Rebecca Cheptegei had done what many athletes can only dream of. At 33 years old, the long-distance runner from Uganda qualified for the 2024 Summer Olympics and competed during the women’s marathon event, finishing in 44th place. Less than a month later, Cheptegei was dead. On Sep. 1, Cheptegei’s boyfriend doused her in gasoline and set her on fire during a disagreement, burning 80% of her body. Four days later, Cheptegei died from her injuries.
Following Cheptegei’s death, Kenya’s sports minister Kipchumba Murkomen said the government would seek justice for Cheptegei. (Cheptegei lived and trained in Kenya.) “This tragedy is a stark reminder that we must do more to combat gender-based violence in our society, which, in recent years, has reared its ugly head in elite sporting circles,” he wrote in a statement.
One day before Cheptegei was attacked, 21-year-old American gymnast Kara Welsh was shot eight times by her boyfriend, who has since been charged with first-degree intentional homicide.
These cases are not isolated. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls violence against women, especially intimate partner violence and sexual violence, “a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights.” The WHO estimates that around 1 in 3 women around the globe has experienced physical or sexual violence in their lives, predominantly intimate-partner violence.
Meanwhile, however, dedicated philanthropic funding for women and girls’ organizations remains chronically low. According to the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, giving to women and girls’ organizations represents a mere 1.8% of all charitable giving in the U.S.
When it comes to funding to end gender-based violence around the globe, a report from the Equality Institute and the Accelerator for GVB Prevention estimates that the baseline investment in gender-based violence prevention by private philanthropy is somewhere between $100 million and $150 million per year — a paltry amount, really, considering how prevalent this violence is across the U.S. and abroad. How many elite universities received alumni gifts of that size over the past year?
Reliance on a small set of dedicated funders also leaves fields like GVB prevention vulnerable if and when one of those grantmakers pulls back. Once one of the biggest funders for women and girls’ issues, including addressing gender-based violence, Peter and Jennifer Buffett’s NoVo Foundation shifted its focus away from this work in 2020, leaving many “heartbroken and stunned.”
Despite the comparatively small amount of funding for addressing gender-based violence and supporting survivors, there are still a number of funders working in this space. To that end, here are some of the key funders supporting efforts to address gender-based violence in the U.S. and around the globe.
Ford Foundation
Unsurprisingly, the Ford Foundation is one of the biggest funders working in this space. Through its Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice program — which funds in the U.S. and around the globe to address the intersection of race, gender, disability and ethnic injustice — Ford also supports efforts to end gender-based violence, particularly in the Global South. Its approach is to strengthen feminist ecosystems, facilitate global coordination and investments, shift narratives and social norms, and expand knowledge, evidence and practice. Ford’s budget for this work is $22 million annually plus an additional $45 million from its BUILD Initiative.
“We are taking a feminist approach to tackling gender-based violence, listening to what survivors want, and paying particular attention to the intersection of race, class, ethnicity and sexual identity. By placing women and girls — and feminist organizations — at the center of the conversation, we believe we can reduce the systems and structures that have enabled violence to persist,” wrote Nicolette Naylor, formerly a special advisor for Ford’s international programs.
In 2021, Ford announced it was committing $420 million over five years to tackle gender inequality, focusing on multiple issues, including “the growing epidemic of gender-based violence.” Ford co-led the U.N. Women’s Generation Equality Forum’s Coalition on Gender-Based Violence and directed $159 million of the total $420 million to organizations preventing and responding to gender-based violence. The funds were earmarked for international and regional efforts in Latin America, India and Southern and Western Africa.
Grantees include Fondo Centroamericano de Mujeres, Masimanyane, the International Network to End Violence Against Women and Girls, Prevention Collaborative, GVB Response Fund 1, Enfold Proactive Health Trust, Sonke Gender Justice Network, Deaf Women Included, and ActionAid Nigeria.
Oak Foundation
Formally established in 1983 by British billionaire Alan Parker, who helped build Duty Free Shoppers, the Oak Foundation works internationally to address issues of social and environmental concern, especially those that impact disadvantaged people. Its work is centered on seven programs: environment, preventing child sexual abuse, housing and homelessness, international human rights, issues affecting women, learning differences, and its special interest program.
In 2023 alone, Oak awarded more than $31 million through its Issues Affecting Women program, which supports women’s efforts to create, lead and grow movements to achieve equity and justice. Oak supports programs in the Balkans, Brazil, Central America, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S., as well as organizations in Moldova, Bulgaria, the North Caucasus and India. Oak explicitly names as part of its work supporting women-led, rights-based services that address violence against women.
Oak also backs the National Coalition for Life Without Violence, a Moldovan network focusing on reducing gender-based violence and building public awareness around the issue. Other grantees include Aide aux Victimes de Violence en Couple, European Network for the Work with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence, Stopping Family Violence and Association ViolenceQueFaire, FreeFrom and MADRE.
Isabel Allende Foundation
Chilean-American author Isabel Allende launched her foundation in 1996 as an homage to her daughter, Paula Fries, who died in 1992. Following her daughter’s death, Allende wrote a memoir titled “Paula” and used the income generated from the book’s sales to establish the Isabel Allende Foundation. Allende continues to support the foundation with income from her other books — she’s one of a number of globally bestselling author/philanthropists, several of whom we profiled here. As of 2013, the foundation had about $11 million in assets.
The foundation is primarily dedicated to supporting women and girls in order to secure reproductive rights, economic independence and freedom from violence. It works alongside nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chile, as well as with national and international organizations.
Past grantees include the Global Fund for Women, Ms. Foundation, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, the Center for Reproductive Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Thistle Farms, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and If/When/How.
Kering Foundation
Based in France, the Kering Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Kering, a corporation that owns several luxury brands, including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and Alexander McQueen. Its foundation was launched in 2008 to address gender-based violence. It works alongside its partners in six countries: the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Mexico and South Korea. In recent years, it expanded its work to include violence against children, nature conservation and sustainability.
The Kering Foundation’s strategy is focused on three pillars: resourcing partner organizations with increased and flexible funding to guarantee services to women and children; creating safe workplaces and offering support to colleagues impacted by domestic violence; and influencing new actors and audiences to take action and raise awareness and funds to end violence.
Last year, the foundation’s Caring for Women dinner raised more than $3 million to benefit the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault and the Malala Fund. It also cofounded One In Three Women, a European network of companies committed to pushing back against violence against women. Other past and current grantee partners include the Mediterranean Women’s Fund, Red Nacional de Refugios, Casa di Accoglienza delle Donne Maltrattate, and FreeFrom.
Collective Future Fund
The Collective Future Fund is a pooled philanthropic intermediary fund that launched in the heyday of the #MeToo movement. Its goal is to bring together social justice movements, survivors and donors to heal, resource and mobilize toward a future that is free from gendered, sexualized and racialized violence. The fund is fiscally sponsored by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
Current funders include several on this list, like the Ford Foundation, Oak Foundation and Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, as well as other progressive stalwarts like the General Service Foundation, Foundation for a Just Society, Libra Foundation and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the Chanel Foundation are also supporters. Past donors include the NoVo Foundation, MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving, Open Society Foundations and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
Since 2020, CFF has awarded $27 million to 112 grantee partners; average grant awards are around $130,000. CFF’s grantees work to advance structural change, collective healing and address the root causes of violence. In 2021, CFF announced it was awarding $11 million over several years to support survivor-led organizations, including Black Women’s Blueprint, the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women, Justice for Migrant Women and the National Women’s Law Center. It also awarded $3 million in 2019 and $4 million in rapid-response grants in 2020. Last year, CFF announced it was awarding $3.4 million over two years to 29 organizations that center survivors.
MacKenzie Scott
One of the biggest figures in philanthropy today, MacKenzie Scott’s gifts through her philanthropic vehicle Yield Giving cover a lot of ground, and she often shifts from one priority area to another. But one consistent focus is funding for women and girls. For example, in 2020 and 2021, she partnered with Melinda French Gates on Equality Can’t Wait, a $40 million grant contest to expand women’s power and influence in the U.S. by 2030.
According to Yield Giving’s grant database, Scott has awarded a total of 2,325 gifts earmarked for sexual and gender-based violence, though this may be an incomplete list of her grantmaking — and since recipients self-report their focus areas to Yield Giving, those gifts aren’t all going toward organizations that specifically prioritize the issue.
That said, Scott’s groundbreaking philanthropy has reached an impressive collection of groups prioritizing GVB prevention and support for survivors. They include Women Helping Women, Purposeful, African Women’s Development Fund, Equality Fund, Avalon Healing Center, Womankind, Equality Now, Mujeres Unidas en Justicia, Educación y Reforma, Marian House, Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence, Esperanza United, Global Fund for Women, MADRE, FreeFrom, the Fund for Global Human Rights, Raksha, Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and The Second Step.
Bonus: Melinda French Gates
Melinda French Gates is an important funder to watch in this space. For more than two decades, French Gates co-chaired the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. After her divorce from Bill Gates in 2021, French Gates remained at the foundation for another three years until she announced her departure earlier this year. In 2015, French Gates established Pivotal Ventures, which works to advance social progress and expand women’s power and influence, both in the U.S. and around the globe.
Although neither the Gates Foundation nor Pivotal Ventures have particularly focused on addressing gender-based violence, they have awarded some grants in this space. Pivotal Ventures, for example, has supported the Collective Future Fund, and the Gates Foundation has awarded grants to the African Women’s Development Fund, the Global Fund for Women and the U.N. Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women.
But French Gates’ departure from the Gates Foundation presents an opportunity for her to transform the way she gives and who gets her money. And the next chapter in her philanthropic story is well underway. Earlier this year, French Gates announced she was committing $1 billion by 2026 to advance women’s issues, noting in an op-ed that there has been a “tremendous upsurge in political violence and other threats” to women and girls’ safety. With billions left to give, it stands to reason that as French Gates further develops her philanthropy to safeguard women’s rights, addressing gender-based violence will be a pivotal part of that.
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Other funders working in this space include the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Ms. Foundation for Women, Equality Fund, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Gender Funders CoLab, Fund for Global Human Rights, Global Fund for Women, Libra Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Trust, Girls Rights Project, and Jewish Women International.
