Change Exploration Conversations

Written by Women Win

About Change Exploration

Change Exploration is a feminist and decolonised approach to monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), adapted from Outcome Harvesting. It collects evidence of what has changed and works backwards to understand whether and how an initiative contributed to those changes. As a participatory method, it centres participant voice and uses processes of reflection and collaboration to explore change, recognising the knowledge and expertise of participants as essential to developing a deeper, more nuanced understanding of why changes have occurred, through collective discussion and shared sense-making.

Change Exploration x ONSIDE

Change Exploration was carried out with ONSIDE grantees through two online sessions in March 2025. Grantees were asked to write two Change Stories, one describing a change in the individuals or communities they work with, and one capturing a change on an organisational level. Stories were shared in small peer groups (Change Story Circles) for refinement and feedback, before the full group came together for Collective Sense-Making — discussing the significance of each change and the extent to which ONSIDE's funding and accompaniment contributed to these occuring.

Illustration by Jenny Leonard Art capturing key highlights from the conversation

Individual Impacts

Through grantee Change Stories, we see four interconnected areas of change:

1

Increased Confidence & Agency

Participants moved from low confidence and limited voice to actively expressing themselves, making independent decisions and influencing those around them. Change Stories showed girls, women and non-binary people taking risks, speaking up and stepping into public space with greater assurance.

2

Expanded Leadership & Economic Opportunities

Grantees intentionally expanded leadership pathways, supporting participants into roles as coaches, peer mentors and facilitators, and integrating them into formal governance structures. This created livelihood prospects and greater influence in decision-making spaces.

3

Greater Access to Safe & Inclusive Spaces

Advocacy by grantees resulted in tangible policy change — including anti-harassment policies in public facilities. The intentional creation of inclusive, play-based spaces enabled marginalised groups, including people with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ individuals, to feel accepted and able to fully 'take up space'.

4

Improved Gender Norms & Community Wellbeing

Grantee-led awareness campaigns and the visible presence of girls, women and non-binary people shifted community attitudes. Families, including mothers and aunts, began exercising their own right to play. Participants also reported improved mental health and became peer educators in their communities on gender-based violence and sexual reproductive health.

Organisational Impacts

The ONSIDE fund also catalysed significant organisational change. Across three

dimensions - effectiveness, resilience and sustainability - grantees demonstrated

meaningful growth:

1

More Effective

Grantees consolidated strategies, expanded teams, hired specialist coaches, increased staff knowledge through training and improved internal coordination. Flexible funding enabled new approaches tailored to the communities they serve.

2

More Resilient

Grantees adopted more inclusive governance structures, integrating women with disabilities into Boards and General Assemblies. They built intentional leadership pipelines and shifted towards community-based structures, enabling them to respond creatively to crises.

3

More Sustainable

Transitioning from informal initiatives to structured organisations strengthened credibility, attracted new partnerships and opened access to diversified funding, reducing dependency on short-term funding and building a foundation for lasting impact.

What the Evidence Tells Us

Through collective sense-making, grantees agreed that increased self-confidence, access to safe spaces, improved mental wellbeing and strengthened knowledge represent ONSIDE's strongest and most direct impacts - the changes that are foundational for advancing gender justice, and where ONSIDE's funding and accompaniment demonstrably contributed to these changes.

Critically, these changes are interconnected. Foundational changes, such as access to safe spaces and increased knowledge, enable higher-level outcomes like confidence, agency and leadership. At the organisational level, strengthened organisational capacity leads to greater visibility, stronger partnerships and more diversified funding. Change in one area tends to unlock change in another, creating a compounding effect over time.

The consensus from grantees was clear: many of these changes would not have happened at the same scale or speed without the support of the ONSIDE Fund.

Flexible or Unrestricted Funding: Key to the Sustainability of Feminist Movements and Initiatives

Written by Jaya Tiwari, Senior Programmes Manager at Maitrayana and OAC member, and Smita Sen, Founder and Executive Director of Rupantaran

We had the opportunity to participate in a Funders Dialogue session on 16th November 2023 and here are some of our reflections on the conversation. 

One of the most relevant topics discussed within the small, vibrant group of ONSIDE funders, grantees, Advisory Committee members and Women Win was the sustainability of grassroots initiatives. During the conversation, several questions were raised to dissect the topic of flexible funding for sustainability: Should funders provide sustainable funding that is multi-year and unlimited or focus on funding sustainable change and long-term systemic impact? What does flexibility in funding entail, and how do we understand it?

This dialogue was specifically pertinent because this is the final grant cycle of many ONSIDE grantees who have received unrestricted funding for three years for initiating, implementing, and sustaining gender equality movements through sports with girls, women, and non-binary people from underrepresented groups and communities.

Illustration by Sagrario capturing key highlights from the conversation

Grantees across Asia-Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, and Europe echoed the need for flexible funding that is fully unrestricted. Restricted funding opportunities are often limited to registered, stable, and established organisations. New initiatives, particularly those amplifying women and girls’ voices and challenging existing norms, struggle to access such funding.

Most restricted funding is project-based and fails to consider the individual needs of organisations, including supplies, physical spaces, learning and capacity building, and leadership development. Moreover, women who do not conform to stereotypes are often perceived as incompetent to lead any movement or cause.

In contrast, the flexible funding provided by ONSIDE has reached 99 groups across 55 countries, including startups with innovative ideas and the courage to challenge gender norms and expectations.

Within ONSIDE, flexibility is not solely about budgetary flexibility and line items, it is about recognising the needs of the community and where and how funds are required to advance the movement. It was also acknowledged that individuals in positions of power influence the concept of flexible funding. On the one hand, individuals can make funding more meaningful to grassroots organisations by granting them the liberty to decide how to allocate resources. On the other hand, even funding labelled as flexible can become highly restricted if it faces excessive scrutiny.

Diana from H&M Move beautifully articulated that grassroots organisations should not be confined to rigid structures and assigned Key Performance Indicators. Instead, they should have full ownership of funds, as they are best positioned to determine how to manage those resources being sector experts.

We found a resonance in the reflective sharing of the ONSIDE grantees who participated in the discussion. Although the sustainability of movements has multiple faces, grantees agreed that working with vulnerable communities and empowering them through sports is in itself a way of making the movement sustainable as it enables the community to take ownership of carrying it forward. Building leadership skills among the girls and women we are working with is not only empowering but also promotes sustainability as shared by Luz, Jennifer, and ourselves. 

We also felt that unrestricted funding is giving organisations a breathing space and infuses us to be entrepreneurial and more creative in our strategies. It fuels the experimentation of new ideas and supports self and collective care within communities, societies, countries, and continents.

In conclusion, we believe that flexible funding represents the future of philanthropy and is something that more corporations should embrace. The funders in the conversation echoed the need for this type of discussion with corporate funders more broadly so that they can hear the voices from the ground and understand how feminist initiatives and movements are looking at sustainability issues as well as flexibility in funding.

The ONSIDE Fund Thought Piece Series IV - Jawa Tiwari, Smita Sen.pdf

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Reflections on Sustainability from a Feminist Grassroots Collective in Mexico

Written by Jennifer Mejía Calderón, Centro Transdisciplinario de Estudios en Género (CETREG)

These dialogues led me to reflect on the importance of having our voices heard in diverse spaces. Although ONSIDE has always given us the opportunity to express our ideas and share our knowledge in forums or panels, we had never shared a space with funders. I believe this is important because as members of grassroots collectives we were able to be heard directly by the people who make decisions about the resources allocated to the Fund. These dialogues allowed us to express ourselves freely about how we understand sustainability, and I noticed that most of the Fund's grantees share similar visions of this concept. I was happy to hear that none of us translated sustainability into a purely economic concept, on the contrary, we defined it from a political, emotional, and social perspective.

This led us to ask ourselves: how can we continue to sustain our work? The importance of self-care came up as we agreed that there is an emotional aspect to sustainability. The question of sustainability forces us to be very clear about our expectations as a grassroots collective. Sometimes we can take up very large projects, but other times we can't, so we devise strategies that allow us to continue collaborating with our organisations and movements based on our capacities and scope. We also talked about the importance of not overburdening ourselves and instead letting our mission and vision guide us to ensure that the funding we receive is aligned with our desires and concerns. For us, as a collective, it means believing firmly in our political commitment and in the changes that we want to create, which then translates into our programme design and proposal writing. This sustains us because we do what we love and are passionate about. It is also why we value flexible funding, as it allows us to make autonomous decisions and does not exert so much pressure to reach certain numbers.

This becomes even more relevant in the presence of funders because it allows them to reflect on their requirements or the results they expect from the organisations. It is crucial for them to know that behind every figure there are dozens of women trying to sustain a movement and their own organisations and that each of us has a social, historical, and family context that must also be taken into consideration. Companies need to know that it is not always possible to achieve the expected results. Furthermore, they should know that contexts can be difficult and therefore it is necessary to be more flexible when granting funding. I was excited to hear that some of the people in the room understood these points and even showed interest in continuing to promote flexible funding.

Photo by CETREG

I would like to go back to the importance of flexibility in the sustainability of movements. Many times, flexible funding helps and encourages us to sustain our work because we feel that our efforts are valued and acknowledged. This also speaks about trust; it shows that funders trust us and our work and therefore give us the autonomy to make decisions and tackle the difficulties we may encounter in our own way. Flexible funding also pushes us to be creative and free, and this certainly sustains our organisations because we're not constantly under pressure.

The ONSIDE Fund Thought Piece Series - Jennifer Mejía Calderón - ENG.pdf

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