Philanthropic funding is not always equitable and can reinforce colonial structures, including onerous bureaucratic reporting requirements and priorities that do not correlate with needs of grantees.
We supported the Lancet Commission for Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health in an in-depth analysis of 13 philanthropies in women and children’s health, chosen from an initial list of 54 philanthropic organisations drawn from the OECD Network of Foundations Working for Development (netFWD) based on defined inclusion and exclusion criteria.
The work was guided by three overarching research questions:
- How do peer equity-focused funders in similar contexts operate?
- What lessons can foundations draw from peer organizations to support their journey towards equity-focused grant-making?
- What are the perspectives of beneficiary communities on making global health grant-making for women and children more equitable?
The analysis utilized the Elevate Children Funders Group Framework to Decolonise Philanthropy, which differentiates individual (attitudes and beliefs of senior leadership), relational (how the philanthropy interacts with communities), institutional (structures, policies, and procedures), and ideological (norms that shape attitudes in the organisation) approaches to decolonization of grantmaking.
Results of the work will be summarised in a 2025 Lancet Commission for Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health report.