MADRE funds community-based women's organizations to meet urgent needs and achieve their long-term goals. Our grants enable life-sustaining and community-changing interventions and are sometimes the sole source of financial support in the places where we work. These are communities that war or disaster have rendered difficult to fund and challenging to reach.
We fund visionary, innovative and intersectional, grassroots strategies that meet immediate needs and create lasting change. When grassroots women’s organizations provide vital services to their communities, women can build new skills, step up as leaders, and mobilize for rights-based policies.
grants in 2018 to support 32 organizations that advance women's human rights across the globe
What We Fund
We fund local organizations, networks and groups that are "under the radar" of other international funders and large aid organizations. We focus our partnerships on women-led organizations that prioritize the leadership of young women and girls, Indigenous women, Afro-descendant women, LGBTIQ people, and people with disabilities.
Direct Service
We provide grants that meet urgent needs, such as shelters for survivors of violence, health clinics, seed banks and water conservation projects.
Convening and Movement Building
We support activists and organizations to exchange strategies and learning to strengthen movement work. The community organizing that we support not only fuels change at the local level but also builds a networked foundation for policy wins.
Crisis Response for Human Rights Defenders
We fund emergency relocation and legal aid to organizations and activists under threat and requiring urgent assistance.
Skills and Leadership Development
We fund training for organizations to acquire the skills and build leadership capacity to advocate for long-term social change.
Advocacy and Policy Change
We work to overcome barriers to grassroots women's participation in advocacy by funding training, stipends, travel, translation and child care. Our grants ensure that women have opportunities to represent themselves in policymaking spaces.
In Kind Support
We deliver humanitarian aid – such as medicines, health supplies, wheelchairs and other basic necessities – to our partners in contexts where such items cannot be locally sourced.
If you are interested to partner with MADRE or you believe your organization could benefit from a MADRE grant, we are open to hearing from you. Please contact us at [email protected] with information about your work.
Crisis Response:
MADRE is able to act nimbly when a disaster hits the communities of our partners. We bring crucial resources–like food, water, medical care and shelter– directly to the women and families most in need.
invested in local community groups over 35 years through grants and in-kind contributions
Shelter Without Walls: Nicaragua
Through a Partnership Grant to Wangki Tangni, an Indigenous women's group, MADRE fueled grassroots efforts to mobilize against gender violence, including by launching the region's first women's rights radio station.
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Our partners are better able to meet the self-identified urgent needs of women and girls in their communities.
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Our partners have the resilience to withstand shocks, adapt and respond effectively to unforeseen challenges.
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Our partners have the financial resources to consciously develop more feminist, rights-based activities and programs to create long-term change in their communities.
Learn More about How We Work
