Alianza Members: Closing the Trust Gap

Organized by HRFN and Alianza Socioambiental Fondos del Sur

For years, our Advancing Human Rights research has signaled disparities in how funders in the Global North are resourcing human rights organizations and movements in their own regions versus those based in other parts of the world, such as Latin America or Sub-Saharan Africa. Our new report finds that organizations in the Global South and East have considerably less access to funding—including flexible funding—even when funders are supporting initiatives meant to impact their regions. The gap exceeds what would be explained by laws and regulations governing financial systems alone and requires honest reflection—on bias, grantmaking practices, and the field-wide impact of implicit ideas about who is trusted to lead change.

At the same time, our findings illustrate the crucial—but often overlooked—role that community and movement-based grantmakers in the Global South and East play in moving resources to groups on the front lines of efforts to claim and defend rights. They also raise questions about the barriers grantmakers in the Global South and East face.

During this briefing for Alianza members, we will explore the findings and discuss opportunities to use them to bring more resources to the Global South and East.

This briefing is for Alianza members.

Spanish interpretation and English closed captioning will be available.

Contact us at community@hrfn.org if you are interested in a briefing on our research for your community.