For the upcoming RightsCon, I’m co-hosting a joint session with Stiftung Mercator (who I work with) and European AI Fund (who I served as interim director for recently, which is also when and why I submitted the session).
From Stiftung Mercator, program managers Lea Wulf and Florian Christ will be co-hosting; from the European AI Fund both director Catherine Miller and program manager Alexandra Toth will be joining. Should be good!
In our session, we want to explore how funders can best support civil society orgs, asking questions like: What types of funding work best? What type of support other than funding work well? How to best manage the relationship between funders and grantees?
Our goal is to share what works and what doesn’t, to learn from one another — and ulimately to offer the best possible support to grantees and partners.
Below the description for our session:
Knowledge Exchange for Funders: How can we better support civil society groups in this space?
Civil society organizations face tremendous challenges, especially digital rights organizations: A highly dynamic environment, structural funding challenges, organizational growth and maturity, access to policy makers, and many more. As funders and grant makers, we should ask ourselves how we can best support these organizations. For example:- What types of funding are best for what context?- What kind of support can we offer beyond funds?- How can we complement the grantees’ work through other channels as funding organizations?In this session we would like to have an open exchange of experiences, ideas, and recommendations in an open discussion format. Let’s learn together!
We aim to raise awareness to the specific challenges civil society orgs face and how to help overcome those challenges in our role as funding organizations — through an exchange of knowledge and best practices, and by forging a community of funders and grant makers who will continue to learn together on this journey to better support the digital civil society ecosystem.
Our key stakeholders are funding partners and grant makers, i.e. people who work with philanthropic organizations or other grant makers who significantly fund civil society.
The session takes place on June 9th, 11:45 CET, remotely. The session is a so-called “private session”, meaning it’s invite only. (Please note that you’ll need a RightsCon ticket to participate.) If you’re a funder and would like to participate, please let me know and we can arrange an invitation.
