Annual Report 2023
Evolution and Roles of Women Win
Sixteen years ago, Women Win was established as a women’s fund to address the lack of girl-centred sports programming, positioning ourselves at the intersection of girls’ and women’s rights and sports for development.
Our dedication to championing girls’ rights through sports transformed and evolved into the dynamic GRLS brand. Recognising the need to support adolescent girls and young women entering the workforce, in 2019 we were joined by Win-Win Strategies as our second sister brand, leveraging our strong partnerships across women’s rights organisations and the corporate sector to deliver on this mission. Most recently, we launched Ignita, answering the critical need for new philanthropic models that are deeply rooted in feminist values and effectively support women’s and feminist movements. The Women Win umbrella unites the three sister brands under a shared vision: a future where every girl and woman exercises their rights.
In recent years, the way Women Win considers the impact of our work has shifted, acknowledging the need for a more comprehensive, systemic perspective and focusing on the ways in which we contribute towards the broader gender justice movements.
Throughout Women Win’s evolution, we have been dedicated to being a learning organisation, honouring our partners and predecessors, whose insights have steered us toward more decolonised, decentralised, feminist and democratic approaches that base Women Win’s work in all three of our brands. We are excited to keep learning, responding and adapting to the needs and together with our partners, including activists, groups and women’s funds that form part of the gender justice movement.
In our exploration on how to best support this movement, we identified four roles: Resourcer, Connector, Space Holder and Cultivator. In 2023, we have shown up in those roles through:
- harnessing our strengths in grantmaking, feminist intermediary approaches and fiscal sponsorship for effective resourcing
- connecting diverse stakeholders and holding space for transparent dialogues in order to shift power, deepen learning, promote collaboration, foster innovation and propel collective action
- advancing the collective impact and knowledge of the gender justice movement by cultivating valuable, transformative ideas, tools and resources
resourcer
connector
space holder
cultivator
Resourcer
Resourcing individual activists, groups and organisations safely and quickly, to sustain the gender justice movement.
Our grantmaking strategies are evolving to:
- Expand our approach to include more diverse geographies and contexts
- Fund ‘non-traditional’ partners such as individuals, unregistered groups and social enterprises
- Advocate for and actively embed participatory grantmaking processes
- Develop our own internal processes that enable us to better support other organisations and groups as an intermediary or fiscal sponsor
In 2023, we have:
- Moved unrestricted core support grants to grassroots groups through participatory fund mechanisms
- Acted as a fiscal sponsor and intermediary for other women’s funds and a growing number of emerging feminist initiatives that are resourcing activists, community based organisations and movements around the world
Connector
Women Win seeks to bring together diverse movement stakeholders and foster meaningful cross-sectoral partnerships.
In 2023, we have:
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- Expanded existing cross-sectoral partnerships to include more implementing partners and funders, and deliver the programmes in new geographies
- Prioritised youth activists as effective co-owners of collaborative processes, by applying and exploring feminist, participatory, democratic and decolonised values and approaches
- Facilitated the formation and launch of the floriculture Community of Practice, as the result of four years of partnership building between the involved Women’s Rights Organisations and private sector stakeholders
Space Holder
Holding spaces for open and transparent dialogues between movement stakeholders to ensure a deeper understanding of the various contexts in which we are working and drive collective action.
Women Win leverages feminist and decolonised mechanisms to share learnings and shift power.
In 2023, we have:
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- Supported and participated in deep learning, community building, knowledge co-creation and exchange among diverse groups to influence feminist movements by reflecting on feminist participatory grantmaking, intersectional and decolonial organisational practices
- Collaborated with sister funds to reimagine and co-create a non-written narrative reporting approach, enabling disruption of the power dynamics perpetuated by typical funder reporting requirements
- Implemented the Resilience Fund Learning Hub to engage diverse global supply chain stakeholders who do not typically interact with one another, incorporate innovative components such as geospatial mapping and facilitate discussions on a variety of topics including organisational resilience, innovative implementation methods and strategic approaches to fundraising.
Cultivator
Women Win designs and co-creates tools and resources, as well as actively amplifies those of our partners, by collating and documenting transformative approaches and key learnings, then sharing these as open-source tools and resources, to build collective knowledge that advances the gender justice movement.
In 2023, we have:
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- Designed and implemented mental health courses and programmes to increase coaches capacity to support the mental health and wellbeing of girls and young women
- Co-conducted and published a research on how mental health and wellbeing is understood by women who work in garment value chains, using play-based methodology to stimulate open conversations with 150 factory workers
Our Partners
Impact
