By Mary Norkai Dowuona and Oluwatoyin Abigail Olaleye, RFLD
Over five months, a team from across RFLD took part in the Bridgespan Nonprofit Development Programme (BNDP). We did not join to write a new strategy. We joined to learn how to explain the one we already run, and how to fund it so that it lasts.
The programme brings together African organisations for a structured journey on funding models. It follows five milestones: strategy, funding goal, funder landscape, fundraising readiness and fundraising materials. Each milestone combines teamwork inside the organisation with coaching from the Bridgespan Africa team. Our participation was led by John Gbenagnon, Regional Development and Strategy Director, with colleagues from our offices in Accra, Porto-Novo and Dakar.
RFLD came to the programme with a strong record. We are a pan-African feminist network of 1,143 women-led organisations in more than 35 countries. We hold Observer Status N°553 at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. We run community programmes, fund grassroots organisations directly, and maintain twelve free, bilingual data tools covering all 55 African Union member states.
Like many African organisations, we have grown by saying yes to good opportunities, one project at a time. What the programme gave us was the time and the method to step back and ask bigger questions. Who exactly do we work for? How do the parts of our work fit together? What does the whole of it cost? And who is best placed to fund each part?
We write this as two members of the team, to share what we learned and what it means for the women and organisations we serve.
Our strategy, said simply
The first milestone was about clarity. Our strategy was strong, but it was written for people who already knew us. Over the years RFLD has built a vocabulary of its own, with programme names that mean a great deal inside the network and very little outside it.
The coaching helped us find a different way in. Instead of starting from our programmes, we started from the people we work for. Our work sits at three connected levels:
- Individuals and communities: women and girls, Vulnerable Groups and people with disabilities facing rights violations across Africa.
- Grassroots organisations: the women-led and community-based organisations in our network, and other small African nonprofits.
- Systems and policy: the African Union, the African Commission, regional economic communities, governments, funders, researchers and media.
For each level we answered three questions: who, how, and what changes. The answers fit on one page, and anyone can follow them.
We also named the common thread that runs through everything we do: one operating model with four functions. We build public accountability tools that civil society uses to hold States to account. We move money and management systems to grassroots organisations. We host free, open, bilingual data. And we deliver community programmes ourselves. Each function feeds the others.
Seen together, the three levels are not three separate lines of work. They are one chain. We train and protect women leaders, we strengthen the organisations that serve them, and we hold institutions to account.
Our funding goal
The second milestone asked a question that sounds simple: what will it cost to do what we want to do over the next five years?
The method made the difference. First, decide what you want to achieve at each level. Then cost it. Only then ask who might pay. Our team held dedicated summits on it, and the conversation in the room moved from “what will this donor fund?” to “what does this work need?”
We built a five-year funding plan, line by line, for our community programmes, our re-granting and organisational resilience work, our open data and policy infrastructure, and the core that holds it all together. For each line we explained what drives its growth:
- Community programmes grow through depth: fully funded country programmes, fuller support at each site, and more women reached each year.
- Re-granting grows by funding more organisations, not by making bigger grants, so the facility stays open to small and newly formed groups.
- Open data and policy work grows with the number of tools we maintain, the policy hubs we run, and our presence at the African Commission.
We priced core costs into the plan rather than hiding them inside projects. Core means the staff, systems and offices the strategy needs: finance and audit, grants and compliance, monitoring and data, fundraising, governance and our registered offices. We also planned an operating reserve, because a resilient organisation needs one.
We then asked which kind of funder is best suited to each part of the work. Bilateral and multilateral partners remain the base of our portfolio. Private foundations carry our growth and offer the best route to flexible, multi-year funding. Pooled feminist funds and philanthropic collaboratives fit our re-granting model naturally. Individual and family philanthropy, through our US giving channel, is an emerging source.
Our funders: relationships first
The third milestone was about who could fund our work. We mapped funders active in gender equality and feminist movements, civic space and digital rights, democracy and governance in francophone West Africa, and open data for development.
The most important lesson of this stage was about access. Many foundations and individual donors do not run open calls. They find organisations through people they trust. Access comes through relationships, referrals and visibility, rather than through an application sent cold. Our own experience confirms it: some of our strongest partnerships began with a trusted introduction, not a proposal.
This shaped three practices we now follow:
- Every priority funder has an entry point. For each one we know the warm route in: an existing partner, a peer, a board member, or a regional office we can visit.
- Peers are partners, not just benchmarks. We look at what we can learn from peer organisations about positioning and communication, where they could introduce us, and where we could work together.
- A short list, actively managed. We focus on a manageable set of priority funders for the next 12 to 18 months, tracked in one place. For each, we record why they fit, what part of our work they could support, how we will engage, who owns the relationship and the next step.
Our fundraising readiness
The fourth milestone turned the lens on ourselves. Are we organised to raise the resources our plan needs?
We assessed our fundraising capabilities across four areas: planning, outreach and proposals, monitoring and tracking, and relationships with funders. The exercise confirmed real strengths. We write strong proposals in English and French. Our compliance record is solid, with consecutive unqualified audits and all our grants published on IATI. Our standing at the African Commission and in regional advisory bodies opens doors. And our data gives every pitch its evidence.
It also showed where to invest. The capabilities that matter most for the years ahead are funder research, relationship-building and referrals, and the active management of our funder pipeline. Those are the skills that bring in flexible, multi-year support.
Our approach is staged. In the next 12 to 18 months, we are building that capacity inside our current team. Our Executive Director leads relationships with our most strategic partners. Our Regional Development and Strategy Director leads the fundraising function. Colleagues in finance, grants, impact and communications support proposals and reporting as part of their roles. Our board takes a defined role in opening doors. A simple funder tracker serves as our live pipeline, reviewed regularly by the leadership team.
As our partnerships grow, we will add specialist roles and more advanced systems. Building the muscle first means that every new hire will join a team with relationships already moving, rather than starting from zero.
Our story to funders
The last milestone brought everything together into the story we tell funders. It is built on five parts: the problem, our solution, the outcomes we seek, what makes us different, and a clear call to action. Then it fits into a one-minute pitch that every colleague can deliver.
Writing the problem was the most useful part. It comes down to one sentence: women’s rights exist on paper, not in women’s lives. Most African Union member states have ratified the Maputo Protocol on the rights of women, but turning it into laws, budgets and services lags far behind.
This gap is not one problem but three connected ones, at the same three levels as our strategy:
- Systems and policy: States sign but do not apply, because too few actors bring the evidence and pressure that hold them to account.
- Individuals and communities: so women cannot claim their rights, and those who speak up face attacks, more and more online.
- Grassroots organisations: so the women’s groups closest to them carry the load alone, with little flexible funding. The gap is widest in French-speaking Africa.
Fixing one level alone does not last. A trained woman leader without a strong organisation burns out. A strong organisation without access to decision-makers stays local. A good law that no one monitors stays on paper.
This gave us our golden thread: our data proves where rights fail, our grants fund the women’s organisations that fix it, and our advocacy makes States answer for it. Fund RFLD and you fund the whole chain, from the village to the African Commission.
We also set out the change we work for at each level:
| Level | Outcomes |
|---|---|
| Individuals and communities | Empowerment; awareness of their rights; a pathway to agency, to become who they mean to be |
| Grassroots organisations | Access to flexible funding; the capabilities and systems to manage it and to last |
| Systems and policy | Laws, budgets and services that apply women’s rights; States that answer to evidence from the ground; protected civic space for women defenders |
What it means for RFLD, and lessons for our peers
Five months is a short time, but RFLD now works with stronger foundations:
- One story. Every colleague can explain RFLD in a minute, in the same words, without internal programme names. Our website, proposals and conversations are being aligned to it.
- A costed plan built from ambition. We know what each part of our work needs, what drives its growth, and which kind of partner is best suited to support it.
- A focused set of relationships. We invest in a manageable number of partnerships, each with an owner and a clear next step.
- A realistic path for our own capacity. We build fundraising skills within the team first, and grow it as our partnerships grow.
For African organisations about to begin a similar journey, five lessons stand out:
- Simplify before you fundraise. If someone new cannot understand your strategy in two minutes, no proposal will fix it.
- Start from ambition, then cost it. Planning only from the grants in hand keeps an organisation small and reactive.
- Price your core. The systems that hold the work together deserve funding in their own right.
- Relationships open doors that applications cannot. Invest in visibility, peers and referrals long before the ask.
- Welcome hard questions. The most useful moments of the programme were the questions that made us look again.
We are grateful to the Bridgespan Africa team for months of patient and rigorous coaching, and for treating our team as the decision-makers throughout. Thank you to our Executive Director, Dossi Sêkonnou Gloria Agueh, to John Gbenagnon, who led our participation, and to every colleague in Accra, Porto-Novo and Dakar who gave their time to this work.
The programme has ended. Our work continues. Over the next 12 to 18 months, we will build these partnerships with funders who share our priorities. If you are one of them, we would welcome a conversation, or a visit to our work in Benin, Ghana or Senegal.
Mary Norkai Dowuona and Oluwatoyin Abigail Olaleye are members of the RFLD team that took part in the Bridgespan Nonprofit Development Programme.
