Introduction
The Equality Fund is a Canadian feminist funding organization that combines grantmaking, gender-lens investing, philanthropy and policy advocacy to move sustainable resources and decision-making power to women’s rights organizations and feminist movements worldwide.
History and Background
The Equality Fund was launched in 2019 as an innovative financing model designed to create a long-term and sustainable source of funding for feminist movements.
Its institutional roots extend to MATCH International Women’s Fund, a Canadian feminist organization established in 1976 by Norma E. Walmsley and Suzanne Johnson-Harvor. MATCH connected resources from Canadian women with women’s rights initiatives in the Global South and placed gender equality at the centre of international development.
Building on this experience, the Equality Fund was established with a landmark CAD $300 million contribution from the Government of Canada. The initiative brought together MATCH International Women’s Fund, the Toronto Foundation, World University Service of Canada and other partners to develop a new global feminist funding model.
Since its 2019 launch, the Equality Fund has become one of the world’s largest feminist funds. It reported reaching financial independence by 2025 and moving significant resources to feminist organizations across more than 100 countries.
The Equality Fund is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, and operates as a registered Canadian charity under registration number 12303 7939 RR0001.
Mission and Purpose
The Equality Fund’s mission is to shift money and power to women’s rights organizations and feminist movements working to create a more just, peaceful, equal and sustainable world.
Its approach recognises that local women, girls, Indigenous leaders, LGBTQI+ activists and trans-led movements possess the knowledge and experience needed to develop solutions to challenges affecting their communities.
The organization focuses on gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health and rights, LGBTQI+ rights, democracy, political participation, climate justice, Indigenous land rights, economic justice, crisis response and the protection of human rights defenders.
Rather than imposing predetermined projects, the Equality Fund provides flexible and multi-year funding that allows organizations to determine how resources can best support their priorities, operations and movement-building activities.
Its funding primarily supports women-run organizations, feminist groups and women’s funds in the Global South and East. It does not generally direct its grantmaking to large international nongovernmental organizations.
Governance and Structure
The Equality Fund is governed by a board of directors with experience in women’s rights, international development, finance, technology, philanthropy, impact investing and social justice.
The board guides the organization’s strategic direction, financial stewardship and accountability. It is supported by an Investment Committee that provides specialist oversight of the Equality Fund’s gender-lens investment strategy.
The leadership structure includes a chief executive officer, managing director, chief financial officer and senior personnel responsible for global programmes, finance, operations, strategic partnerships, policy, communications, philanthropy, investment, innovation, learning and impact.
Jess Tomlin, a co-founder of the Equality Fund, serves as chief executive officer. The publicly listed board leadership includes Theo Sowa as co-chair and Ilse Treurnicht as interim co-chair.
The Investment Committee includes professionals with backgrounds in responsible investment, venture capital, financial risk, social innovation, international finance and impact investing.
The Equality Fund publishes annual reports, audited financial statements, investment policies and learning resources to promote transparency. These materials explain how the organization raises, invests and distributes its resources.
Funding and Grants
The Equality Fund operates through four interconnected pillars: investment, policy and strategic partnerships, philanthropy, and grantmaking.
Investment grows resources through a gender-lens strategy. Policy and strategic partnerships seek to unlock public and private financing. Philanthropy mobilizes contributions from individuals and institutional donors. Grantmaking directs flexible resources to feminist organizations and movements.
This structure differs from a conventional charitable model that depends entirely on donations or annual government appropriations. The Equality Fund combines donor contributions with investment returns to establish a more reliable, long-term funding base.
The organization invests across public and private markets while applying gender-aligned standards. Its investment strategy seeks both competitive financial returns and improvements in access to capital, employment conditions, leadership opportunities and economic participation for women and LGBTQI+ people.
Investment returns help finance future grantmaking and organizational operations. The Equality Fund describes its portfolio as operating through a 100 percent gender-aligned investment strategy.
Government partnerships are another significant funding source. The Government of Canada provided the initial CAD $300 million contribution that supported the creation of the Equality Fund’s investment model.
In 2023, the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office announced a GBP £33 million partnership, valued at approximately CAD $54 million at the time, to expand support for feminist movements across the Global South through 2028.
The Equality Fund also partners with philanthropic institutions, including the Ford Foundation, Oak Foundation and Fondation CHANEL. Donations from individuals and other supporters provide flexible funding that can respond to emerging needs and support initiatives that conventional financing mechanisms may overlook.
According to its audited financial statements for the year ending 31 March 2025, the organization recorded approximately CAD $29 million in grantmaking expenditure during that financial year.
Major Programs and Initiatives
Catalyze
Catalyze provides direct, flexible and multi-year core funding to women’s rights organizations and feminist groups.
The programme enables organizations to maintain operations, develop leadership, respond to changing conditions and pursue priorities identified by their communities.
Its grantee partners address gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive rights, LGBTQI+ rights, economic justice, racial justice, migrant rights, disability inclusion, feminist leadership, climate justice and Indigenous land rights.
An early participatory Catalyze process distributed approximately CAD $4.37 million through 72 grants. Forty-two African organizations were selected through a partnership with the African Women’s Development Fund, while the Equality Fund selected another 30 partners across Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
A subsequent Catalyze cohort provided CAD $4.9 million to 34 feminist organizations from 23 countries, including partners in historically underfunded regions such as the Caribbean and Eastern Europe.
Activate
Activate provides flexible, multi-year grants to women’s funds and feminist funds that redistribute resources to grassroots organizations.
The programme recognises that locally and regionally rooted funds possess relationships, knowledge and experience that help resources reach movements frequently excluded by conventional donors.
Through Activate, 23 feminist funds operating across five continents received a combined CAD $14 million. Participating funds work at national, regional and global levels, including in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa.
Activate uses a community-based decision-making method called Step Up/Step Back. Participating funds consider their own needs alongside those of the wider community, allowing organizations with greater immediate need to step forward while others voluntarily wait for a future funding opportunity.
Connect
Connect provides multi-year funding for feminist coalitions, consortia and networks undertaking movement building, collective organizing, advocacy and shared learning.
This funding stream supports collaboration across organizations and regions. It is intended to strengthen relationships, collective strategies and the infrastructure needed for feminist movements to pursue long-term systemic change.
Prepare and Respond
Prepare and Respond supports feminist organizations working in crisis-affected and fragile settings.
The programme provides grants and organizational support to groups preparing for or responding to armed conflict, natural disasters and other emergencies.
Eligible applicants can include women’s rights and feminist organizations, groups, collectives and networks based in Official Development Assistance-eligible countries in the Global South and East.
Since 2019, the Equality Fund has directed approximately CAD $10 million toward emerging and evolving responses to disasters, armed conflict, war and other crises in fragile contexts.
First Response Fund
The First Response Fund is a pooled global funding mechanism for diverse women- and girl-led organizations undertaking humanitarian response.
The Equality Fund hosts and administers the fund’s secretariat. The initiative helps local organizations access resources during emergencies and reinforces the leadership of women and girls in humanitarian decision-making.
Gender-Lens Investment Programme
The Equality Fund’s investment programme applies feminist and intersectional principles to capital markets.
The strategy invests in public and private assets, including women-led investment firms and businesses advancing social impact. It seeks to generate returns for future grantmaking while influencing how investors evaluate gender equality, diversity, employment practices and access to capital.
The organization works with the Toronto Foundation as a fiduciary partner and with investment specialists responsible for managing the Government of Canada-supported portfolio. Investment recommendations pass through joint oversight and approval processes.
Policy and Strategic Partnerships
The Equality Fund engages governments, foundations, investors and international institutions to advocate for stronger and more flexible financing for feminist movements.
Its policy work seeks to influence development finance, climate funding, humanitarian support and institutional grantmaking. It highlights evidence demonstrating how locally led feminist organizations contribute to human rights, democracy, peace, public health and climate resilience.
In 2026, the organization published Beyond Aid: Rethinking Development Finance for a Changing World, presenting an alternative model that combines public, private and philanthropic capital to finance locally led social change.
Philanthropy and Convening
The Equality Fund encourages individuals, foundations and other donors to participate in feminist philanthropy.
Philanthropic funding can respond quickly to urgent situations, support emerging ideas and reach groups that face barriers when applying to traditional funding institutions.
The organization also convenes activists, funders, policymakers, investors and community leaders. These gatherings promote shared learning, strengthen relationships and bring perspectives from outside traditional centres of power into decisions about social financing.
Impact and Examples of Work Funded
The Equality Fund reported in May 2026 that it had disbursed approximately CAD $125 million in grants to 1,800 organizations operating in more than 100 countries. It also reported that its investment portfolio had reached a valuation of CAD $356 million.
The funded organizations work to prevent gender-based violence, defend sexual and reproductive rights, advance LGBTQI+ equality, strengthen women’s political participation and protect human rights defenders.
Other partners promote climate justice, Indigenous land rights, disability rights, racial justice, migrant rights and the economic empowerment of women and gender-diverse communities.
Examples of grantee partners highlighted by the Equality Fund include organizations working with trans communities in El Salvador, Indigenous women in Guyana, rural women in Saint Lucia, Indigenous women in Guatemala and LGBTQI+ communities in Albania.
The organization’s impact extends beyond direct grant recipients. Grants made to feminist funds allow those institutions to redistribute resources to hundreds of smaller grassroots organizations with strong local relationships.
During the 2021/22 reporting period, the Equality Fund moved more than CAD $21 million through three grantmaking streams, supporting 654 organizations across 90 countries in the Global South and East.
Its wider influence includes generating investment returns, convening leaders and influencing public policies and funding practices. The Equality Fund reports CAD $107 million in investment earnings, approximately 7,500 people convened and 35 policy wins as part of its cumulative impact reporting.
Conclusion
The Equality Fund represents an innovative approach to financing gender equality by bringing grantmaking, investment, philanthropy and policy advocacy together within a single institutional model.
Its flexible, multi-year grants provide women’s rights organizations, feminist funds, coalitions and locally led movements with resources to address inequality according to their own priorities.
By combining public funding, private capital, investment returns and philanthropic support, the Equality Fund seeks to build a sustainable pipeline of resources for feminist movements while challenging traditional relationships between donors and grant recipients.
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