Welcome to FRIDA’s 2024 Annual Report: Breaking through solid ground!!
Navigating the difficult terrain of philanthropy and shifting geopolitical landscapes has required courage, finesse and readjustment. Our steadfast commitment to resourcing young feminist movements has guided and allowed us to not waver in our support to our grantee partners. The design for our annual report reflects the rootedness that 2024 required of us, the difficulties of the discipline of sustainability, and the vibrancy of the movements we continue to support.
FRIDA continues to be an organisation that stretches to meet the needs of young feminist movements across the global majority. In 2024 FRIDA upheld its commitment to our internal grant-making policy and maintained our commitment to key strategies on trans organising, climate and environmental justice, and teenage girls and retained all our grantee partners alongside our funding commitments to them.
In total, in 2024, FRIDA supported 206 grantee partners across 101 countries through direct grant-making support of $ 2,972,071.30
The challenges faced are not unique to FRIDA, but have had ripple effects on the sector as a whole, posing a threat to what feminist movements have been building for decades. While feminist funds work to combat the violent swing back to brazen anti-Black, anti-rights, misogynistic and homophobic and transphobic political shifts, feminist organizers and collectives are undoubtedly feeling the brunt. It is FRIDAs ongoing mission to centre movements in both how we fund and how we advocate for others to join us in resourcing and supporting young feminists in ways that foster continued success and sustainability while dismantling harmful and oppressive hierarchies of traditional western philanthropy.
We remain steadfastly committed to our advocacy and mission of serving as an incubator and propellant of young feminist movements globally.
A Deeper look at the Magic of young feminist movements
Caribbean Convening 2024
FRIDA’s deep commitment to young feminist movements means our approach to resourcing young feminist activists must be as multifaceted as their needs are. Our resourcing includes our continued core grantmaking to our grantee partners, but also additional support for their work as movement actors. In the last quarter of 2024, FRIDA was able to gather 30 members of its Caribbean community for a first-of-its-kind convening within the region. The convening created space for deeper movement work and connection building, and built stronger networks between different constellations of the FRIDAverse.
Transition Strategy
FRIDA’s grantmaking supports young feminist collectives for up to 4 years, with multiple kinds of support being offered throughout the funding relationship. In the last stage of the grantee partner journey at FRIDA, extra sustainability support is offered through our transition strategy. Our current transition strategy is the product of sustained conversations with Grantee partners, which allow us to meet their complex needs as they transition out of a funding relationship with FRIDA and become a part of a wider philanthropic eco-system.
Grantmaking in Numbers
FRIDA supports young feminist organisers and movement building in global majority countries. This includes providing funding to FRIDA’s community of grantee partners selected through our participatory grantmaking process, our annual Renewal process, as well as through influencing and raising funds to sustain young feminist organising through advocacy and partnerships.
A Reorganisation of the FRIDAverse
As FRIDA faced ongoing internal shifts, the reorganization of our external FRIDAverse and reassessment of our relationships with our advisors became imperative. The core activities of the advisory remained the same, but the restructuring of our Advisory allowed FRIDA to realign the advisors’ journey with grantee partner groups and deepen pre-established relationships.
Advocacy & Care
FRIDA, in collaboration with The Doria Feminist Fund, Mongolian Women’s Fund (MONES), TEWA and Women’s Fund Fiji formed the Communities of Collective Care collaborative group in 2023 and began a multi year journey that culminated in participation in a collective care festival, where the funds strategised around advocacy for collective care, and the Advocacy toolkit for Resourcing Collective care. The toolkit was enriched by the knowledge and learnings we’d gathered from each other’s work and the work of our grantee partners. The toolkit was launched during the AWID Forum in December 2024.
