India’s philanthropic ecosystem is changing. Private philanthropy reached approximately USD15 billion in FY2023, with growing participation from family philanthropists and other private actors. However, the infrastructure and mechanisms needed to deploy this capital, for work happening on ground, remain limited. At the same time, there is insufficient visibility on what kinds of support are actually needed across the ecosystem. 

As philanthropic capital expands, the opportunity is not only to mobilize more resources, but to strengthen the systems and organizations that enable those resources to support long-term social change. 

The question on gender funding is not just a funding question, it is also a practice and an infrastructure question. This includes the institutions and mechanisms that connect resources to organizations and movements, the way funding is structured, and who has influence over funding decisions. 

Women’s and Feminist funds, for example, are an important part of the gender funding infrastructure. They play the role of raising and moving resources to organizations working on transformative agendas that may otherwise have limited access to flexible and long-term funding.

The important questions on gender funding are: Do we know where funding is going? Is funding being able to reach organizations and movements working closest to communities? Are funding models aligned with the realities of gender-transformative work? And do those most affected have influence over how resources are allocated?

What is Gender Funding?

Gender funding seeks to transform underlying conditions of gender inequality and discrimination. It means addressing barriers to equality at the level of physical resources but more importantly, individual mindsets, family practices, community norms and actions, gender biases in structures (such as health systems and education), policy framing and implementation that many times suffer from gender stereotyping. However, most often it is simply understood as targeting women and girls as project beneficiaries. 

Gender-transformative funding means supporting work led by women, girls, trans and gender-diverse communities that challenges systems, and shifts power relations. The kind of change that requires shifts at so many levels is not and cannot be linear - progress can be uneven, and new barriers often emerge even as others are addressed. If this kind of change has to be resourced, an increase in the quantum of funding alone is insufficient because transformation is long-term work. The manner in which these resources are structured and made available - with flexibility, trust, patience and for long term work - is equally important.  

Therefore, when we ask if enough money is going towards gender equality, the question is not just about the amount of money but also whether the systems to deploy that money are also designed to support the kind of change we want to see. Essentially, grant making practices, funding agenda setting and the systems and processes through which funds are made available cannot be divorced from the larger change agendas they seek to galvanize at the community level. In short, the way money is given is itself part of the change making process. 

Addressing gaps in data transparency

An important aspect of the funding architecture is reliable data. Rigorous data on how much funding flows to gender transformative agendas remains a gap in India. There is a huge amount of anecdotal evidence, medium and large impact studies and programme insights from gender programmes on barriers to accessing funds for gender equality and transformative work, but what we don’t know what is the actual resourcing that is needed versus what is flowing towards ensuring women and trans people are able to be equal and free.

Foundation giving is very hard to track and gender budgets show allocations without necessarily telling us what is actually spent or where the money eventually reaches. CSR reporting gives us some information but doesn't tell the full picture either. Gender-related work may also sit under other categories such as health, education, livelihoods or rural development. However, we know much less about which organizations are receiving funding, whether resources are reaching women- and trans-led organizations, what kinds of work are being supported, and whether funding is flexible enough to support longer-term change.

In FY 2023-24, for example, Indian companies reported total CSR expenditure of ₹354,909 crore, of which ₹204 crore was reported under “gender equality” and ₹455 crore under “women empowerment”. Together these categories represent around 2% of total CSR expenditure in India. These categories provide one indication of CSR spending related to gender, but they do not tell us which organizations are receiving resources, what types of interventions are being supported, or whether funding models match the needs of gender-transformative work. 

Credible data about what kinds of work remains underfunded, can help resources move more effectively. This requires funders to think differently about transparency. Sharing more information about where gender funding goes, the duration of grants, the type of support provided, and the organizations being reached could help build a stronger understanding of the ecosystem

Building stronger funding infrastructure

As more funders seek to engage with gender equality, one emerging challenge is how to build stronger pathways between capital and communities they want to support. Many times, the entry barriers for civil society organizations are very strong - application processes are lengthy, in a lesser known or familiar language and require knowledge of complex measurement terms and frameworks. This suggests that the gap is not only a shortage of funding opportunities but also in the infrastructure that connects resources with communities on ground.

AWID’s recent research with feminist and women’s rights organizations across 128 countries illustrates some of these challenges. 86% of organizations surveyed reported that funding application processes were complex or inaccessible, while 65% said they did not meet the legal or administrative requirements for some funding opportunities. Therefore, we need to ask what infrastructure is needed so that gender funding can reach those organizations leading transformative change but who may not on the radar of funders.  

Some institutions have been trying to build this infrastructure for years. Women’s funds and feminist funds have over many decades developed models that combine grant making with contextual knowledge, relationship-building, accompaniment and movement support. They are also able to structure funding in a flexible manner, ensuring the priorities and agendas are set by those solving the problems at the grassroots. 

Women’s Fund India (WFI), a national women’s fund in India for example, works with women and trans people led initiatives in 11 states and 14 districts in India. It supports organizations through financial and non-financial resources, including small grants, institutional and capacity strengthening, accompaniment support as well as knowledge-building, with the aim of ensuring resources reach groups and collectives for the priorities they identify themselves.  

Women’s funds are one example of this broader ecosystem infrastructure. Other mechanisms also exist, for example collaboratives and pooled funds, funding models that support long term core operating costs, as well as Funder-plus models where financial resources are accompanied by structured capacity strengthening. Such mechanisms bring expertise in supporting movements, strengthening organizations and connecting resources with communities. As more funders seek to engage with gender equality, there is an opportunity not only to partner with such mechanisms and platforms/ organizations, but also to learn from the practices they have developed over time.

Funding practices for long-term change

The challenge is that much of philanthropy in India is still structured around projects, outputs and fixed timelines. Change Engine’s Ease of Doing Good study, based on a survey of 146 organizations, found that around 80% of respondents had less than a quarter of their funding as flexible capital, while more than half had less than 10% unrestricted funding. Around 40% had never received a multi-year flexible grant. 

This gap is particularly important for gender transformative work where change often happens through relationships, adaptation and long-term organizing. Many civil society organizations driving transformative change are dealing with multiple agendas: preventing violence, expanding access to rights, shifting social norms, and strengthening democratic participation. Short-term, tightly restricted project funding limits their ability to respond to real-world complexity, sustain their teams, and build lasting impact. Short funding cycles have the potential of interrupting progress just when change is beginning to take root. 

Long term, and flexible approaches to funding help protect the investment already made by ensuring organizations can continue momentum rather than repeatedly restarting work, this can create greater impact. The Ford Foundation’s BUILD initiative combined five-year flexible support with investment in organizational strengthening; its evaluation found that because of this approach, organizations became stronger and more resilient and were better able to adapt and pursue their missions over time.

Long-term, flexible support is not only about grant design, but also about decision-making. The way funding is structured reflects who holds knowledge and who is best placed to make decisions. Communities closest to the realities we are all trying to change need to have meaningful influence over how priorities are defined, and resources are structured. Participatory grant making processes where sector experts take decisions around funding partnerships is one example of such a practice and has been adopted by many women’s funds. 

The opportunity for philanthropy is therefore not only to increase funding for gender equality, but to rethink mechanisms, partnerships and ways to decrease the gap between funders and groups they want to support. Different forms of capital will be needed for different contexts - and that includes creating more space for locally rooted organizations to shape the strategies and solutions they are working towards. 

Collaboration and Ecosystem Building

Bain and Dasra’s India Philanthropy Report 2024 highlights the growing momentum behind collaborative philanthropy in India. The report notes that the number of philanthropic collaboratives established annually has increased nearly fivefold over the past three years, reflecting a growing interest among funders in working collectively to address complex social challenges. 

This moment presents an opportunity to think beyond individual funding relationships and towards stronger ecosystem-building. Complex challenges such as gender inequality cannot be addressed by one funder, one organization or one intervention alone. They require shared learning, stronger networks and greater coordination between funders, movements and other actors. However, the value of collaboration is not simply that more funders come together. The question is whether and how these collaborations can help build a stronger ecosystem around the issues they seek to address.  

There are limited India-focused, collaborative funds that can pool resources and support organizations working on gender equality at scale. Urban and intersectional barriers to gender equality remain underfunded, particularly where gender intersects with factors such as class, caste, migration, disability, or informality. Ways to bring the experiences and insights of communities in finalizing funding priorities are limited. Most importantly, collective learning platforms are few, limiting opportunities for funders to adapt their approaches based on what organizations and communities are learning.

For gender funding in India, the opportunity is to build an ecosystem where capital, knowledge and decision-making are better connected. That will require more than individual grants or individual funders acting well; it requires stronger pathways between funders, intermediaries, organizations and movements. Ultimately, the test is whether resources can reach the right actors, in forms they can use, and with enough flexibility and continuity to sustain change.