Why are we building the future the old way?
The traditional funding framework is no longer fit for purpose. Help us shake off the cobwebs.
What is the impact of human rights from the perspective of local organizations and the communities they work in?
RFF is exploring this question with our partners at NYU's Program on Peace Research and Education in Colombia, Libya, and Moldova as part of a 4-year long project supported by the U.S. Department of State.
Working with Local Migrant-Led Organizations in Colombia
RFF, with our Bogotá-based partners Latimpacto and Innpactia, has been leading a process to co-design with community stakeholders a new funding pathway to support migrant focused organizations working in Colombia’s Caribbean coast. This process moves beyond rhetoric speaking to the how of localization and provides a non-extractive model for innovative approaches to resourcing community-led work. We'd love to tell you about the innovative resourcing mechanism that has evolved from this work!
Operationalizing Locally-Led Development
One of the best conversations we had this fall about the "how" of locally-led social change this year was thanks to our fantastic colleagues at Humentum and this wonderful panel!
Our Founder, Dr. Riva Kantowitz, was honored to share her thoughts about how the private sector can support community based organizations at the UN 🇺🇳
"We talk a lot about blended finance and other approaches that crowd in private sector resources, but the tools and mechanisms through which these resources flow – pooled funds or social impact bonds - are usually not scaled or structured to allow those resources to directly reach local organizations ." If you work at this intersection we’d love to hear from you!
Radical Flexibility Fund
Radical Flexibility Fund (RFF) is a new organization working to improve the current foreign assistance and private foundation funding model to more efficiently and effectively get resources to individuals, networks and civil society organizations. The Fund works with stakeholders and clients to gather information about new financing approaches; uses that information to design and facilitate processes led by grassroots organizations to effectively and sustainably resource work in their communities; supports the generation of locally-led knowledge; and, monitors and disseminates the learning and impact of these new approaches. Through #RadicalFlexibility we will demonstrate to other decision makers that it is possible to #ShiftThePower through new funding approaches to achieve durable social change.
What we believe
We have a vision that local people, communities and organizations are at the center of social change. They make decisions about their communities’ priorities, generate financial independence and create and implement approaches to meet their real time needs. Through trust-based relationships and direct and flexible financing, funders help to facilitate their work.
What We Do
We work with a range of donors, INGOs, non-profit and civil society organizations to design innovative financing strategies to fund locally-led social change.
Radical Flexibility Fund contributes to a new era of locally-led social change by investing in people and communities - supporting their rights and agency and amplifying their voices - in new ways by combining three elements:
Supporting communities to identify their own priorities and define their own impact
Resourcing these priorities through a broad range of funding tools that are more flexible, more inclusive and more sustainable than grants
Allocating resources in participatory ways with a focus on innovative technologies
New financial tools to generate renewable resources that will empower communities to determine their own social change priorities and their own futures.
10 Radical Actions
Simple, yet radical, steps to evolve from promises of supporting locally-led social change to action.
Invest in local priorities.
Radiate global change.
The branding for the Radical Flexibility Fund was created by Gabriele Lari. The logo represents our commitment to placing local priorities at the center of social change; we believe that change radiates out from communities, and this wave then creates global change.