The Global Philanthropy Project and ILGA World are thrilled to announce the launch of LGBTI Pathways - a groundbreaking global project, which aims to identify and catalyze pathways to increased and improved funding for LGBTI communities around the world.
Officially launched at the Pan Africa ILGA Conference in Mauritius on 2 August 2023, the two partner organizations, together with activists and donors from across the continent and beyond, celebrated the start of something truly transformative.
LGBTI Pathways will shape the quality and quantity of resources to LGBTI people around the world by undertaking a comprehensive gap analysis on the state of global funding to LGBTI issues through regional surveys of the LGBTI movement. Each region will produce a series of useful products that include regional analyses of movement needs and priorities, and a global meta-analysis will be the outcome of the 3.5-year project. Crucially, every stage of Pathways will be movement- and donor-led and informed - for example, the regional surveys and analyses will be led by regional organizations and advised by regional advisory groups selected through an open-call process.
Two moments of the launch event of LGBTI Pathways at the Pan Africa ILGA conference in Mauritius, July 2023
In pursuit of more and better resources for the international LGBTI movement, several research projects have been undertaken in recent years to highlight current funding levels, the needs and priorities of specific parts of the movement, and critical funding gaps - in order to influence funder decisions and the donor field in general. These include:
- the Global Resources Report (global donor tracking);
- the State of Intersex Organizing and the State of Trans Organizing reports (global civil society surveys); and,
- ILGA-Europe’s European and Central Asia LGBTI funding assessment (regional civil society survey).
These projects pointed towards the potential of a global project that gathers data from the LGBTI movement across each major region of the world and compares it to donor tracking data from the Global Resources Report. A project that aims to provide pathways for current and future funders to direct their resources to address the needs and priorities identified within the different parts of the international LGBTI movement, and to where funding gaps are most critical, impact can be best had and synergies can be created for shared advocacy with grantmakers and civil society movements.
The call for Global Advisors is open until 15 September 2023 and we seek dedicated, thoughtful activists and donors to guide the direction of Pathways and its research, and help oversee the regional surveys that will soon follow.