The Trevor Project and the National Women's Law Center are not doing the same work, but they might be sitting in the same line item in your foundation's portfolio.
For International Women's Day, I mapped the women's rights funding ecosystem and found 427 nonprofits, 1,755 funders, and $190.8M in grants in 2024.
The organizations inside that ecosystem are doing remarkable work across completely different arenas:
National Women's Law Center: Legal and policy advocacy
Pregnancy Justice: Reproductive rights litigation
9to5: Workplace equity and labor rights
Women Enabled International: Disability and gender rights advocacy
The Trevor Project: Suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ youth
For foundations, this creates a strategic opportunity.
A portfolio labeled “women’s rights” may actually span multiple ecosystems with different actors, leverage points, and timelines for change.
Seeing those systems clearly makes two things possible:
1. Foundations fund organizations with full visibility into the network around them.
2. Strategies are built on a clear picture of where funding is concentrated and where it isn't.
Instead of starting with individual organizations, foundations should look at the structure of the ecosystem:
Where funding is clustering
Which organizations anchor each system
Where critical roles in the ecosystem are underfunded
Women’s rights is a useful label, but effective capital allocation requires seeing the systems underneath it.
If you want to see the full report, DM me or let me know in the comments.