Deadline: 7 December 2018

Comic Relief is currently seeking applications for a program entitled “Power Up: Resourcing Women’s And Girls’ Movements for Change” that aims to support a diverse range of women’s rights organisations to fight against systems which perpetuate the injustices they encounter in their daily lives.

Funding Criteria

• Comic Relief will want to work with amazing women and girl-led organisations, partnerships, consortia and women’s funds who are supporting women to have collective power, build movements and become change agents.
• Comic Relief is interested in hearing about the work that applicants feel is most important and appropriate to secure long-term change for women and girls in their context. Comic Relief understand that change takes time, and so are interested in what their long-term goals are and who else they are working with to achieve these, either in formal partnerships, or informally.
• Comic Relief is interested in supporting the development of specific work (such as campaigns, advocacy and/or services) when it is part of this long-term change. They are also interested in supporting work which helps movement constituents develop a common agenda for change, such as developing and sharing analytic frameworks, learnings and research, and work that is focussed on base building, such as growing membership and leadership, building/growing/supporting alliances and solidarity both between and within movements.
• Comic Relief is inviting locally-rooted organisations to tell that what solutions they believe will work, demonstrating how their solutions are rooted in and informed by an understanding and experience of delivery, centring the experiences of those most affected by the issue. This is to ensure that lived experience and learning from doing are at the heart of the work. There is evidence that their work is already making a demonstrable difference, this is an exciting opportunity to expand, learn and influence from that work.
• Comic Relief is inviting applications from any of the geographies where they fund in. These are the priorities countries: United Kingdom, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, India, Nepal, Bangladesh.

What they will fund

• Funding is available for 3 – 5 years
• Funding can be used to cover the core costs / overheads of an organisation / partnerships, or specific projects and activities or a mixture of the two.
• Comic Relief is also welcome applications using digital or Sport for Change approaches.
• Comic Relief is interested in the way that movements bring about change, approaches might include (but not be limited to):
  • Strategic litigation
  • Norm changing and behaviour change including with men and boys
  • Grassroots or frontline delivery of services
  • Policy work
  • Campaigns
  • Advocacy
  • Network/alliance building
  • Research/building shared analytical frameworks
• Comic Relief is also interested in any number of issues as identified by those most affected, for example these may include (but are not limited to):
  • Gender based violence
  • Access to and control over resources, both within families, and over shared community assets (including land rights, water, protecting resources from extraction)
  • Women and girls in detention
  • Labour rights
  • Rights of minoritised or excluded groups, including BME, migrants, internally displaced people, disabled women, older women, rural women, sex workers
  • Work on the rights of LBTQI

Criteria

• This fund is for women and girl led organisations only
• Comic Relief will be offering grants for 3-5 years for the following total amounts:
  • Single organisations can apply for grants between £150,000 up to £300,000
  • Those working in partnership (2 or more organisations), up to £500,000.
  • For women’s funds or others sub-granting may consider larger grants (up to £750,000).
• For sub-granters who aren’t women’s funds, the following criteria MUST be met:
  • Women and girls who are most affected by the issue being addressed must have a significant role in decision making about how the grants are distributed and what issues are centred
  • The money must be regranted to women or girls’ led groups or women or girls if supporting individuals

How to Apply

Applicants can apply online via given website.

For more information, please visit Comic Relief.