The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) is inviting civil society organizations with proven expertise in ending violence against women and girls to submit project concepts to end violence against marginalized women and girls.
The UN Trust Fund welcomes proposals that contribute to one or more of its three strategic outcome areas:
Improving access for women and girls to essential, specialist, safe and adequate multisectoral services;
Improving prevention of VAW/G through changes in behaviours, practices and attitudes; and
Increasing effectiveness of legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to prevent and end VAW/G.
Within this framework, the UN Trust Fund is establishing two windows of funding:
General window: Addressing violence against marginalized women and girls and those experiencing intersecting forms of discrimination
This UN Trust Fund’s General Window focuses on addressing violence against marginalized women and girls and those experiencing intersecting forms of discrimination, in their specific context or community. This is in recognition of the fact that not all women and girls are at the same risk of experiencing VAW/G, nor for the same reasons. Women and girls not only face gender-related discrimination but also additional discrimination due to factors like their race, ethnicity, religion, sexual identity, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, disability, or other aspects of their identity.
Interventions need to respond to the lived realities of women and girls in order to prevent the violence they experience and/or address its consequences. Intersectional approaches help identify the connections between social categories and/or circumstances that put certain women and girls at increased risk and ensure that programming can identify and respond to these realities. For example: indigenous women and girls living with disabilities, or women and girl internally displaced and refugees living with HIV/AIDs, or women and girl survivors of violence belonging to ethnic minority groups.
Special window addressing violence against women and girls affected by crisis
This UN Trust Fund’s Special Window focuses on addressing, mitigating, and responding to the specific challenges and risks faced by women and girls who are impacted by crisis and on supporting civil society organizations working to end violence against women and girls in crisis settings.
In the context of this Special Window, these crisis settings can encompass a broad spectrum of combined and/or compounding events or phenomena, including natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and droughts, conflict (and post-conflict settings), climate-change-induced challenges, humanitarian, economic and political crises, and public health emergencies. Given the unprecedented level of global displacement, applications from refugee led organizations and local women’s rights organizations addressing violence against refugee and/or forcibly displaced women and girls are especially encouraged.
Funding Information
Civil society organizations can apply for a grant size of between US $150,000 and US $1,000,000.
Small civil society organizations can also apply for a ‘small grant’ between US $150,000 and US $250,000, which provides access to additional core and flexible funds.
They will fund all selected organizations for a duration of four years.
Eligibility Criteria
The UN Trust Fund will only accept applications from Civil Society Organizations with specialized knowledge, expertise, and a track record of working on defending and advocating for women’s and/or girls’ rights and eliminating violence against women and girls. Organizations are expected to have at least five years of relevant programming experience in the field of ending violence against women and/or girls. The organization must provide information on its technical expertise and experience in this field as part of its application, including an explanation of its history and experience working on this issue and the number and CVs of staff with the requisite ending VAW/G skillset.
Prioritized organizations
They will prioritize applications from the following organizations:
Women’s rights organizations (WRO): To be considered a “women’s rights organization”, the applicant must demonstrate its core work is in the field of women’s rights, gender equality, the elimination of violence against women and/or girls, or sexual and gender-based violence. The organization’s official mission and vision statements must reflect its commitment to pursuing gender equality and empowering women and girls.
Women-led organizations: To be considered a “women-led organization”, the applicant must demonstrate it is governed and led by women. This requires evidence that a minimum of 61 per cent of leadership positions across various decision-making levels, including in management, senior management and board levels are held by women.
Organizations led by and for marginalized women and girls (constituent-led): who represent marginalized groups of women and girls. Organizations of people with disabilities, organizations of indigenous women, associations for lesbian, bisexual and trans women (LBT), survivors-led organizations, refugee-led and refugee/IDP-focused organizations, and girl-led and girl-centered organizations are particularly encouraged to apply.
Small organizations: To be considered a “small organization”, the organization’s annual operational budget must have been lower than US$ 200,000 (on average) over the last three years.
They require supporting documents (constitutions, by-laws, official missions, vision statements, organigrammes, certified financial statements) as part of the application to help determine whether an organization is a women’s rights, a women-led, a constituent-led organization and/or a small organization.
Note for International non-government organizations (INGOs): INGOs may apply on the condition that they clearly demonstrate their added value and intention to engage with and strengthen the capacities of local WRO/CSO partners on programming and/or coordination in a mutually enabling manner.
Legal status and registration (5 years)
The lead applicant must be officially registered or have a legal basis/mandate as an organization.
If the lead applicant is not legally registered in the country of implementation, it must submit a legal registration document of at least one of its co-implementing partner(s) that is registered in the country of implementation (in addition to its own legal status/registration document).
Applications without clear proof of legal registration (or legal status) will be considered incomplete and removed from the review process.
The lead applicant needs to have been legally registered for at least 5 years. In exceptional circumstances, three years of registration history may be accepted with justification.
Demonstrated capacity for operational, financial and human resource management
Operational and human resources: The applicant must have the necessary operational and human resources to manage the proposed project. A clear project internal control framework should be defined once implementation starts.
Certified Financial Statements of the Organization: The applicant must submit certified financial statements for three fiscal years (including 2020, 2021 and 2022).
A certified financial statement is one that has been reviewed, approved and signed by the person authorized to sign financial documents for the organization. This can be someone from within the organization or an outside firm, as delegated to sign as the designated official of the organization.
Partnership and accountability arrangements:
Organizations can only apply once under this Call for Proposals, either as the lead applicant organization or as a co-implementing partner.
An application should include no more than four co-implementing partners that will receive a portion of the requested funding.
In all cases, the lead applicant organization will be accountable for managing the grant award in its entirety.
Current UN Trust Fund grantees are not eligible to apply.
Ineligible
The following are not eligible to apply for a grant:
Organizations proposing interventions in a country not listed in the OECD DAC list of ODA recipients
Organizations whose work and mission/vision statement do not focus on nor explicitly mention gender equality and the elimination of violence against women and/or girls
Organizations that do not have a legal status in the country or territory of implementation, and neither do any of its co-implementing partners
