Support a routine habit of using that data to inform strategy adaptations. Is flexible enough to change easily as the strategy evolves.
EXTERNAL EXPERTISE
The Alliance is relying on the support of an advisory committee to advise the strategy and a selection committee to select the grantees. Both bodies are made of external gender experts (including from CSOs and women’s funds) benefiting from their expertise covering the diversity of local contexts in Europe and the wide topic ranges included in gender equality.
