The Challenge

For decades, approaches to address gender-based violence (GBV) have been fragmented and reactive. To create lasting change, there is a critical need for transformative, sustainable solutions that target the root causes of violence.

This requires centering the leadership and experience of those most affected, particularly women, girls, LGBTQI+, and gender-diverse people in the Global South. However, the feminist organizations and movements best placed to lead this work are historically excluded and underfunded, operating in a fragile ecosystem with shrinking civic space.

What We Did

Beginning in 2020, the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice International (GREJ-I) strategy has sought to prevent GBV by supporting organizations developing transformative solutions, especially those led by and for communities in the Global South.

The strategy is implemented at global and regional levels, with work in West Africa, Southern Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Between July 2020 and November 2024, the GREJ-I program awarded 409 grants to 290 partners, with total committed funding of over $266.5 million. A key feature of its approach has been providing flexible, long-term support, including general operating and BUILD grants, to strengthen organizational capacity and resilience.

In 2024, we engaged Kore Global to conduct an external evaluation of the GREJ-I strategy’s first five years. The evaluation was designed for both accountability and learning, assessing progress while identifying lessons to guide future strategic decisions. The evaluation team used a theory-based, mixed-methods approach, which included a portfolio analysis of all 409 grants, document reviews, and interviews with 55 grantee partners and 23 external stakeholders.

What We Learned

The evaluation found that GREJ-I’s decision to focus on GBV prevention was timely and strategically sound, helping to shape the field at a pivotal moment. The program has laid essential groundwork by investing in feminist infrastructure, enabling movements to sustain their work in an increasingly challenging global context.

Areas of Progress

The evaluation assessed progress against four key outcome areas, finding strong, moderate, and emerging results:

• Strong progress in infrastructure and collaboration: The program made strong progress in building a more resilient and collaborative GBV prevention ecosystem. Ford’s flexible, long-term core support has been a vital stabilizing force, helping grantee partners improve their financial sustainability, increase their visibility, and navigate internal leadership transitions. This investment has been foundational to progress in all other areas.
• Moderate progress in norms, narratives, and accountability: GREJ-I partners have advanced more inclusive, intersectional framings of GBV; informed global and national policy agendas; and engaged new actors including traditional and faith leaders as champions for prevention. However, progress was often uneven, with hard-won gains facing significant resistance.
• Moderate progress in resourcing: The program has played a pivotal role in creating new funding mechanisms, such as feminist pooled funds, that direct more resources to grassroots organizations in the Global South. Ford’s leadership has also influenced other donors to prioritize gender justice. Still, the funding ecosystem for GBV prevention remains fragile.
• Emerging progress in evidence-based policies and programs: The program helped strengthen the evidence base with locally led, intersectional research that helped inform legal reforms. A persistent challenge, however, is the gap between policy adoption and sustained, effective implementation on the ground.

Persistent Gaps and Strategic Questions

While progress is evident, the evaluation identified several persistent gaps and strategic questions for the GREJ-I program to consider as it moves forward:

• Clarifying aims and building evidence: A critical gap remains in the technical capacity to design, implement, and measure primary prevention efforts at scale. This is compounded by a weakening global infrastructure for GBV data. Looking ahead, there is a need to clarify the program’s ultimate aims and invest in evidence systems to track outcomes.
• Navigating a fragile ecosystem: As a key donor providing flexible, long-term funding with a feminist lens, Ford plays a unique and catalytic role as a field-builder, especially as other funders are exiting the space. The erosion of response services and data infrastructure raises strategic questions about where the program should focus its efforts and how it can leverage its convening power to sustain the field.
• Strengthening ways of working: Grantees deeply value Ford’s flexible support and trust-based approach. They also called for more transparent communication and consistent alignment of grantmaking with community-led ways of working. At this moment, Ford’s visibility and leadership are seen as critical to sustaining momentum for GBV prevention.