By Davina Rojas Murga (Senior Program Officer at FRIDA), Amanda Hodgeson (Communications and Advocacy Manager at FRIDA), and Maame Akua Kyerewaa-Marfo (Senior Communications Officer at FRIDA)
In September 2025 FRIDA held its very first reverse call for applications. A reverse call for applications does as it sounds: reverses the flow, in this instance of power, from one point in the philanthropic sector – the funder – to another – the grantee partner. In a series of articles published on different platforms FRIDA will delve into the various facets of its reverse call for applications, ranging from the mechanics, to the political context that makes a shifting of power in this way so poignant in this moment in global political history.
In this first offering of the Upending Power : FRIDAs Reverse Call For Applications we give some background and chart the how-to journey of FRIDA’s very first Reverse Call for Applications.
Background: Ultimately what happens when Grantee Partners transition out of their funding relationships with FRIDA matters
As a fund focused on resourcing young feminist organizers, FRIDA is often the first formal source of funding for newly established groups. We commit to providing flexible, core support for up to a period of 4 years, facilitating space and time for groups to become more firmly rooted, build stronger networks, and start to build and strengthen a sustainable feminist ecosystem of their own. An incredibly important part of FRIDA’s Transition Strategy is providing grantee partners the space, network and resources to utilize the partnerships, potential and community inherent in their relationship with FRIDA to mobilize and begin to tap into larger pools of funding. As such, FRIDA’s transition support provides: transition grants, capacity strengthening, organizational development, and mentorship.
Securing core, flexible funding for feminist activism has historically been challenging. But in a global state of increasing facist-imperialist-capitalist-patriarchy, securing the resources that feminist activists and movements need to survive and to challenge these institutions of oppression has become even more difficult. And while FRIDA has made it a practice to build policies, strategies and grantmaking methodologies that are adaptable and flexible to meet young feminist activists where they are, this moment has called for a more bold and proactive vehicle to play our role in securing the future for young feminist movements.
Reverse Call for Applications
A prototype envisioned by The RINGO Project and the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), a reverse call for proposals, as they termed it, aims to flip the script on traditional funding mechanisms.
“Imagine this: Local organisations issue a ‘call for proposals’ to international actors (INGOs and funders) to provide support for locally-determined endeavours. These local organisations assess the potential of international actors, evaluating how well they can support local needs. Then, the local organisations decide who to partner with and on what terms. Crazy, right?” – RINGO
Traditional calls for applications not only place the burden of labour on civil society, they also have notoriously low award rates, oftentimes even below 10%. Unremunerated and invisibilized labor, enforced on civil society, goes into mapping suitable open calls, drafting proposals, submitting applications, and, if awarded, providing reference checks and clearing due diligence.
The reversal, challenging and redistribution of power has been a commitment to feminist movements by feminist funds for as long as we have been in existence. As one such commitment within the funding sector to transform vertical and asymmetrical decision-making practices, participatory grantmaking mechanisms have placed decision-making within the broader community of applicants and movement representatives.
Participatory grantmaking, however, has to go beyond a mechanism to welcome new grantee partners. It has to be a political commitment that speaks to the core of accountability, systemic change, and movement autonomy as it promotes the reallocation of resources to the territories and communities from which they were initially extracted.
It is in concert with FRIDA’s commitment to a radical feminist grantmaking mechanism that we pursue this further spinning of philanthropy on its head by co-creating and engaging in a reverse call for applications.
The reversal of the funding process challenges and readjusts power dynamics in traditional philanthropy in a few ways: by problematizing the amount of unidirectional labour expected of civil society to attain resources; by mirroring back to donors the hidden abuses of power in their funding mechanisms; and by bringing into focus the feminist principles of collective care and collective power, thereby turning over the award/acceptance decision-making to local organizers.
What a reverse call does is to ask funders to intentionally step into forming new alliances with potential grantee partners and to take on some of the labor of building these relationships.
And…its also about community
At the heart of it, FRIDA’s reverse call is an ongoing commitment to grantee partners to continue to shift power from institutions back to movements. But beyond the adoption and replication of this framework as a politic and as a practice by other grantmakers, the reverse call offers us one more opportunity – community. Whether it is FRIDAs Transition Strategy – which aims to, among other things, connect grantee partners to larger pools of financial and other resources, or the reverse call for applications which asks funders to ‘flip the script’ – the success of these tasks is dependent on the commitment and buy-in of the philanthropic sector. Therefore, the reverse call for applications also invites us to collaborate with other funds to strategize on how to continue to sustain life-affirming work. In this way, the reverse call asks funders to mirror the collaborative innovation we often see in movement spaces, and provides the possibility for the sector to bend, stretch, and hold work we know matters even in the midst of shifting priorities.
So how does it actually work?
This reverse call is centred on support and network building for the grantee partners that FRIDA welcomed in 2020, who will be transitioning out at the end of this year.
As this is the first time FRIDA is piloting such an endeavor, the process has been intentionally designed to be more experimental, flexible, and engaging with the community, rather than bureaucratic or administrative. This means that there isn’t an application form for donors to fill out, however, we do have two specific mechanisms through which the Reverse call operates:
- Inter-institutional partnerships will be established through a Memorandum of Understanding, which agrees on continued funding through sequenced grantmaking for some of these groups. These partnerships will require analyzing the different administrative processes, decision-making mechanisms, and eligibility criteria to assess areas of collaboration and opportunities for co-resourcing. This approach enables more robust and institutionalized collaboration, providing a great space to learn together and strengthen coordination, irrespective of suitability or outcome for an agreement.
The second mechanism is more open and spontaneous, falling under the broader lens of cross-pollination. We’re seeking to build connections, to scaffold bridges, and to generate a fertile space where unscripted collaborations can happen. For this, we have a Portfolio that compiles summary information of the 2020 FRIDA grantee partner cohort (mission, main activities, budget, registration status etc). This portfolio can be circulated internally so that donors may learn more about these groups and assess funding possibilities or connections to allied organizations working on the same intersections or geographies. If you are an ally in movement strengthening and are interested in reviewing this Portfolio, please email davina@youngfeministfund.org and subina@youngfeministfund.org.
In Conclusion
All FRIDA grantee partners, including the groups that are being centred in this first iteration of the Reverse Call for Applications, continue to do work that we know matters on a wide range of intersecting issues, all urgent in today’s global landscape. Even as they transition out, it’s essential to FRIDA that we continue to create the conditions for young feminist activists to thrive and help create a philanthropic ecosystem that recognises their activism. Partners like African Trans Women’s Alliance in Zambia, whose work to protect trans women in their communities involves shifting state structures like the police and building networks of solidarity within a continental context that is violently transphobic. Grantee partners like Noun Solidarity, who supported the establishment of 6 women’s collectives in the Gaza Strip and served in 9 shelters, responding to the needs of 12,000 internally displaced persons in Lebanon during 2024, in the midst of Israeli invasion and genocidal war.
Rella Women’s Foundation established House of Hope, Uganda’s first rehabilitation and transitioning center for LBQ individuals, supporting over 150 persons with shelter, skills, and healing. Through their Hebwa program, more than 155 LBQ people gained entrepreneurship and livelihood skills, while advocacy and storytelling amplified LBQ voices nationally despite continuous raids and shrinking civic space. Girls Club in Mongolia raised awareness through their “Proud Girls” Exhibition around access to education, challenging gender stereotypes, and providing empowerment workshops for young girls to occupy public space freely and confidently.
These are just a few of the grantee partner organizations that make up the FRIDAverse and will continue to be part of FRIDA within our Alumni community, which continues to grow and reflect the expansive and revolutionary nature of young feminist activists from the global majority.
