0.1 percent of the world’s philanthropic money goes to Black feminist activists — this global organization is working to change that

Author Kylie Adair
The Black Feminist Fund is a Black women-led initiative aiming to raise $100 million for Black feminist movements globally

Why It Matters

Black feminist activists are at the forefront of political and social change worldwide, yet they receive a miniscule amount of global philanthropic dollars. Closing that gap requires a new approach to grantmaking — one that’s Black women-led, trust-based, and community-first — and resources from the rest of the sector.

Ten years ago, Amina Doherty was sitting around a kitchen table — “like all amazing things that come from Black women, this came from kitchen table conversations,” Doherty says — with her friends Hakima Abbas and Tynesha McHarris. They’d all worked in and around philanthropy for years, and were frustrated, to say the least, with the lack of funding accessible to the Black feminist movements they saw making systemic change around the world. 

“What would it look like for a fund to be led by and for Black women?” they asked each other. “We just had a real, strong sense that the kind of political organizing and activism that was being led by Black feminists was just not being resourced,” Doherty says. (Spoiler: Abbas is leading research now that’s found that around 0.1 percent of philanthropic money globally goes to Black feminist-led organizations.)

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