WIEGO and its partners are hosting a session at the WINGS Forum 2026 to examine how funders can resource the infrastructure that holds movements together in a way that translates into collective power, and move beyond project funding.
The forum, held in Montreal, Canada, brings together 400 leaders from across the global philanthropy community to focus on how the industry can move from intention to practical action.
The session draws on the five-year, USD 25 million Ford Foundation Social Justice Bond to the WIEGO Network, StreetNet International, the International Domestic Workers Federation, HomeNet International and the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, and on findings from its independent evaluation.
What would it take to fund movement infrastructure?
Speakers and participants will examine how philanthropy, which can struggle to resource movements in ways that build lasting collective power, can change in order to enable movements not only to navigate systems, but to transform them collectively, from the local to the global.
The session will engage participants to consider:
- What would need to happen to fund infrastructure rather than projects
- Where they have tried this, and what broke
- The smallest viable version for their context
- What they would stop doing
The speakers will work through these tensions in dialogue with the coordinators who led their organisations through the SJB grants, including what the independent evaluation found did not work.
From discussion to decisions
Participants will leave the session with with decisions and ideas for change, including:
- A sharper way to distinguish investment in movement infrastructure from isolated organizational capacity building
- A clearer understanding of common failure modes in funding movements and networks, and an ability to name these patterns in their own grantmaking
- A practical commitment they can take back to their own organization: including a stop, start or change commitment
- Connections with peers working on related funding experiments
Speakers
- Laura Alfers: International Coordinator, WIEGO
- Oksana Abboud: International Coordinator, StreetNet International
- Adriana Paz: General Secretary, International Domestic Workers Federation
- Jemimah Nyakongo: Interim International Coordinator, HomeNet International
- Kabir Arora: General Secretary, International Alliance of Waste Pickers
About WINGS
WINGS is a community of more than 250 member organizations in over 60 countries. It is committed to building a more just, equitable and sustainable world by strengthening the global ecosystem for philanthropy.
It works to ensure philanthropy is well-resourced, supported and equipped to contribute to long-term progress in communities around the world.
This year, building on previous years’ work, the network is focussed on action – how philanthropy can come together to support community leaders and organisations, a more engaged and accountable philanthropy, and deeper collaboration with governments, businesses and communities.
In 2020, the network explored the need to imagine new possibilities, and in 2023, it looked at how to transform its practices and institutions.
