Proudly empowering
At Ignita, we seek the transformation of philanthropy by utilising tools and methodologies that are ethical, decolonised, and democratised.
Shared decision-making is the future. As part of our work we champion shared decision-making at strategic governance level with representatives of the impacted people and communities.
We argue for positioning local experts as central actors leading processes. By moving towards more democratised philanthropic models, we believe our tools and methodologies can be leveraged towards a greater sector-wide commitment towards equity, accountability, and necessary innovation for fluid contexts.
Feminist Hosting
As a feminist host, Ignita provides an operational and financial home for values-aligned initiatives and collectives.
We offer bespoke processes and structures for project incubation to a wide range of gender equity initiatives aligned with our vision and mission. By extending our legal and tax-exempt status to emerging organisations and activists, they can receive funds, operate during their start-up phase, and focus on advancing their activities and mission.
Pooled funding
A pooled fund is comprised of multiple individual funders. Pooled funding helps amplify the value of the fund, for both funders and partners, by creating more effective mechanisms.
This type of funding model strengthens the resilience and sustainability of the fund by diversifying the income sources and reducing both the risk and dependency as well as power of one contributor/partner.
Shared Governance
The model is based on a shared and collaborative approach to grantmaking which shifts power from individual funders to a representative group of key stakeholders. This is achieved by forming an Advisory Committee with representatives from key stakeholders as close to the local context as possible. This group convenes regularly to discuss and reflect on their individual goals and the goals of the fund. By leveraging shared governance in fund management, grantmaking decisions are made collaboratively with local experts. This approach disrupts traditional grant management processes, thereby fostering faster and more effective responses to changing complex contexts.
Participatory Grantmaking
One of the main elements of democratising philanthropy is to engage in decision making those who are directly affected by the issues. As we seek to develop increasingly decolonised processes for grantmaking together with our partners, participatory methods remain at its core – with activists, civil-society leaders, and nonprofit members leading all grantmaking decisions.
By using participatory grantmaking, we aim to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in all the phases of grantmaking and enable members of the community to have the power to determine how resources are allocated.
Learning Hub
The learning hub is a technology-rich learning environment that provides formal and informal opportunities for members to come together with peers, funders, grantees, and other experts. It is a shared-learning ecosystem through which peer-to-peer and funder-grantee learning exchanges are facilitated and help work towards capacity building of all participants.
The learning hub enables an innovative interactive platform for real-time learning and network building, and moves away from a traditionally extractive, transactional, and top-down donor-grantee reporting relationship.