We work alongside women-led organizations in the US South and Global South, and the foundations that fund them, to build what has been missing: the relationship infrastructure that makes locally led development last.
Ways to begin →What we have seen dismantled in the United States since January 2025 has been hard to watch. A field built over decades, gone in weeks and months. The impact has been immeasurable and the recourse has been almost none. The redirection of European bilateral funding toward national security priorities has compounded it even further.
Many are trying to rebuild what was lost, but we believe that misses the point. The real question is not how to restore what existed before, but whether it was ever working for everyone.
The old system did not work for everyone. The gaps existed before the crisis and the exclusions were structural, not accidental. What we need is not restoration but reimagination. A way of working fueled by authentic relationships, honesty, and the willingness to learn from what does not work. A system where organizations can show up as themselves rather than perform a version of themselves that funders will recognize and fund.
That kind of change takes all of us, especially those with tangible power through resources. The opportunity, if we are honest enough to take it, is to build something that actually works for the people it was supposed to serve all along.
The current funding crisis did not create the vulnerability of locally-led organizations, but it has exposed it. Small, women-led organizations in the US South and Global South were already operating on the edge, not because their work was ineffective, but because no one built the infrastructure, peer networks, or honest funder relationships that would let them lead.
Two structural barriers make this cycle challenging to break.
"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist and educator
Everything we do is designed to close the distance between what funders know and what organizations actually experience. These three practices are how we do that. We are not an intermediary. We work alongside organizations to build their own capacity to navigate and sustain direct funder relationships. The goal is their autonomy, not their dependence on us.
We work inside organizations over time, building the internal infrastructure that lets them show up differently with funders. Stronger documentation, clearer theory of change, more honest reporting. The systems built belong to the organization and remain after any engagement ends.
We convene practitioners across the US South and Global South who are doing adjacent work in isolation from each other. The peer network is where the learning compounds and where isolation becomes solidarity.
We work with foundations to help their existing grantees connect and collaborate, and to build the practices and honest self-assessment that make locally led grantmaking real rather than rhetorical.
We are a collective of practitioners across the peacebuilding, development, and humanitarian sectors who have spent years working at the intersection of organizational development, fundraising, and locally led development. Many of us are women of color, from the US South and the Global South, who have been in rooms on both sides of the funder-grantee relationship and watched the same gap open up in every context, from Jordan to Baltimore to Nairobi, between what funders needed to know and what organizations felt safe enough to say.
We know what it feels like to be assessed before speaking and required to prove legitimacy that our peers are assumed to have. We have worked inside Global South organizations, Northern funders, and large INGOs. We have seen how institutional survival pressures pull organizations away from the local commitments they publicly champion. We have sat with women-led organizations in Baltimore and Nairobi and Port-au-Prince and said honestly: here is what is happening in that room, and here is how we make sure you do not have to reshape yourself into something unrecognizable to get what your community needs.
We were dismissed because we were viewed as too local or fit the profile of a beneficiary. We have worked inside the systems we are now working to change, and that experience is the point.
We also know what it feels like to be on the other side of that table. To sit across from a funder and calculate how much truth is safe to tell. To wonder whether naming what is not working will cost you the relationship you depend on. That is not a hypothetical for us. It is something we have lived, and it is why we know this work has to be done differently.
We believe the era of top-down solutions is over. Real and lasting change comes from networks and collectives, from practitioners who trust each other across geographies and build together. For us, this is not an aspiration, because we have seen it work, and it is what we are currently building.
If you are at a crossroads, questioning whether to rebuild what was lost or take the lessons from the past and reimagine systems that are more equitable and work for everyone, join us.
Every foundation is in a different place. Some have found creative ways to make localization work, and are ready to go deeper, while some want to understand what is possible before committing. We are ready and equipped to meet you where you are.
A good first conversation. We map the relationship infrastructure across your existing portfolio, identify where organizations are isolated from each other, and show you what a deeper engagement could look like with real names attached. Produces something concrete and useful regardless of what comes next.
A foundation or funder collaborative funds a dedicated practitioner to work across their portfolio over twelve to eighteen months, building peer connections between grantees and advocating on their behalf with other funders. Designed for foundations whose grantees need sustained support that program staff cannot provide across a large portfolio.
A fully embedded engagement with five to eight organizations from your existing portfolio. We work inside each one, convene them as peers, advocate on their behalf with funders, and close with a portfolio assessment. The deliverable is a cohort of organizations that are more resilient, better connected, and in more honest relationships with their funders than when we started.
The collective is building a peer network across the US South and Global South. If you are navigating this funding moment, you do not have to do it alone.
If you want to connect with practitioners facing similar challenges in other regions, reach out. The peer network is where the learning compounds and where isolation becomes solidarity.
We are actively listening to what local and community-based organizations need most right now to sustain their work. Your ground truth shapes what we build. Your experience and your relationships are what make this real.
If any of this resonates, we would like to hear from you. We are in an early phase of development and are looking for a small number of foundation partners who want to build this infrastructure together. The conversation does not have to be about a formal engagement. It can start with a question, a shared frustration, or a hunch that the relationship layer is where the work is actually stuck.
If you are navigating this funding moment and want to connect with practitioners facing similar challenges in other regions, we want to hear from you. The collective is building a network across the US South and Global South, and your experience and your relationships are what make it real.