Co-Impact has announced a new Gender Fund that aims to raise and deploy $1 billion. The fund will launch at the end of 2021, and Co-Impact plans for it to accelerate progress towards gender equality and women’s leadership by supporting women-led organisations in the Global South.

Among those contributing to the new Fund are the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Mackenzie Scott, Melina French Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

As a part of developing the new Fund, Co-Impact is also planning to work with Tsitsi Masiyiwa and the African Philanthropy Forum to bring together a group of philanthropists from across Africa, as well as with Vidya Shah and EdelGive Foundation on a similar model to support their work in India. It will also partner with The Philanthropy Workshop to bring additional learning and engagement opportunities to its community of funders.

Read more: Interview: Oliva Leland

Through its work with the Gender Fund, Co-Impact hopes that it will reach 100 million people and enable better access to healthcare, education, and work; support more women to be in leadership roles; and that perceptions and norms about women’s roles will be challenged and shifted.

‘This fund builds on the extensive work of our existing program partners who continue to demonstrate how integral gender is to achieving sustainable systems change, as well as the guidance of the many leaders who have informed our thinking over the last year,’ said Co-Impact in a statement.

Co-Impact was launched in 2017 by Olivia Leland, founding director of the Giving Pledge. Its Foundational Fund, worth $500 million, sought to establish and advance a model of collaborative philanthropy for transformative change in health, education, and economic opportunity.

To learn more about the new Fund, visit co-impact.org.