The Global Fund for Women, the largest public foundation for women’s rights in the world, saw 2014 as a year of opportunity. There was heightened mainstream interest in women’s empowerment and increased engagement and branding by larger NGOs around women’s issues, and Global Fund’s closest peer organizations were forming new alliances.
In addition, CEO and President Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro was committed to move the organization “from excellence to significance.” Its merger with the International Museum on Women (IMOW) added skills and competencies in raising awareness, advocacy, and digital story-telling. And a new program framework established an explicit focus on three investment areas: zero violence, political and economic empowerment, and sexual and reproductive health.
The convergence of these events gave Global Fund leaders an opportunity to reimagine their future to better advocate for the women’s and girls’ rights. With this goal in mind, they partnered with FSG to co-develop Global Fund’s future identity and ambition.
FSG helped the Global Fund define its new identity by answering the following questions.
- How does the Global Fund define and articulate its identity and reason for being, now and for the future?
- What can be the unique contribution of the Global Fund, given its evolving skills, focus, and possibilities? How is that informed by the landscape of other players in the space?
To answer these questions, FSG conducted a strategic assessment of what the organization had been and what it intended to be, reviewed the competitive and peer landscape, and laid out a set of broad identity options for Global Fund. Through four facilitated workshops, FSG and the Global Fund leadership co-created a new identity for the organization anchored around advancing the movement for women’s and girls’ human rights by directing resources to women worldwide and raising their voices.
Following the conclusion of FSG’s engagement, Global Fund has made significant progress in executing its new strategic plan. By reorganizing its staff and creating cross-functional teams, Global Fund has begun to live into its new identity.
About the Global Fund for Women
The Global Fund for Women is a publicly supported, non-profit grant-making foundation that is dedicated to advancing the rights of women and girls worldwide. The organization believes that women are powerful catalysts for change and that strong women’s organizations and movements make transformative shifts in power that are crucial to realizing women’s rights. Since its inception in 1987, the Global Fund has given grants to nearly 5,000 women’s groups in 175 countries, helping to win rights for more than a billion women and girls.
