We have always worked towards ensuring that our Forums are co-developed with partners, movements and our priority constituencies.

For our upcoming Forum, we aim to deepen and strengthen that spirit and practice of co-creation and collaboration. We also recognize the need to improve the balance between the inclusion of many voices and experiences with room for participants and staff to breathe, take pause and enjoy some downtime.

This Forum will be different in the following ways: 

• We will have far less organized Forum activities because we want people to have time to engage, experience, process, talk to each other, etc.  This is key to communicate: you can come to the Forum, be very engaged and active and not facilitate any organized activity (or “session”).
• We will have Open Spaces - at least one whole afternoon without any organized activities - but also physical spaces available throughout the Forum for people to self-organize meetings, etc.
• We have a Content and Methodology Committee made up of feminists from different regions with expertise on participatory methodologies to support us and all those leading activities at the Forum to use creative and engaging  formats for the Forum activities. 

If you’re looking to have an impact through your work in feminist, social justice and other non-profit organizations, we hope this page provides a start.

Here you will find open vacancies and call for applications from AWID and the Alliance for Feminist Movements, when available. Follow us on social media to be in the loop.

Instagram LinkedIn Facebook X (Twitter) BlueSky

With smart filtering for Who Can Fund Me?  Database, you can search for funders based on:

In 2023, feminist and 
women's rights organizations 
had a median annual budget of $22,000

In contrast, over $1 billion went to three anti-rights groups 2021-2022, with funding for anti-gender networks still rising.¹

¹ Global Philanthropy Project, 2024

International Eco-Socialist Encounter

Panels, workshops, plenaries and spaces for exchange between collectives, activists and organizations in struggle to collectively walk the path towards an agenda and a program of struggle for ecosocialism.

📅 November 8 - November 11, 2025
📍 Buenos Aires, Argentina

Register here

Join the Global Feminist Community!

Sign up to be an AWID member to connect with 9,600+ global feminist movements and co-create a range of platforms and spaces designed especially for activists and organizations from teach-ins to solidarity spaces and member mixers. 

The AWID Membership community is available as an app. Download the app and start connecting with movements! 

The Young Feminist Wire

An online community for and by young feminists working on women’s human rights, gender equality and social justice around the world.

Visit the site

The Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs)

The platform is the go-to place for information and resources on safeguarding the universality of rights in international and regional human rights spaces.

Visit the site

The Young Feminist Fund-FRIDA

Provides funding for young feminist-led initiatives. It aims to strengthen the capacity of young feminist organizations to leverage resources for their work and to increase donors’ and allies’ commitments to resourcing young feminist activism.

Visit the site

Online Directory of Urgent Responses for WHRDs

A go-to site to learn about the urgent responses undertaken to protect women human rights defenders and to find tools and resources to support the work and wellness of WHRDs.

Visit the site

IM-Defensoras (Mesoamerican Initiative for Women Human Rights Defenders)

A regional initiative created to prevent, respond, document and make public all cases of violence against women human rights defenders in the Mesoamerican region.

Visit the site

The WHRD International Coalition

The WHRD IC is a resource and advocacy network for the protection and support of women human rights defenders worldwide.

Visit the site

Post-2015 Women´s Coalition

A Coalition of feminist, women´s rights, women´s development, grassroots and social justice organisations working to challenge and reframe teh global development agenda. 

Visit the site

Women´s Major Group on Development

The role of the Women’s Major Group is to assure effective public participation of women’s non-governmental groups in the UN policy processes on Sustainable Development, Post2015 and Environmental matters. 

Visit the site

Women Working Group on Financing for Development

An alliance of women’s organizations and networks to advocate for the advancement of gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights in the Financing for Development (FfD) related UN processes.

Visit the site

7 Women Human Rights Defenders from across the South and Southeast Asian region are honored in this year’s Online Tribute. These defenders have made key contributions to advancing human and women’s rights, indigenous people’s rights, and the right to education. These WHRDs were lawyers, women’s rights activists, scholars, and politicians. Please join AWID in commemorating t their work 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

The results of your research will also shape your advocacy – for example, your results will have revealed which sectors fund the most and which sectors you feel need donor education.

In this section

• Build your advocacy strategy
• Reach out to your network
• Adapt your strategy to the sector
  1. Women’s rights organizations
  2. Bilaterals and multilaterals
  3. Private foundations
  4. Women’s funds
  5. Private sector and new donors

Build your advocacy strategy

In the “Frame your research” section of this toolkit we recommend that you plot out what goals you hope to accomplish with your research. These goals will allow you to build an advocacy strategy once your research is complete.

An advocacy strategy is a plan of distributing your research results in a way that allows you to accomplish your goals, falling under the broader goal of advocating with key sectors to make positive changes for resources for women’s rights organizing.

Using the goals defined in your research framing:

• List the potential groups of contacts who can be interested in your research results
• For each group, explain in one sentence how they can help you achieve your goal.
• For each group, mark what tone you are supposed to use to talk to them (formal professional, commentary casual, do they understand the field’s jargon?)
• List every media that can allow you to reach these audiences, in the proper tone (social media to build community feeling, press release for official announcement to a general audience, etc.)

From this list – as exhaustive as possible, chose which ones are the most efficient for achieve your goals. (See below for specific examples of audiences and advocacy methods)

Once you have a strategy, you can start the dissemination.

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Reach out to your network

To disseminate your results, reach out first to the contacts through whom you distributed your survey, as well as to all your survey and interview participants.

• First, take this opportunity to thank them for contributing to this research.
• Share with them the main survey results and analysis.
• Make it easy for them to disseminate your product through their networks by giving them samples of tweets, Facebook posts or even a short introduction that they could copy and paste on their website.

Do not forget to state clearly a contact person and ask for a confirmation once they have published it.

On top of making you able to track who disseminated your report, it will help build stronger relationships within your network.

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Adapt your strategy to the sector

As an example, we present below a list of sectors AWID engages in advocacy.

• Use this list as a point of departure to develop your own sector-specific advocacy plan.
• Create an objective for what you hope to accomplish for each sector.
• Be sure to add any additional sectors to this list that are relevant for your particular research, such as local NGOs or local governments, for example.

Your list of advisory organizations and individuals will also be useful here. They can help you disseminate the report in different spaces, as well as introduce you to new organizations or advocacy spaces.

1. Women’s rights organizations

Sample objectives: Update women’s rights organizations on funding trends; brainstorm collaborative efforts for resource mobilization using research findings; influence how they approach resource mobilization

Examples of possible advocacy methods:

• Offer seminars, learning cafés or other events throughout your region, in relevant languages, in order to update women’s rights organizations with the findings of your research.

• If you can’t physically reach everyone in your region, think about setting-up a webinar and online presentations.

• Present your findings at larger convenings, such as the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

• Beyond your own organizations’ newsletters and website, write articles on different platforms that are frequented by your target audience.
  Some examples: World Pulse, OpenDemocracy, feministing.

2. Bilaterals and multilaterals

Sample Objective: Raising awareness about how funding is not meeting established commitments and how this sector needs to improve funding mechanisms to finance women’s rights organizing.

Identify which bilateral & multilaterals have the most influence on funding – this could include local embassies.

Examples of possible advocacy methods:

• Enlist ally organizations and influential individuals (some may already be your advisors for this research process) to do peer education.
• Seek their assistance to disseminate research finding widely in large multilaterals (like the UN).
• Present at and/or attend influential spaces where bilaterals and multilaterals are present, such as GENDERNET .
• Publish articles in outlets that are read by bilaterals and multilaterals such as devex, Better Aid, Publish What You Pay.

3. Private foundations

Sample Objective: Expand the quality and quantity of support for women’s rights organizations.

Examples of possible advocacy methods:

• Attend and/or present at events led by private foundations.
• Approach private foundations through membership groups, such as the International Human Rights Funders Group or African Philanthropy Network. Propose sessions at their events.
• Reach out to progressive grantmaking alliances, such as EDGE Funders, for dissemination and possible presentation.
• Publish articles on different outlets read by private funders, such as The Chronicle of Philanthropy and Alliance Magazine.

4. Women’s funds

Sample Objective: Encourage them to continue their work at higher scale.

Examples of possible advocacy methods:

• Hold presentations at the women’s funds in your region and in countries that you hope to influence.
• Disseminate your research findings to all women’s funds that impact the region, priority issue or population you are focusing on.
• Consider doing joint efforts based on the results of the findings. For example, you could propose to collaborate with a fund to develop an endowment  that closes the funding gaps found in your research.

5. Private sector and new donors

Sample Objective: Increase their understanding of the field and encourage coherence between their philanthropic interests and business practice.

Examples of possible advocacy methods:

• Enlist ally organizations and influential individuals (some may already be your advisors for this research process) to do peer education.
• Arrange meetings with influential private actors to present your research findings.
• Host your own meeting, inviting private sector actors, to share the findings and to advocate for your position.

Make sure to adapt your presentations, propositions and applications to each targeted group.

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Previous step

8. Finalize and format

Are you ready to start your own research?

We strongly recommend referring to our Ready to Go worksheet to assess your own advancement.

Estimated time:

• 1-2 years, depending on advocacy goals

People needed:

• 1 or more communications person(s)

Resources needed:       

• List of spaces to advertise research
• List of blogs and online magazines where you can publish articles about your research finding
• List of advisors
• Your WITM information products
• Sample of Advocacy Plan

Previous step

8. Finalize and format

Ready to Go? Worksheet

Download the toolkit in PDF