Healthy Democracy Fund
Defunded & Thriving: How Girls & Women Are Reimagining the Future of Funding
Mazuri Designs Hub is Girl Up Initiative Uganda’s social enterprise, creating income while equipping vulnerable, out-of-school girls and young women with skills in tailoring and fashion design. Photo credit: Girl Up Initiative Uganda
What do you do when the funding you’ve relied on for years suddenly disappears?
For girl- and women-led organizations around the world, that question isn’t hypothetical. Ninety percent of girls’ and women’s organizations globally report funding cuts, and nearly half are at risk of closing. For girls and young women of color, the picture is even starker: in the U.S. they receive less than half a percent of all charitable giving.
We could tell this story as one of scarcity. Another crisis. Another funding gap. Another reason to ask women and girls to do more for less.
But this isn’t the story we see. It’s a wake-up call.
We see girls and women leading through uncertainty with courage and creativity and choosing to rebuild and to reimagine what’s possible. That spirit drives Defunded & Thriving, a new virtual learning journey that WomenStrong is hosting, narrated by CNN journalist Stephanie Busari, launching today, October 6, 2026.
Thriving Is a State of Mind
The examples are everywhere. One of our grantee partners, Natasha, founded Copper Rose Zambia while she was a medical student. When her funding dropped by 80%, she didn’t close her doors. She reinvented her organization, bringing on new donors and exploring a revenue-generating income stream. As she puts it:
“Defunded is what’s happening to us. Thriving is a state of mind. It’s us leading through this moment.”
When people ask whether girl and women leaders can survive this moment, we think of Natasha and the many women like her.
Across communities, girls and women are showing us what reinvention looks like. They are experimenting with new models, building partnerships, sharing resources, and creating possibilities where others see only constraints. Now it’s philanthropy’s turn to catch up.
Introducing the Abundance Collective for Girls & Women
Partnership is key to navigating this moment, and we’re committed to walking the walk. Today, WomenStrong International and the Advancing Girls Fund at Tides Foundation are proud to announce the Abundance Collective for Girls & Women. It is a $10 million co-investment fund that will help girl and women leaders pivot to new ways of funding their work.
It will provide flexible, multiyear funding, support to test innovative financing or organizational resilience strategies, and a peer learning lab.
Our first round of funding will support girl- and women-led organizations in Francophone West Africa, alongside a U.S. cohort of women-led organizations. Check out the expression of interest for Francophone West Africa here.
It’s time to stop asking girl- and women-led organizations to do more with less. It’s time to trust them, fund them, and let them lead.
In Bangladesh, Amal Foundation is building financial resilience through two mission-aligned enterprises—a quinoa farm and pickle production company. These ventures generate income to help offset organizational costs and sustain Amal’s work. Pictured here: women preparing pickles. Photo credit: Amal Foundation
Thriving Together
The future of funding for girls and women won’t be created by a single institution, funder, or model. It will be shaped through listening, collaboration, experimentation, and collective imagination. It will mean a willingness to let go of old assumptions about who holds the answers and who gets to decide. Most importantly, it will be shaped by girls and women themselves, who have always been builders, strategists, innovators, and leaders. So perhaps this moment of disruption offers us an opportunity.
Not simply to restore what was lost, but to imagine what could be built in its place by the people closest to the consequences, who also hold the solutions. It can be a moment to ask bigger questions, think outside the box, build differently, and move resources and power in ways that allow more women and girls to thrive.
Join us
Subscribe to follow the Defunded & Thriving journey, and invite others to come along.
Learn more about the Abundance Collective for Girls & Women and the upcoming Call for Proposals. And join the conversation with the leaders shaping what comes next.
