Video transcript
Hi, my name is Antonia Musunga, the Freedom Fund’s Program Manager for Movement Building.
While the Freedom Fund, has always focused on supporting frontline leaders, a few years ago, we realised that we needed to do more to support organisations led by survivors of modern slavery.
Their knowledge and expertise of survivors is critical in the anti-slavery movement, but often they struggle to access funding due to discrimination, rigid requirements, and lack of access to donors.
Our Survivor Leadership Fund offers unrestricted grants to survivor led organisations.
We found that offering this unrestricted support has led to some really exciting and innovative initiatives.
It has enabled organisations to reflect and grow in ways that serve them and their communities.
We’ve met amazing survivor leaders in organisations that we weren’t aware of before.
We’ve learned a lot too.
In order to get word out to as many groups as possible, we’ve made it a priority to cater to different languages and accessibility needs, and we’ve included these costs as part of our budget.
When possible, we try to offer contacts in-country to answer questions and provide support.
We have simplified the due diligence process so that most of their work sits with us by spreading information and requests throughout the application process.
We can reduce the burden on grantees and make sure a lot of the work has been done by the time the grant is awarded.
We have found it important to continuously stress the flexibility of these grants because many organisations are not used to unrestricted funding.
We try to be super clear that they can use the money to fulfil any organisational needs.
And it’s okay if the plans for the use of the grant change over time.
While this fund started out as a small pilot, we’ve already seen its impacts.
We plan to make grants to hundreds of organisations in the next few years.