Our Funding & Strategies

Channel provides grants to organizations and projects that specifically champion women’s human rights and feminist movements.

  • Please Note: The Channel Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals. New proposals are considered by invitation only.

Refreshing Our Strategy

As explained further in our 2026 announcement about Channel’s refreshed website, we’re excited to share how our new look honors the headwaters of our history, celebrates our impact, and represents our streamlined strategy. 

Given the turbulent times we find ourselves in, Channel stands fast in its commitment to the movements for gender equality around the globe. So too do we remain focused on our longtime areas of interest and on partnership funding models that center those closest to the front lines of social change.

The main shift is one towards greater support and focus on newer and younger organizations or initiatives where the size of our grants, and indeed the full spectrum of our support, can make a real difference.

 How We Work

In addition to making grants to organizations engaged in combating gender inequality, we engage in collaboration and advocacy with an international network of women’s rights organizations and funders, in order to ensure that women’s rights are respected, protected, and fulfilled.

We also aim to promote paradigm shifts in the world and in activism itself, including encouraging more sustainable practice that centers collective care and is accountable to feminist movements.

 

Types of Work We Fund

Additional Information

What We Do Not Fund
  • Individuals
  • Service delivery projects
  • Programs that promote religious beliefs
  • Capital campaigns or electoral campaigns
Grant Amounts
Channel Foundation grants have ranged from US $2,000- $50,000.
Our Focus Areas
Group of women listening 10th Annual FIMI Conference in Guatamala City

Global School of Leadership for Indigenous Women

Our Strategies Beyond Grantmaking

Channel engages in many strategies beyond grantmaking to further our mission.

We participate in international, regional, national, and local networks and convenings of women’s human rights activists and donors to make informed, collaborative, and strategic funding decisions. (See our Affiliations and their convenings).

We promote exchange and collaboration between activists, educators, and community leaders from the Global South and East. (See partners FRIDA, ICAN and RESURJ amongst others).

We increase support for global women’s human rights in the U.S. to encourage a connected and engaged citizenry and a stronger global movement by creating events and shining a spotlight on the work of our partners. (See Events we have organized and co-hosted.)

We encourage inclusion of women from historically marginalized communities in the programs and organizations we support. (See our Indigenous and Disability Rights Focus Areas).

We influence philanthropy and the donor community via events, peer exchange and publications featuring our partners and highlighting our Focus Areas and approach to grantmaking. (eg. Gender and Global Grantmaking Initiative,  Global Donors Exchange, and Events).

“[S]mall, localized and isolated efforts that cannot be scaled up to mobilize a larger number of women and their communities against gender discrimination, are not sustainable: we cannot rest content with small islands of change in a sea of oppressive patriarchal cultures. We also know that going to scale by merely converting millions of women into project “beneficiaries” rather than agents of change, is also not a transformative strategy – so conscious and systematic movement building, by empowering women to become conscious actors in a social change process, is vital.”

Srilatha Batliwala, Association for Women’s Rights in Development, in “A Transformative Strategy: The True Value of Investing in Women’s Rights.”