Community Voices Blog

Are You Over or Under-Protecting Your Grants Data? 5 Ways to Balance Transparency and Data Protection in Sensitive Contexts

By Laia Griñó, Director of Data Discovery at Foundation Center

Over the last few months, this blog has presented insights gained from the Advancing Human Rights initiative’s five-year trend analysis. Getting to these insights would not have been possible had not a growing number of funders decided to consistently share more detailed data about their grantmaking, such as through Foundation Center’s eReporting program. In a… Read more

Where are the Gaps, Opportunities, and Challenges? Comparing funding trends from the women’s funds community

By Augusta Hagen-Dillon, Program Officer at Prospera, published March 8, 2018

Prospera – International Network of Women’s Funds brings together 37 women’s funds located in 33 countries. Together these funds give grants in 173 countries to support organizations, groups, and movements that seek to advance the rights of women, girls, and trans* people globally. They share a set of values and approaches based in feminist philanthropy,… Read more

Funding and Building Power Across Movements

By Yumi Sera, Director of Partnerships and Communications at Disability Rights Fund, published February 21, 2018

  With support from funders and with the groundswell of one billion persons with disabilities demanding their rights, I am confident we can redefine how we talk about rights, inclusion, equity, and diversity. Last week, I was invited to a conversation at the Human Rights Funders Network to give context to five years of funding… Read more

Human Rights and the Sustainable Development Goals: Are the SDGs living up to their promise to leave no one behind?

By Inga Ingulfsen (Research Analyst, Global Partnerships) and Anna Koob (Knowledge Services Manager) at Foundation Center

Much has been made of the commitment to human rights principles reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 goals covering a range of social and economic issues to guide the global development agenda through 2030. Rooted in a promise “to leave no one behind” and seeking to “envisage a world of… Read more

A view from London: three questions to answer from the Advancing Human Rights trends data

By David Sampson, Deputy Director at The Baring Foundation

The Baring Foundation is based in London, and two-thirds of its funding goes to organizations in the United Kingdom. When we are thinking about human rights, our focus can often be local: how do we engage with the politics of Brexit to ensure a robust human rights framework? What is the future of the Human… Read more

The Missing Piece of the Puzzle – Using Data to Improve Funding Practice

By Lorena Klos, Communications and Events Manager at Ariadne

Marie Curie once said, ‘’You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most… Read more

Breaking Barriers to Participation: Five Years of Participatory Grantmaking at the Red Umbrella Fund

By Jurre Anema at Red Umbrella Fund, published November 3, 2017

This piece was originally published on the Red Umbrella Fund’s website. In the past half year I had the honor of writing my thesis at the Red Umbrella Fund office in Amsterdam. I was introduced to the global movement of sex worker rights activists and had the opportunity to speak with some of the great… Read more

HRFN is headed to Mexico City in 2018

Our members have spoken. Coming in first with the most votes, Mexico City will host HRFN’s next conference! HRFN is constantly evolving to better reflect the diversity in our funder community. We are very excited to hold our first-ever conference in the Global South and will be actively partnering with our Mexico-based members throughout the process. This… Read more

The Challenge of Creating Human Rights Heroes

By Lesley Carson, Director of the International Human Rights Program at Wellspring Advisors LLC

The recent uproar about State Counsellor and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence in the face of the Myanmar military’s campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya minority touches on one of the more confounding challenges for human rights funders. Communications experts affirm that we need compelling spokespeople who represent the… Read more

Lessons from a Frequent Conference Flyer

By Merrill Sovner, Research Fellow, Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at The Graduate Center at City University of New York

I had the pleasure of attending three conferences of international philanthropy and funder support networks in 2017, at a time when it felt the world had changed around us. While the conferences represent three different groupings with different audiences, they also share many overlapping values, attendees, and discussions. So, I thought it would be worthwhile… Read more