Mama Cash Grant- Resilience Fund Grant

The Mama Cash Resilience Fund is dedicated to empowering feminist movements globally by providing long-term, flexible funding to groups led by women, girls, and trans and intersex individuals. Established in 1983, Mama Cash supports initiatives that drive social change, ensuring that marginalized communities can pursue their own agendas. The Fund prioritizes smaller organizations, offering an average grant size of €35,000 to enable meaningful activism and foster connections across social justice movements.

Who we are- The first international women’s fund
Mama Cash was the first international women’s fund in the world, established in the Netherlands in 1983. We use our role as a feminist funder, our experience supporting feminist activism, and our geopolitical location in the Netherlands to mobilise and move funding to feminist initiatives, groups, individuals and women’s funds.
Because self-led feminist groups demand the freedom to act on their own visions and strategies
In every corner of the world, courageous feminist activists are working together to build collective power, claim justice, and create, sustain, and revive ways of living that are just and fair. The Resilience Fund – our largest grantmaking programme – aims to resource, support and connect the collective activism of women, girls, and trans and intersex people around the world.
Lasting change comes from the collective activism of those who are structurally excluded, marginalised, exploited and stigmatised
The Resilience Fund supports feminist groups, collectives and initiatives that are founded, led, and/or run by people who belong to the communities whose rights they seek to advance. They are working to advance their own political and social agendas, to build connections across issues and borders, and to strengthen feminist and other social justice movements.
Movement building and structural change take time!
Unrestricted funding and longer-term support are crucial for enabling groups to organise, and to take advantage of or respond effectively to important opportunities and changes in their contexts. That is why the Resilience Fund provides long-term, flexible, core support grants. First-time annual grants are made with the intention of renewing them for multiple years, and Mama Cash typically supports partners for up to ten years.
Powerful movements tackling under-addressed or contested issues often start small
The Resilience Fund gives priority to smaller and emerging groups that are doing critically important work but have limited access to funding. In addition to funding registered, formal organisations, we are open to funding informal or unregistered groups of activists, as well as networks or coalitions. The average grant size under the Resilience Fund is €35,000.
Accompaniment ensures that grantee-partners are equipped to fulfil their missions
Mama Cash also provides accompaniment to all Resilience Fund grantee-partners. Accompaniment can include both financial and non-financial resources. Grantee-partners can use these resources to obtain, improve, retain, build, and sharpen their skills, knowledge, and networks. The accompaniment support we provide corresponds to the specific organisational needs and plans identified by the grantee-partner.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the Resilience Fund, groups and initiatives must:Work from a feminist, women's, girls, trans rights and/or intersex rights perspective
Self-led by the women, girls, trans people and/or intersex people they serve
Promotion of women’s, girls’, trans people's and/or intersex people’s human rights as primary mission
Push for structural and fundamental change
Focus on issues that are under-addressed and/or contestedWomen’s funds are eligible to apply for long-term core funding under the Resilience Fund.Mama Cash funds worldwide, without geographic restrictions. Even though contexts are significantly different, we find that the concerns of some specific groups of women, girls, and trans and intersex people tend to be under-addressed and/or contested in most societies (and social movements).Mama Cash prioritises groups or initiatives that have an annual budget below 200,000 euros.Mama Cash is open to supporting informal, unregistered groups of activists, or networks, or coalitions of organisations.

Ineligibility

Mama Cash does not prioritise providing financial support to larger groups. As a result, among our grantee-partners in the thematic portfolios you will find only very few groups that have annual budgets over 200.000 euros. Mama Cash does not fund the following types of groups, initiatives, or activities:Groups whose mission and/or primary focus are not the promotion of women’s, girls’, trans people's or intersex people’s human rights
Groups whose work focuses primarily on improving the lives of individual women, girls, trans people and/or intersex people without addressing the conditions that give rise to the injustices they face
Groups that actively seek to deny the rights of certain women, girls, trans and intersex people, based on who they are, the work they do or on their position in society
Groups whose primary purpose is development work, humanitarian assistance, or services, such as:Income-generating activities and credit programmes
(In)formal education, literacy programmes and traditional skills training
Providing social, legal or health care servicesGroups led by cis-men
Groups based in the Global North that are executing programmes in or are leading partnerships with groups based in the Global South and East
Groups led by, or structurally or economically dependent on political parties, government agencies, or religious institutions
Businesses
Individuals are not supported through the Resilience FundAcademic research or scholarships
Stand-alone travel grants (costs for travel can, however, be part of broader applications provided they are consistent with the group's mission and strategies)