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Special features
This way for structural change
I’m a social justice philanthroholic. I admit it. Most of what I think about each day is how grantmakers can be more strategic and have greater impact in the service of social justice. With hindsight, …
Are you Dalit?
Founded in 2003, the Dalit Foundation was born out of an imperative need for institutional support for activists and organizations involved in the Dalit communities’ struggle for equality. Its establishment followed the World Conference against …
Influencing policy at a pan-African level
Before TrustAfrica was set up, there was no African foundation that worked at a continental level explicitly on issues with regional and continental dimensions.[1] The very scale of Africa’s problems was potentially paralysing. How could …
Beyond faith and charity
Impact evaluation is now required for funders and funded alike. So how can woolly ideas like ‘social justice’ stand up to this new imperative? And how can social justice funders gear themselves up to measure …
Struggling with complexity
After six years, with an annual budget that has grown from $25,000 to $1.5 million and an increase from five grantee partners in Nicaragua to 140 in six countries, the Central American Women’s Fund (Fondo …
A liberal funder under attack
Last winter, a so-called Israeli ‘student group’ launched an attack on the New Israel Fund (NIF). Despite NIF’s 32-year track record of building and sustaining progressive civil society, we found ourselves in the fight of …
Taking the flak of unpopularity
Achieving social justice often demands actions that make funders unpopular. For the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland (CFNI), working through 30 years of violent conflict and a tenuous peace process, a commitment to social justice …
No social justice possible without Roma inclusion
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is at the centre of a political storm over his treatment of the Roma – 8,000 have been expelled from France this year. However, though he finds himself isolated from and …
Banks and philanthropy advice: are there dangers?
As the articles in this Alliance special feature make clear, philanthropy advice is a small field relative to the growing number of donors and potential donors, but it’s a growing one. Among those increasingly offering …
A steering group for the philanthropy advice field
A steering group of individuals and organizations involved in providing philanthropy advice was created in late 2009 with the aim of stimulating the provision of and take-up of good philanthropy advice in the UK. New …