6 Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) across Western and Southeastern Europe have in their lifetime researched, campaigned, participated in and advanced peace and women’s rights movements be it through political and social activism or through dance. We are grateful for the legacy they have left. Please join AWID in honoring these women, their activism and legacy by sharing the memes below with your colleagues, networks and friends and by using the hashtags #WHRDTribute and #16Days.

Please click on each image below to see a larger version and download as a file

See Our 2015 WHRD Tribute

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us via the form here, indicating “WITM Survey” as the title of your message. You can also write to us at witm@awid.org.

A framework for your research will guide throughout your research process, and the framing document you develop can also serve as a concept note to advisors and partners, and a funding proposal to potential donors.

Before conducting any research:

• Set the goals of your research
• List the key questions you want your research to answer
• Write out the type of data you will need to obtain and review to answer your key questions
• Define the final products you will produce with your research

Your research framing may evolve over time as you refine your questions and gather new information. However, building an initial research framing will allow you to work from a solid foundation.

Goals

To create a strong foundation for your WITM research, it is important to clarify what you hope to accomplish.

For example, one goal of AWID’s WITM global research was to provide rigorous data to prove what we already knew anecdotally: that women’s rights organizations are discrepantly underfunded. With this data, we felt we would be better positioned to influence funders in their decision-making.

Your goals could be to:

• Generate hard data on funding realities and trends to prove or disprove existing myths.
• Gain deeper insight into differences between the perspectives of donors and women’s rights organizations.
• Influence donors in grant-making.
• Add crucial input to key funding debates.
• Explore collaboration between donors and women’s rights organizations on issues that emerge from the research.

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Key questions

Frame your research process with key questions that only your research can answer and limit those questions to a specific time frame (e.g. past five years, past year, etc.).

Consider the following points:

• What exactly do you want to learn more about and what is the hypothesis you would like to test? Writing this out will assist you in your thought process.
• Is there existing research on this? If research already exists, it may not make sense to conduct new WITM research unless you feel like the existing research is not extensive or specific enough.  
• What time frame do you want to cover in your analysis? For example, will your research analyze only the past year, or several previous years, such as the past five years?
• Are you planning to repeat your survey to collect data in the future?

Choosing a specific timeframe for your research can result in more precise findings than working with an open-ended timeframe. Also, deciding whether you will repeat this research at regular intervals will allow you to set up data collection benchmarks for easy replication and comparison over time.

These were the key questions that guided AWID’s WITM research process:

• What is the current state of women’s organizations’ financial sustainability across the world?
• What external and internal trends are impacting donors’ funding decisions to support women’s organizations and movements?

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Type of data

Now that you determined your key questions, you can determine what kind of data will help you answer your key questions. This will allow you to plan the rest of your schedule for your WITM research.

For example, will you conduct a survey that covers an extensive portion of your priority population? Will you analyze the applications that funders are receiving from a certain region? Will you also conduct interviews (recommended)? By determining the types of data you need, you can reach out to external parties who will provide this data early on, and plot out your full schedule accordingly. Some suggested sources of data could be:

• Surveys you create for women’s rights organizations and donors
• Application and grantmaking data from donors funding cycles
• Interviews of prominent activists, organizations, and donors
• Donor data from membership organizations and networks, such as  the Foundation Center, regional or national donor affinity groups.

Diverse data sets are a great way to create robust and rich analysis.

The data from AWID’s 2011 Global Survey formed the backbone of our analysis in Watering the Leaves, Starving the Roots report. However, we also collected data from interviews and interactions with several actors in the field, ranging from donors to activists and women’s rights organizations.

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Final products

In addition to allowing you to set your schedule, creating an initial plan of what products you will develop will also allow you to work out what resources you need.

For example, will you only produce a long research report or will you also create infographics, brochures and presentations? Depending on your products, you may need to hire a design firm, plan events and so on.

These products will also be the tools you use to achieve your goals, so it is important to keep those goals in mind. For example, is your WITM research exclusively intended as an advocacy tool to influence funders? In that case, your products should allow you to engage with funders at a deep level.

 Some sample products:

• Long report for dissemination with key funders and organizations.
  Historically, AWID WITM research has centered on a long report, from which AWID distilled other smaller products  - see rest of list.
• Infographic for viral distribution online
• Short animation demonstrating key findings
• Short brochure(s) distilling your findings and messages
• Articles and blog posts on key findings to draw interest to your larger report
• Seminars or webinars presenting key findings.

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Conclusion: Framing your research will give you the big picture

Framing your research to cover goals, key questions, types of data, and final products will allow you to create a well-planned schedule, prepare your resources in advance, and plan a realistic budget.

This will make interactions with external partners easier and allow you to be nimble when unexpected setbacks occur.

Previous step

1. Gather your resources

Next step

3. Design your survey

Estimated time:

• 1 month

People needed:

• 1 or more Research person(s)

Resources available:

• AWID Research Framing: sample 1
• AWID Research Framing: sample 2

Previous step

1. Gather your resources

Next step

3. Design your survey

Ready to Go? Worksheet

Download the toolkit in PDF

Escucha la historia aquí:

Interviews produce in-depth information that you cannot easily obtain from surveys. While surveys focuses mainly on quantifiable data and closed questions, interviews allow for expert opinions from activists and donors, and open-ended questions which can provide context to survey data results.

In this section

• General tips
  1. Before conducting your interviews
  2. During the interviews
• Specialized interviews
  1. Donor interviews
  2. Women’s rights organizations and activists interviews
• Preliminary findings

General tips

1. Before conducting your interviews

Send the interviewees a concept note with your objectives for the interview and for your overall research, as well as a list of questions.

This allows them to prepare answers for more complicated questions and look up information that they may not have immediately on hand.

2. During the interviews

• You can conduct interviews while your survey is running, in order to save time.
• Try to keep your interviews as consistent as possible in order to facilitate systematic analysis of results. This means asking the same questions. Coding identical responses to each question will allow you to uncover hidden trends.
• The interviews can also be used to flesh out some of the survey findings

Do not base your questions on assumptions about your interviewees’ knowledge.
Instead, first clarify what they know – this will reveal information as well.

• DON’T: “Given the current funding trends in Switzerland, do you know of any opportunities for collaboration? This question assumes that the interviewee knows current funding trends and that their understanding of funding trends matches yours.
• DO: First ask “What is your understanding of current funding trends in Switzerland?”, followed by “Do you know of any opportunities for collaboration?” This will reveal what their understanding is, giving you even more information than the first question.

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Specialized interviews

1. Donor interviews

Interviews with donors will allow you to build deeper relationships with them, which will be useful when you conduct post-research advocacy. They will also provide you with deeper insight into funders’ decision-making processes.

Suggested topics of focus for donor interviews:

• What are their funding priorities? Why and how did they select those priorities? For example, why do they choose project-funding over core support or vice versa?
• What are annual amounts allocated to the advancement of women’s human rights? This will strengthen overall reliability of data collected.
• Have they noticed any funding trends, and what do they believe are the origins and politics behind these trends?
• What is their theory of social change and how does that impact their relationships with women’s rights organizations?

View samples of donor interviews

2. Women’s rights organizations and activists interviews

Interviews with women’s rights organizations and activists will provide you with insight into their on-the-ground realities. Again, these interviews will allow you to build deeper relationships that can be incorporated into your advocacy, particularly to encourage collaboration between donors and activists.

Suggested topics of focus for women’s rights organizations and activist interviews:

• Long-term funding priority trends noted by women’s organizations and their impact.
• Successful examples of feminist and collaborative resource mobilization strategies that build strong and complementary movements.
• “Making the case” for why it is important to support women’s organizations and organizing.
• How different actors understand the social change process and their role in advancing/achieving gender equality and women’s rights.

View samples of women’s organizations and activists interviews

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Preliminary findings

Through the course of your WITM research, we recommend analyzing your preliminary findings. Presenting your preliminary findings opens up opportunities to conduct more interviews and get feedback on your research process and initial results. This feedback can be incorporated into your final research.

AWID conducts “WITM convenings” to share preliminary results of survey data and interviews. These gatherings allow participants (activists, women’s rights organizations, and donors) to debate and discuss the results, clarifying the context, creating more ownership amongst members of the movement, and providing more input for final research.

For example, the Resource Mobilization Hub for Indigenous Women’s Rights at the World Summit on Indigenous Philanthropy was used as a space to debut preliminary results.

See the presentation given at the RMH

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Previous step

4. Collect and analyze your data

Next step

6. Conduct desk research

Estimated time:

• 1.5 - 3 months

People needed:

• 1 or more research person(s)

Resources needed:

• List of donors and women’s rights organizations and activists to interview
• Prepared interview questions
• Concept Note (You can use the research framing you created in the “Frame your research” section)

Resources available:

• AWID Sample Interview Questions: Donors
• AWID Sample Interview Questions: Activists & Women’s Rights Organizations

Previous step

4. Collect and analyze your data

Next step

6. Conduct desk research

Ready to Go? Worksheet

Download the toolkit in PDF

...QUI PREND SOIN D'ELLEUX?

¡Gracias por haber sido parte del Foro AWID 2016!

AWID agradece enormemente a todxs ustedes que han compartido con nosotrxs estos últimos cuatro días de aprendizaje, celebraciones, ideaciones, sueños y la construcción conjunta de nuestros futuros feministas en el Foro AWID 2016.

Nos sentimos muy inspiradxs, maravilladxs y llenxs de energía con todo el trabajo colectivo que hemos hecho para crear nuestros diversos futuros feministas.

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Об исследовании «Где же деньги для феминистских объединений?»

Глобальный опрос «Где деньги для феминистских объединений?» является ключевым элементом третьего этапа нашего исследования, ориентированного на конкретные действия: «Где деньги для феминистских объединений» (короткое название – «Где деньги?»). Результаты опроса будут доработаны и обстоятельно изучены в ходе бесед с активистами и донорами, а также сопоставлены с другими имеющимися аналитическими материалами и исследованиями о состоянии ресурсов феминистских движений и инициатив по достижению гендерного равенства во всем мире.

Полный отчет организации «Где деньги для феминистских объединений?» будет опубликован в 2026 году.

Чтобы узнать больше о том, как AWID освещает вопросы финансирования феминистских движений, ознакомьтесь с историей инициативы «Где деньги?» и нашими предыдущими отчетами здесь.