Human rights grantmaking involves challenging and transforming how power is held and used. Unequal relationships persist that impede our collective work to advance human rights, including between donors and grantees, between the Global North and the Global South and East, and between large well-funded international organizations and small national or local groups and movements.

Human rights funders should seek to share and shift power by incorporating power analyses across our work, establishing participatory decision-making processes, and building relationships based on trust and equal footing. Funders can challenge inequitable power structures by resourcing those whose rights are under attack to build and exercise their own power. This should include providing flexible and unrestricted funding so that grantees have the power to set their own priorities and establishing straightforward grant processes which do not place undue burden on grantees. Funders must directly acknowledge and redress power imbalances within our grantmaking processes and across all relationships.

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