Governance and policies, in the open.
RFLD is led by African women and accountable, first, to the communities and the more than 1,143 member organisations it serves, and second to the funders who resource the work. Good governance is what allows a grassroots organisation to trust us with its name, and what lets us move resources responsibly across a continent. Our governance bodies, our safeguarding commitment and our full policy suite are all published here.
Authority in RFLD flows from its members and is exercised through defined bodies, each with a distinct role. This separation of duties is what keeps oversight honest.
General Assembly
The supreme decision-making body, made up of all members. It sets the broad direction and holds the leadership to account.
Board of Directors
Strategic oversight, policy direction and fiduciary duty. It works independently of executive management and through standing committees.
Finance Committee
Oversees financial management, reporting and the annual external audit, and reviews cash flow with management each quarter.
Ethics Committee
Independent oversight of integrity, safeguarding and whistleblower matters, handled outside the ordinary line of management.
Executive Management
Implements programmes and manages day-to-day operations across the offices, under the strategy the Board sets.
Continental Advisory Committee
Keeps the wider movement and an intergenerational voice present in how the network is run.
Led by African women, accountable to the communities we serve.
RFLD is a women-led, pan-African feminist network. Its leadership is drawn from, and answerable to, the movement, with priority given to the underserved francophone West Africa and Sahel corridor and to organisations led by women, Vulnerable Groups and people with disabilities. The people affected by the work help decide the work.
The Board of Directors carries fiduciary duty and sets strategy independently of executive management. Its composition, the mix of skills and diversity it seeks, its term limits and its succession process are all defined in the Board Governance Charter. The Board delegates detailed oversight to its Finance Committee and its Ethics Committee, and reviews the organisation’s risk register on a regular cycle.
Day-to-day, the organisation runs through clear functions: resource mobilisation and partnerships, finance and compliance, programmes, monitoring and evaluation, and communications. Personnel accounted for about 19% of expenditure in the most recent audited year, with the large majority of spending reaching the field.
RFLD holds zero tolerance for sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment, and applies the same standard to itself, its staff, its board and every partner and sub-grantee. We work in fragile and high-risk settings, including the Sahel and with defenders under threat, so our approach is conflict-sensitive and do-no-harm by design, and we back defenders and sub-grantees with rapid-response support.
Anyone, including community members and beneficiaries, can raise a concern, confidentially and without fear of retaliation.
These ten policies and the charter set the standards we hold ourselves and our partners to. Each is a current, Board-approved, version-controlled document. Click any card to download the full PDF.
Board Governance & Charter
Board composition, fiduciary duties, committees, term limits and succession.
Safeguarding & PSEAH
Protection from sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment, for everyone we work with.
Anti-Corruption & Conflict of Interest
A zero-tolerance integrity framework for everyone acting for RFLD.
Sub-Granting & Partner Management
How RFLD re-grants and manages its member organisations and partners.
Donor Compliance & Grants Management
Grant inception, amendments, audit cooperation and closeout across all funders.
Risk Management
An organisation-wide risk framework and risk appetite for pan-African operations.
Procurement
Value for money and fair competition, aligned to OECD-DAC, UNCITRAL and Sida.
Human Resources
Staff management, rights, wellbeing and accountability across the network.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Internal hiring, pay equity and inclusive culture, aligned to our GESI mandate.
Digital Security & Information Management
Device and data security, secure communications and incident response.
Looking for our audited accounts and statutes? See Financials and Transparency. To raise a concern, use our confidential reporting channel.
The Board is majority African women and independent of executive management. Members are chosen for a mix of finance, legal, programme and monitoring expertise and for geographic spread across the corridor we serve. The Board Governance Charter sets defined term limits and a documented succession process, so that leadership does not rest on any single person. These are the governance signals a funder scans for, and they are written down, not assumed.
Independent Ethics Committee
Handles integrity, safeguarding and whistleblower matters outside the ordinary line of management.
Whistleblower protection
A confidential, retaliation-free channel open to staff, partners and community members alike.
Anti-corruption and conflict of interest
Zero tolerance, with segregation of duties: every bank withdrawal needs the joint signatures of the President and the Treasurer.
RFLD is a re-granting intermediary, so how we handle other organisations’ money matters as much as how we handle our own. Our Sub-Granting and Partner Management policy sets partner due diligence, a sub-recipient audit framework, and clear suspension and exclusion rules, alongside capacity strengthening rather than compliance theatre. Between June and September 2026 we awarded 16 grants, including €160,000 in sub-grants to nine women-led organisations across francophone West Africa, and through our Organizational Resilience Program we donate the management systems that let those grantees pass an audit. We move both the cash and the systems that make cash safe.
- Consecutive unqualified external audits under the International Standards on Auditing.
- Every grant published to the IATI transparency standard.
- Timely donor reporting to Sida, GIZ/BMZ, the Packard Foundation and AmplifyChange.
- NGOsource 501(c)(3) equivalency determination maintained for US grantmakers.