Mama Cash celebrates 35th anniversary by looking forward
When Mama Cash celebrated her 35th birthday, we decided to look forward and asked ourselves what an equal world would look like. We imagined what the world would look like if feminist activists receive the support they need to create change. We brought this vision into life in an animation.
This is not our world yet, but it can be. Women, girls, trans and intersex people are working every day to make this vision a reality. Mama Cash is here to support them. Because we believe that feminist activism works.
Reflections on ten years of funding feminist activism
Mama cash founder Marjan Sax with Micky McIntyre speak at our 30th Anniversary Event.
After ten years of dedicated service, Executive Director Nicky McIntyre left Mama Cash at the end of May 2017. In sharing her decision to leave, Nicky said that she is as committed as ever to our movements and to Mama Cash’s work, and that she thought the time was ripe for a leadership change. She felt Mama Cash was in a strong position, and she wanted to make space for new leadership after a decade in the role of Executive Director.
As she prepared to leave, she collected her thoughts on some of the changes she has been part of at Mama Cash. In this document, “Reflections on Ten Years of Funding Feminist Activism”, she looks back on a decade of growth, changes, successes and challenges. She speaks here of the importance of developing a clarity of purpose, of taking (calculated) risks, of collaborating for greater impact and of daring to be ambitious and envision a just world.
From the moment Mama Cash was founded in 1983, she was determined to be a stepping stone for small and new businesses run by women. Since 1956, it had been possible for women in the Netherlands to get a bank guarantee without the signature of her male partner or father. But even in the 1980s, prejudice caused banks to be reluctant to make loans to women entrepreneurs. Women’s entrepreneurship was still a rarity in the Netherlands.
In the beginning, Mama Cash provided gifts and loans from her own capital, but the founders soon learned that this placed too big a claim on Mama Cash’s resources. From 1985 onward, Mama Cash started referring women entrepreneurs to banks, while she herself acted as guarantor for the loans. The guarantees functioned in two ways as leverage to give women access to banks. Banks were pushed to end their prejudicial practices against women entrepreneurs, and women entrepreneurs were given the kind of practical support needed to set up their businesses.
Risk
At first, Mama Cash guaranteed one hundred percent of the loans, up to a maximum of 50,000 guilders (24.000 euros). Soon the amount of the guarantee was reduced to fifty percent of the loan. The other half comprised the bank’s risk. In the beginning, the founders assessed all of the grant requests themselves. By 1986, a separate Working Group Guarantees had been established, advising the founders about awarding the grant requests. In 1990, the Guarantee Fund formed, with its own Board under the umbrella of the Mama Cash Foundation.
A company is like a child
Jos Esajas
Jos Esajas, the project manager, was the driving force behind the Guarantee Fund. She met with new entrepreneurs in her office and advised them while they developed their business plans. She answered phone calls and worked to make the Guarantee Fund more widely known. ‘Mama Cash is a financial institution, not a consultancy office. But we do make it a point to talk to all of our clients’, Esajas said in an interview with women’s magazine Libelle in 1998. ‘Many women regard their company like a child’, Esejas pointed out in this interview. ‘They are so excited about it, they forget to structure their plans’. She also used to visit entrepreneurs to give them a boost. ‘Esajas is like an aunt to us’, according to one of the entrepreneurs involved. At first, the Mama Cash women themselves took to coaching the entrepreneurs. Beginning in 1996, the Mama Cash Guarantee Fund limited its role to providing guarantees and let external professionals take over the mentoring role.
A sense of reality
Organic Farm Oosterwolde
The requirements Mama Cash had set for the entrepreneurs she supported were initially very strict. Only women’s businesses that were collectives could qualify for a guarantee. These businesses had to provide work experience and function as a stepping stone to employment for the unemployed. Their business goals had to challenge the traditonal norms, or further other goals of the women’s movement. The first businesses to receive guarantees included publishers, women’s bars, organic agriculture businesses, mechanics and women friendly sex shops.
After a few years the requirements shifted. ‘We noticed a shift from supporting collectives to businesses led by an individual woman, closely connected to a growing understanding of professional and commercial interests of a company’, the founders observed in the first annual report 1983 – 1986: ‘A strong sense of reality and a commercially orientated approach are requirements for the success of a woman’s business.’
Bridal gowns
The activities of the Guarantee Fund became more business-like. Entrepreneurs requesting guarantees needed to have commercial business plans based on solid financial outlines. Additionally, beginning in 1991, enterprises were expected to ultimately generate wages. (In the 1980s, many feminist enterprises were run by women who received some form of government support. They would request financial support for rent and business costs from Mama Cash, while benefits would provide for their income.)
Mama Cash began receiving requests from women striving for financial independence, but who were not specifically feminist. The women wanted to start typical women’s trade businesses such as hairdressing and beauty salons, and fashion and clothing stores. ‘Even a shop for bridal gowns’, founder Marjan Sax exclaims, dismayed even after twenty years. That could not be the job of a fund whose purpose is to challenge the heterosexual norm!
Priority to black women, immigrant and refugee women.
Havva Şahin
In order to recover her reputation as a social conventions breaking women’s fund, Mama Cash sharpened her policies from 1995. The fund would focus on innovative and non-traditional women’s businesses. Requests from black, migrant and refugee women would receive pritority. Later on, these priorities shifted to include young and re-employed women, women who were sole providers for their families and women on welfare. An example of a business that got a guarantee in the late 1990s was Geylani Şahin Impex, wholesaler and retail shop selling fruits and vegetables.
Project with Rabobank
The Mama Cash Guarantee Fund initiated the creation of networks and partnerships. Together with the Rabobank, in the 1990s she set up a special programme for new black, migrant and refugee entrepreneurs. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment negotiated with Mama Cash about the possibility of women starting an enterprise while maintaining their welfare. The Ministry of Economic Affairs started a public campaign with the motto ‘Hidden Potential’ aimed at women entrepreneurs in the beginning of the 1990s. Also various Chambers of Commerce started to give more attention to the specific needs of women in their membership.
Great initiative
An example of a ‘man’s business’ run by a black woman was the multi-cultural undertaking concern, Final Farewell, located in the south-east district of Amsterdam. Entrepreneur Leny Oostwoud’s business plan was ‘very good’, the Mama Cash archives noted in 1996. ‘Mrs. Oostwoud possesses the necessary qualifications and is doing an internship in a morgue’. Both the ABN AMRO and the ING Bank had refused her request for a 60,000 guilder (28.500 euro) loan because she did not have enough start-up capital of her own. ‘Mama Cash was willing to guarantee my loan’, Leny Oostwoud says. ‘At the same time, I received an offer with favourable conditions from the Rabobank, with whom Mama Cash had set up a special programme for new black, migrant and refugee entrepreneurs. That’s why I decided to go for the Rabobank. If they had refused my request as well, I would have made use of Mama Cash’s guarantee. The bank examined my business plan and gave me feedback. The project was a great initiative. It’s been very productive for me’.
Counterweight against the establishment
Oostwoud gives Mama Cash partial credit for her success as an entrepreneur. ‘Mama Cash was a counterweight against the establishment. She helped to challenge the prejudices against women as entrepreneurs, prejudices such as ‘women will quit their business as soon as they’re pregnant’, or ‘women are part-time entrepreneurs’. Without a doubt she contributed to banks seeing women in a more positive way and fully accepting us as entrepreneurs’.
Polished gem
Bosnian Grill Markovic
Tendayi Matimba took over Jos Esejas’ job as Project Manager in 1999. Compared to the beginning, the Guarantee Fund had become rather ‘ordinary’ in Matimba’s eyes. The Fund’s Board consisted of a bank director, a lawyer and a business consultant, all women. ‘Financial institutions directed women to us and indeed turned to us for advice’, Matimba says. When in doubt about the feasibility of a business plan, Mama Cash would have a strengths/weaknesses analysis carried out. Businesses receiving guarantees were properly monitored. ‘The feminist ideals that had driven Mama Cash in the beginning, were ‘so eighties’, says Matimba. Also, around the turn of the millennium there simply were not as many battle fronts left. She compares Mama Cash of the 1990s to a polished diamond: ‘She had lost her edge’.
Growth market
Near the end of the 1990s Mama Cash concluded that requests for loans by women entrepeneurs were received more readily, and even eagerly, by the banks. By the year 2000, business women had become a growth market for banks. ABN AMRO had followed in Rabobank’s footsteps by setting up a programme specifically for women entrepreneurs. Women also received support from the Dutch government: geginning in 2000, new entrepreneurs receiving welfare were able to contract for a loan. In addition, the ‘Aunt Agatha Decree’ was put into effect by the Tax Department. This meant that new entrepeneurs’ family members or acquaintances were allowed to receive tax deductions when investing in their family or friends’ businesses.
Sister Guarantee Fund in Suriname
At the beginning of the new millennium, Mama Cash and the National Women’s Movement of Surinam looked into the possibility of setting up a sister Guarantee Fund in Surinam. They contacted women’s organisations, banks, as well as small and medium-sized businesses in Paramaribo. The Surinam-based Uma Kraka Fonds was founded in 2001.
Ending the Guarantee Fund due to success
Due to its success in breaking down gendered prejudices in approving business loans in the Dutch banking sector, Mama Cash decided to close the Guarantee Fund in 2002. Prior to making this decision, research had been done among women entrepreneurs. The research demonstrateed that significant changes had taken place between 1985 and 2002. Banks recognised the strength of women entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs were now perceived as good and safe investments. Women encountered fewer prejudices when they approached banks. Managing business and family responsibilities had become commonplace. Women receiving welfare who wanted to start a business could count on support from the government. In addition, new entrepreneurs were able to consult with a large body of advisors. The Guarantee Fund had reached its goals and was therefore no longer needed. Mama Cash could not have dreamt of a better result.
Catalyst
Founder Marjan Sax: ‘Mama Cash managed to show that businesswomen also needed financial support and that women are fully capable of successfully running a business. The fact that we were willing to take risks attracted publicity, which in turn generated more money. But in fact our influence on the financial world was not too big’.
Sax’s outlook on Mama Cash’s role may be too modest. The very act of bringing together women entrepreneurs and banks in the 1980s and 90s was radical and was an important catalyst in changing bank practices and changing the levels of confidence of women entrepreneurs to approach banks for loans.
The stunning success of the Guarantee Fund did have an unforseen downside. Many Dutch people still think of Mama Cash solely as a fund that provides support to women entrepreneurs in the Netherlands, rather than as a fund that supports many forms of women’s, girls’ and trans activism worldwide.
Culture Fund
Feminist counter-culture and subculture
Printing Company Las Muchachas
At first, almost all grant requests, the Dutch ones as well as those from the rest of the world were classified as ‘culture’. Except for women’s businesess, those were referred to the Guarantee Fund. Mama Cash interpreted ‘culture’ in the very broad sense, meaning everything that referred to feminst activism.
Feminist counter-culture and subculture took shape in the form of radical feminist magazines, cafés, printing houses, congresses, demonstrations, women’s bands, and women’s centres and facilities, all financed by Mama Cash. But culture in the narrow sense of artistic expression was also included. Founder Marjan Sax: ‘Art was very important to us. Both art and culture play an important role in social change. We struggled a lot to get that right. For what is feminist art? In the end we decided to leave the interpretation to the artist herself’.
A specific fund for culture
In 1990, Mama Cash created a separate fund, managed by its own Board, to support ‘culture’. The Culture Fund was meant specifically ‘for Culture and the Third World’ (in the first half of the 1990’s Mama Cash started to use the term ‘Global South’ instead of ‘Third World’). Subsidy requests from the Netherlands and the Global South were evaluated by Project Director Will Janssen. She advised the volunteer Board, which in turn decided which requests would be granted funding. As the rapidly growing number of requests from the Global South required some special expertise, Mama Cash founded the Fund for the Global South as part of the Culture Fund in 1991. The fund for the Global South became a separate fund in 1994.
Culture Fund the Netherlands
The Board of the Culture Fund, beginning in 1991, focused on grant requests exclusively from the Netherlands. The Board set up its own set of criteria to help evaluate the large quantity of requests: culture for Mama Cash included everything women do to improve their position in society and to manifest their choices. The Fund paid attention to new ideas and to projects important to the current feminist debate. The grants awarded by the Culture Fund varied from 500 to 5,000 guilders (240 and 2,400 euros). It supported theatre, words, music, dance, film, demonstrations, congresses, centres for women and actions. Costs for personnel, or rent were not funded. The history of women was also considered to be important, and women in non-traditional sports—such as chess, football, or rugby—received grants. Special attention was paid to groups that needed ‘to fight for or defend their position in society’, like black, migrant, or refugee women, older women, girls and lesbian women.
Saintly and slutty
Dameambiet
The following is a small selection from the large variety of groups that received money: 2,000 guilders (950 euros) went to a symposium about older women and their future organised by the group ‘A Merry Old Day’; 1,500 guilders (720 euros) went to fund a trial against an insurance company for not covering sick leave salaries during employee pregnancies; 1,000 guilders (480 euros) went to a March 8th meeting of Migrant Women Netherlands. Women’s chess club ‘Queen’s Gambit’ received subsidy to organize the Fenny Heemskerk tournament. Occasionally a loan, with or without interest, or a guarantee would be granted. Artist collective, the ‘Voyeuse’, received a grant of 2,500 guilders (1,200 euros) in combination with a loan of 7,000 guilders (3,330 euros) for the themed exhibition ‘saintly and slutty’ in the Old Church in Amsterdam.
Seed money
In 1997, Nancy Jouwe became the Manager of the Culture Fund. The artistic focus became more pronounced during her tenure. ‘Supporting women entrepeneurs in the art world was important. At the time, women had a hard time getting money if they hadn’t established themselves as artist or documentary maker yet. Solid craftmanship and artistic genius were exclusively associated with men at that time’. (watch interview)
Many artists did not want to be portrayed as women artists; they simply thought of themselves as artists. Furthermore, the mainstream funds to which artists could apply were not interested in small projects. Mama Cash was, and she granted seed money to women artists in small amounts of up to 1,000 guilders (480 euros). Over time, the grants increased in size.
Art Award Exhibition 2001
Mama Cash Art Award
The Culture Fund was not only concerned with supporting women artists; it also wanted to celebrate women’s artistry. In 1991, initiated by founder Dorelies Kraakman, the Mama Cash Art Award launched with an exhibition of the works of the nominees. Jouwe: ‘The media and some artists regarded the Art Award as a ‘Chick prize’. At the time in the Netherlands, combining social engagement and artistry was not common. Mama Cash wanted to fund work that merged social engagement with beauty and aesthetics with a strong, personal voice’. (watch interview) The Mama Cash Art Award was presented for the last time in 2004. Mama Cash had reached the conclusion that women artists in the Netherlands had taken their place in the art world.
Black Magic Woman Festival
Black Magic Woman Festival
Along with visual artists and theater and documentary makers, Mama Cash also supported initiatives such as the Black Magic Woman Festival in Amsterdam. This festival raised the visibility of up and coming talented black and migrant women artists. ‘Mama Cash was the first fund to grant us a subsidy in 1996’, says Ernestine Comvalius.She has been involved in the annual Black Magic Woman Festival since 1998. ‘A separate festival for black women artists was controversial’, she says. ‘Even now, we have to prove why it is necessary to draw attention to black artists. Mama Cash was the first to recognise the importance of our work. She took the Black Magic Woman Festival seriously. This, in turn, convinced other financiers. Later on, we also received a contribution from the VSBfonds. When we became well-known and others started to finance us, Mama Cash ended her grant support. The Black Magic Woman Festival functioned as a stepping stone for various women to become succesful artists’. (watch interview)
Documentary Festival
In cooperation with two public broadcasting channels, in 2003 Mama Cash invited five documentary filmmakers to create a documentary with the theme ‘Who is S/he?’. Nancy Jouwe: ‘One of the filmmakers was Sunny Bergman. She later became known for documentaries such as ‘Perishable’ and ‘Sunny Side of Sex’’. In 2004, the documentaries were shown at the Mama Cash Documentary Festival. Three of them were broadcast on Dutch television. The documentaries, as well as the festival, were financed by Johanna, a member of the network of Women with Inherited Wealth.
Inspiration for others
Oprichtingsvergadering ‘Babaylan’
Mama Cash’s financing of artists inspired others to do likewise. Nancy Jouwe: ‘We possessed a lot of knowledge about, and had developed relationships with women black, migrant, and refugee artists. The VSBfonds wanted to get to know these women through us and learn from our working method’. Mama Cash’s support did not stop at involve money, but also included encouragement for the artists. Jouwe, who now works in the cultural sector, still meets women who tell her: ‘It meant so much to us when Mama Cash gave us that money. She was the first to believe in us as artists’. With relatively few resources, Mama Cash had helped to make women artists more visible and had inspired others to start financially supporting women artists.
Losing visibility
In 2001, the Culture Fund the Netherlands was closed during a structural reorganisation and was merged with the Mama Cash Foundation. Three years later, Mama Cash decided to divide her grantmaking activities into five different regions: Africa, Asia, Latin-America, the Middle East, and Europe. During this transition, the funding of groups in the Netherlands became a part of the Europe programme. By doing so, and by putting more emphasis on funding groups in the Global South and Eastern Europe, the support to groups in the Netherlands gradually lost its visibility in the work of Mama Cash. With the strategic plan 2009 -2013 On the Move for Women’s Rights, the organisation decided to give more money to fewer groups. The number of groups supported in the Netherlands was reduced considerably as a result.
Fund for the Global South
A flood of requests
CEDEP Women’s-Forum, Aids preventie Ghana 1996
The number of grant requests from the Global South (Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East) increased significantly at the beginning of the 90s. That is why in 1991, a separate Fund for the Global South was created within the Mama Cash Culture Fund. Now the flood of requests could be considered with the necessary expertise. In 1994, the Fund for the Global South officially spun off and became its own fund under the umbrella of Mama Cash Foundation.
Market research
The women of the Fund for the Global South were looking for ways to spend Mama Cash’s money as effectively as possible. They researched the activities of development organisations such as Hivos and Novib in the field of empowering women. Compared to Mama Cash, these were giants whose first concern was to deal with poverty. At the time, gender issues had a low priority for them. Additionally, they were too big to deal with the needs of small, new groups in the Global South. Awarding small grants was very labour-intensive and therefore relatively expensive for them.
The development organisations tended to set their priorities using measures of wealth developed by the IMF and the World Bank, with the result that organisations from supposedly richer, developing countries were not eligible for funding. Mama Cash strongly opposed the guidelines of the IMF and the World Bank: ‘We know for sure that even in more affluent societies, women’s groups always lack sufficient resources’, the annual report 1994-1995 states.
Pick up where other funds leave off
With this knowledge in hand, the Fund for the Global South defined her niche. Her motto became ‘Pick up where other funds leave off’. Mama Cash did not restrict the number of countries to which she granted funding. The Fund for the Global South decided to grant small subsidies of up to 10,000 guilders (4,800 euros) to small, new groups promoting women’s rights that had difficulty receiving financial support from other sources because of their radical views. For instance, the f und made grants to initiatives promoting the sexual and reproductive rights of women, demanding protection against violence and rights to inherit land , as well as to cultural programmes, such as information centres, magazines, and radio broadcasts. Grantees had to be autonomous and acting independently, free from the demands of governments, religious organisations or political parties.
Word of mouth
Mama Cash workshop in Beijng
Because Mama Cash appreciated the value of international exchange, she also provided travel budgets to women’s groups from the Global South so that they could meet each other, and other activists, at international congresses. At first, most requests came from Latin America’s traditionally large and active feminist movement. In Latin America, Mama Cash acquired recognition through word of mouth. Beginning in 1995, she actively advertised her services at the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing and in Asia and Africa in order to stimulate grant requests. This had its desired effect: by the end of the 1990s, the number of requests from these parts of the world had increased.
Fake requests
It was impossible to evaluate every single request thoroughly from Mama Cash’s office in Amsterdam. ‘We couldn’t even always check whether the requests came from existing groups at all’, Will Janssen, Manager of the Fund for the Global South in the 1990s, says. ‘Some requests turned out to be fake. They would copy half of our brochure to reinforce their request’. Founder Lida van den Broek: ‘At a certain point we received a lot of requests from India for projects for blind people. We thought: this can’t be right. As it turned out, these were fake requests. This sometimes would happen if a group found out there was money to be had’.
Network of advisors
To ensure that Mama Cash had local, national and regional expertise, the focus moved to extending the international network of advisors. International advisors could provide information about the groups requesting support, about the local circumstances, and about the role and influence in that area of the group involved. During the mid-1990s, the network consisted of about 80 advisors. Ten years later, the number had grown to almost two hundred.
Despite receiving information from advisors, in practice, the criteria of the Fund for the Global South were not always appropriate, especially when it came to Africa where there was a gap between the criteria set in Amsterdam and the requests from local women’s groups. The Fund for the Global South received fewer requests from this continent in any case, and the majority were rejected. This led to critical questions about the fund’s own criteria and priorities.
No women’s rights on an empty stomach
An examination of all requests received between 1994 and 1997 revealed that many proposals were rejected, because women wanted to use the funds to generate income instead of to change the world. The researchers concluded: ‘Given the often poor circumstances, this was logical, no women’s rights on an empty stomach’. Inadequate communication also played a role, and often Mama Cash did not know the women’s groups requesting money. The researchers recommended that Mama Cash drop the criteria of ‘generating income’ as a basis of rejection and start working with local development organisations.
Lin Chew, a Board member of the Fund for the Global South in 1994: ‘When receiving such requests, we would look to see if they would contribute to strengthening the position of women. We would ask them if it empowered the women involved, even if this empowerment happened within their families’. (watch interview)
Tightening up criteria
Near the end of the 1990s, the character of the financial support offered by the Fund for the Global South changed. Mama Cash’s preference for short-term commitments and small grants was not sustainable over time. ‘Was there a point in giving small subsidies to five women’s groups focusing on similar issues? Or should we support one group with a large sum?’ Will Janssen wondered. ‘Many organisations kept coming back to us. We thought that we should organise our support in a different way. We started supporting some women’s groups for several years. Other grants were thoroughly examined’. Because of the growing stream of requests, the criteria were re-examined once more in 2001. In particular, requests from groups that were most marginalised were granted: lesbian women, sex workers, women living in the countryside and indigenous women.
Money, moral support and status
Staff and volunteers of the Fund for the Global South were not just in charge of evaluating requests for financial support. ‘Prospective grantees often brought up good ideas, but had a hard time formulating them’, Will Janssen says. ‘We sometimes helped them write their grant requests. As far as the content was concerned, we stayed on the surface. If a group wasn’t able to formulate their mission, there was no point in investing’. Receiving funding from Mama Cash meant more than just getting money and moral support. Will Janssen: ‘Being recognised by an international fund such as Mama Cash gave an organisation status. This in turn generated more money in its own country or abroad’.
Groups supported
During the ten years of its existence, the Fund for the Global South supported over 1.200 groups and was of importance to the development of women’s movements in Latin America, Asia and Africa. In 2002, the Fund for the Global South merged with the Central and Eastern European Fund into the International Fund for a short period. From 2004, Mama Cash’s Programme Team started to focus on individual regions: Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe.
Mama Cash Art Award
Many submissions
In 1991, through the Culture Fund, Mama Cash set up the Art Award, an initiative by founder Dorelies Kraakman. Each year, two Dutch visual artists were received a 5,000 guilders (2,400 euros) award. At first, Mama Cash chose to support artists who had already been professionally established for several years. Women artists who had been working for a while and who had not immediately advanced to the top had a hard time receiving financial support. Also, there were other organisations supporting younger talented artists, Mama Cash reasoned. Later on she changed her point of view as well as her awards. In addition to the Mama Cash Art Award of 8,000 guilders (3,800 euros), she established a ‘Baby Cash Incentive Award’ of 3,000 guilders (1,400 euros) dedicated to supporting young talented women. The Art Commission, consisting of artists and staff members of Mama Cash, reviewed 150 to 200 submissions with unremitting dedication each year. Johanna, a member of the network of Women with Inherited Wealth, financed most of the exhibitions that showcased the work af the nominees.
Power of expression
A professional attitude, the authenticity and originality of their work, as well as artistic quality and development of each artist were important factors when making a decision. Nancy Jouwe, Manager of the Culture Fund and member of the Art Commission from 1997: ‘The jury did not specifically focus on the role of women in the works of art. We preferred to concentrate on the work itself and on the power of expression and the artistic capabilities of the participating women. However, I have always been drawn to art exploring the artist’s identity’.
Self-willed works of art
In January 1998, Mama Cash organised the retrospective art exhibition ‘Mama Cash Art Award 1991 – 1997’ as part of her 15th anniversary. The Amsterdam artist club Arti et Amicitiae showed the work of the winning artists from the past seven years. Some artists and media mockingly referred to the Mama Cash Art Award as a ‘chick prize’. Art historian and journalist Wilma Sütö wrote in the exhibit catalogue that the artists deserved to be looked at without prejudice. She complimented the Mama Cash jury for choosing ‘self-willed works of art’, meaning that they were cheeky and precocious in nature. The exhibition and catalogue were partly subsidised by the Mondriaan Foundation, the ASN Bank, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, and VSBfonds.
Important factor
According to Nancy Jouwe, the Mama Cash Art Award has been important to the community of women artists. Several winners of the award received national and international acknowledgement. Examples are Louise Schouwenberg, Sara Blokland, Jeanne van Heeswijk and Hadassah Emmerich. ‘As women artists established themselves within the art community, our chick prize wasn’t required anymore’, Jouwe says. (watch interview) The last Mama Cash Art Awards were given in 2004.
Jubilee Year
Celebrating financial success
Jubilee 1998
Mama Cash’s 15th anniversary celebration in November 1998 attracted a lot of public and media attention. Her 10th anniversary in 1993 had been a smashing party, but this time she wanted it to be even bigger. She organised a retrospective exhibition, displaying the work of the winners of the Mama Cash Art Award, a public conference and expert meeting on women and money, a film and video festival and a workshop on fundraising. The anniversary week concluded with a big party. ‘We wanted to celebrate women’s financial successes’, the anniversary report states. On the occasion of her anniversary, Mama Cash launched her first website, co-financed by the Rabobank.
Women’s control over money
Mama Cash invited feminist partners from various parts of the world, women’s and other funds, and representatives of banks to attend the public conference and the two-day expert meeting: ‘Women and Financial Resources’. Her goal was for participants to contribute to the international debate about gender, sustainable development and the flow of financial resources. They discussed autonomous women’s funds, women controlling money and the advantages and disadvantages of microcredits. These were productive and inspiring days, particularly due to the vivid and critical contributions of the audience.
Flow of finances in the Global South
Elaborating on the views of the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi, guests attending Mama Cash’s conference concluded that autonomous women’s funds should be created throughout the world. ‘Instead of the North supporting the Global South, an independent flow of financial resources should exist in the Global South,’ the anniversary report firmly concludes. One of the most striking results of the expert meeting was the on-site creation of an international umbrella organisation for women’s funds: the International Network of Women’s Funds, INWF. The conference, as well as the expert meeting, were co-financed by the National Commission for Sustainable Development (NCDO) and the Rabobank.
Lesbian romance and eating disorders
During the film and video festival, a selection of more than one hundred films and videos made by women who had received Mama Cash’s support was shown. The large variety of subjects, such as racism, lesbian romance, fundamentalism, refugees, eating disorders and the oppression of women, captivated the attention of a wide range of visitors. Afterward, the audience was invited to engage in an in-depth debate about the political aspects of the films and about the position of women film makers.
Daring, swinging and exuberant
Jubilee Party at Paradiso
The final celebration, ‘Women of the World’, was a happening with 1,100 (mostly) women gathering in the Amsterdam concert hall, Paradiso. The guests received champagne upon arriving. Mama Cash awarded several prizes including the Award of the Global South, a motivation award in the form of 15,000 guilders (7,150 euros) for women striving for structural change. Ngonu Chaidzo, the first lesbian black women’s group in Zimbabwe, won this award. Relocation Management Services, an enterprise that facilitated the repatriation of Dutch expats, and a young black woman who had just set up a fitness studio, received Dutch entrepeneurship awards of 2,500 guilders (1,200 euros) each. The Culture Fund awarded two Mama Cash Film Awards of 5,000 guilders (2,400 euros) each. The American Global Fund for Women and the Mama Cash Central and Eastern Europe Fund together awarded the Lydia Sklevicky Award to Motrat Quiriazi from Kosovo. The group received the award from Sklevicky’s daughter. There were opera singing majorettes with a birthday cake. Guests who preferred some peace and quiet could have tea in the ‘Mama Cashba’, that also offered aromatherapy, massage, palm reading, and henna tattoos. The festivities complete with a band created for the occasion consisting of musicians from different generations such Rosa King and the rapper Strezz. The Mama Cash Party was daring, swinging and exuberant!
An excellent year
The 15th anniversary attracted a lot of media attention, as well as many new donors. Interviews in newspapers and magazines gave Mama Cash the opportunity to deny the completion of women’s emancipation, as many politicians, policy makers and newspapers had suggested back then. 1998 was an excellent year.
Fund for Central and Eastern Europe
Poverty, conflicts and traditional norms
Motrat Qiriazi
‘Thanks to a substantial gift from an individual donor, Mama Cash was able to widen her field of activity to include women’s groups in Central and Eastern Europe’, the 1996 annual report states with pride. Although Mama Cash had given grants to several groups in Eastern Europe before, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent deconstruction of the Iron Curtain, more grant requests started to trickle in from Central and Eastern Europe. In 1996, this inspired Johanna, a member of the network Women with Inherited Wealth to set up a work group especially for Central and Eastern Europe. This work group was part of the Culture Fund.
The position of Central and Eastern European women was difficult due to poverty and conflicts. Also, the influence of the church had increased significantly, and people had a strong tendency to return to nationalism and ‘traditional norms’. This caused, for example, the right for abortion to be challenged, whereas abortion had not been an issue during the communist era.
A great succes
Johanna’s initiative was a great succes. The Fund for Central and Eastern Europe received more and more requests. (watch interview) By 1998, the Fund for Central and Eastern Europe had become a respectably-sized fund. It had set up a network consisting of 25 advisors and, during that year, it received 145 requests from 28 countries, over half of which were granted support. Money went to lesbian women, sex workers and women with disabilities. It funded initiatives against sexual violence such as shelters for battered women. A temporary fund was set up specifically to assist women in the disintegrated states of the former Soviet Union: the Soviet Union Fund.
Lydia Sklevicky Award Ceremony
Lydia Sklevicky Award
The Fund for Central and Eastern Europe created an award named after Lydia Sklevicky. Sklevicky, who died in a car accident in 1990, was the driving force behind the first feminist organisation in the former Yugoslavia. The award went to the Albanian women’s group Motrat Qiriazi, named after the sisters Sevasti and Parashqevi Qiriazi, who had fought for girls’ education a hundred years before. The group organised discussions among young women and girls in Kosovan villages where patriarchical practices were still going strong, such as marrying off girls after primary school. The objective of establishing contact between girls and young women was to create awareness about their position and to break their isolation.
In 2002, the Fund for Central and Eastern Europe and the Fund for the Global South joined together and formed the International Fund for a short period of time. In 2004, Mama Cash had structured her grantmaking around separate regions: Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe. The International Fund was not needed anymore.
The new Mama Cash
Annual report 2007
Women wake up the world
The time had come to create a new strategic plan for the next five years. In 2008, the international Board and the new Executive Director Nicky McIntyre, decided to ‘open up all windows and doors’. They announced a period of creative self-investigation. The results obtained over the past five years, and developments in the world of women’s rights, were examined thoroughly. Mama Cash wanted to form clear-cut and sharp criteria about which groups to support, and she wanted to become a more professionally structured organisation with a more influential international presence. While annual reports from previous years all had rather aesthetically pleasing covers, the first annual report produced under McIntyre’s leadership showed a powerful woman demonstrating and shaking her fist to a row of forbidding police officers in full riot gear. ‘Women wake up the world’ was the title of the report. The tone had been set.
Investigations
With her previous five-year strategic plan She makes the difference, Mama Cash tried to create a more focused direction for her grantmaking policy. However, the number of groups receiving support was rather large: more than 250 groups per year working on diverse issues in nearly 100 countries received grants. Nicky McIntyre: ‘It became impossible for our employees to stay in touch with all those groups. As soon as we had granted a request, we would transfer the money. At the end of the year we would ask the groups what they had spent the grant on. The groups then had to go look for new funds. This way, the organisations didn’t have a chance to grow, and we couldn’t give them the support they needed. Groups were telling us that, metaphorically, their wheels were spinning in the mud, and they needed more than small one-off, project grants to get the traction to get out of the mud and achieve success’.
More connected
The network of local advisors to Mama Cash, that had been built up since the 1980s, had become disconnected over the years. It could not engage deeply enough to help execute the new strategic plan. It needed to be reformed.
Also, over the years the landscape of women’s funds had changed: with support from Mama Cash, The Global Fund for Women and other funders, national and regional women’s funds were now mobilising resources and making grants in their own countries. These women’s funds maintained a finely-woven network of contacts with feminist organisations and helped to finance the activities of those organisations, and they were often more connected with local groups and movements than Mama Cash.
More money for fewer groups
Strategic Plan 2009-2013
Mama Cash’s new strategic plan for the years 2009 – 2013, titled ‘On the Move for Women’s Rights’, stood for clear-cut choices. While in the years before, Mama Cash’s Programme Team and grantmaking had been structured by region, they were now reorganized into four themes: Body, Money, Voice and Women’s Funds. Mama Cash would finance fewer groups—under one hundred per year—with more money. Also, she would provide multi-year funding in order to allow women’s, girls’ and trans groups more time to develop. The money would be mainly flexible, core support to promote the development of organisations and cover costs such as salaries, rent and computers. These are expenses that few other funders will cover.
Self-led groups
Nicky McIntyre: ‘We concentrate on feminist and women’s rights groups that are mainly in the margins of their societies. These are groups that are cutting-edge, using a rights approach and are able to take and make strategic opportunities to challenge the status quo. We decided to fund self-led groups. This means that if it is a group intended to benefit sex workers or women with disabilities or migrant workers, it has to be led by sex workers or women with disabilities or migrant workers. These groups tend to be the most excluded in their societies as well as in women’s movements’. (watch interview)
Movement building
Community of Practice meeting
Because the number of groups supported has been reduced, Mama Cash’s Programme Team is able to provide grantees with other support. McIntyre: ‘We call this kind of support “accompaniment support”. In Spanish, acompañamiento means to “walk with”. It means asking questions that help a group or women’s fund to draft a budget or a strategy; it means connecting grantees to each other and to other funders; and it means being there for each other in a spirit of solidarity. It also means recognising grantees’ own leadership and expertise’. (watch interview)
Mama Cash also stimulates movement building. Grantees are connected to each other so they can identify common challenges and trade promising strategies for change. These connections help organisations and movements to grow in size and influence. One way to achieve this is by organising regional and thematic convenings.
Fight against discrimination, violence and isolation
Voices of Women Media
Groups that received grants during this period are, among others, Voices of Women Media in the Netherlands. The group teaches media skills to asylum seekers, trafficked women, sex workers, women without residence permits and migrant women. This way these women are able to give a true image of themselves, against the stereotyping of the traditional media; Independent League of Yezidi Kurdish Women in Georgia, which fights against violence that is rooted in harmful cultural traditions and which challenges fundamentalist understanding of religious norms; the Namibia’s Women’s Health Network which campaigns against forced sterilisation of HIV-positive women. Mama Cash is also supporting the women of ATRAHDOM in Guatemala, which advocates for labour rights for factory workers and domestic workers on a national and international level; the farmers and rural land tenants of Peasant Women Society in Pakistan, who resist intimidation by the military and bang their laundry sticks during street demonstrations; and the women of Sentra Advocasi Perempuan Difabel Dan Anak, who fight against discrimination, violence and isolation in their communities, after becoming disabled overnight by earthquakes and volcanic eruption.
Influencing philanthropy
The new grantmaking programme is not the only modification Mama Cash has made since 2009. With the new strategy Learning for Change, Mama Cash has invested in developing methods of evaluation that are in accordance with her own vision and activities.
Mama Cash also wants to encourage other funds, institutions and governments to invest in women’s and girls’ rights. To this end, she developed the Influencing Philanthropy strategy. This strategy builds upon Mama Cash´s more spontaneous efforts that had emerged organically in the 1980s and 90s to advocate for women´s rights in the donor sector.
New knowledge with a new team
Mama Cash team in 2010
All grant requests had to be put on hold for half a year during 2009 while new procedures and criteria were developed for grantmaking and accompaniment. But other areas were affected, too. Human Resource Management was given a bigger role and continued to hire more specialised employees. Marjo Meijer, co-chair of the Board since 2007: ‘When you take on a strategy with a different approach, you will need people with new knowledge, a new team. Some staff employees were asked to leave, which was painful for them as well as for those who stayed’. (watch interview)
Renovation
The Board also professionalised. It upgraded the Articles of Association, which still contained remnants from its previous all-volunteer status, into a state-of-the art document for good governance. And for the first time in her existence, Mama Cash formulated Board Regulations.
Transformation continued across the organisation. During winter months in the past, some employees could be seen wearing their coats at their desks because the heating system was malfunctioning. The main meeting room was also an acoustic disaster and leaks were plentiful. The landlord was pushed to make the necessary improvements to the building, and the offices, though still basic, were renovated. An unexpected bonus occurred when Mama Cash was offered free office furniture, previously owned by a bank that had gone bankrupt during the 2008 credit crisis.
Dramatic growth of income
Mama Cash is making the best of the opportunities at her disposal once again. Despite the 2008 credit crisis and the current euro crisis, her income has grown dramatically: from 4.7 million in 2008 to 7,7 million euros in 2012. Income from private donors shows steady growth, while these days about two thirds of her budget comes from foundations and governments.
Defend women who defend human rights
urban art project for Vogelvrije Vrouwen. Foto: AIR SHOOTS
Mama Cash ended the year 2012 with a spectacular action in solidarity with the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders. Mama Cash volunteers and staff dug into the earth with urban artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada to create an immense land-portrait of an anonymous woman activist covering a piece of land about two football fields in size. The piece was unveiled on International Human Rights Day, December 10, to launch an awareness campaign in The Netherlands called Vogelvrije Vrouwen, Defend Women Who Defend Human Rights.
30th Anniversary Marjan Sax, one of the founders of Mama Cash: ‘Once again, I can be proud of Mama Cash. The fund still carries out the same ideals that we founders stood for in 1983. She managed to show that professionalisms can go hand in hand with radicalism and activism. All the more reason for Mama Cash to have a celebratory 30th anniversary in 2013, honouring all those women, volunteers, staff members, interns, Board Members, advisors and, last but not least, our donors whose contributions supported, and will continue supporting, women’s rights. I’m hoping for extra contributions by all of those who understand that women’s rights are essential for a better world’.
The first strategic five-year plan
New era
When Executive Director Ellen Sprenger spearheaded the development of Mama Cash’s first ever five-year strategic plan, it marked the start of a new era. Mama Cash continued to focus on funding autonomous regional and national women’s funds all over the world. Mama Cash also continued to support women’s groups addressing taboo issues. However, she limited the number of themes. Her priorities were bodily integrity; art, culture and media; economic justice; peace and security; and agency and participation.
Mama Cash also needed to bring her radical wisdom into sharper focus and be more active in communicating her grantmaking and other goals. Apart from granting funds, she also wanted to influence the world of philanthropy and convince others of the necessity of investing more money in women’s rights. Last but not least, Mama Cash wanted to improve her capability to evaluate the grants she awarded and demonstrate the effectiveness of her own activities as well as the effectiveness of the supported organisations.
Hanneke Kamphuis
On her own feet Hanneke Kamphuis, formerly employed by SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, took over Sprenger’s function as the Executive Director in 2004. Her task was to execute the new five-year strategic plan. She was also in charge of stabilising the internal environment as the organisation navigated the recent shift from a voluntary structure to an organisation with paid employees. When the last founders—Marjan Sax and Lida van den Broek—left in 2003, the Board and staff had to stand on their own feet.
International partnerships
When Mama Cash closed the Culture Fund in 2001, the Guarantee Fund in 2002 and the Mama Cash Art Award in 2004, she focused on the Global South and Central and Eastern Europe more than ever.
Groups such as Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, that opened women’s shelters during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, Cross in India, that requests equal payment for equal work for women working on the rubber plantations, StudioMobile in Georgia that is reaching out to isolated communities through TV and a traveling video theatre, and the Latin American network Relacahupan that campaigns for women to decide on the handling of pregnancies and childbirth, received grants from Mama Cash.
Although Mama Cash is not an urgency relief organisation, she, after the 2004 tsunami that hit many countries around the Pacific, looked through her network of advisors for women’s groups she could support. This way Mama Cash gave grants to several groups, among them Siyath, an organisation providing women home workers with new raw materials, that had disappeared in the waves.
International feminist partners
In the new millennium, Mama Cash partnered with international feminist organisations. Feminist organisations had grown in size significantly over the turn of the century, and their influence had increased substantially. Together with other women’s funds, Mama Cash tested Making the Case, a new tool developed by the Women’s Funding Network (WFN) that would help evaluate the impact of grants awarded. In addition, together with WFN, Mama Cash assisted in advancing a tool for the organisational development of women’s funds: Smart Growth.
Shocking facts
Mama Cash also worked together with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), an international network that works to strengthen the voices, the impact and the influence of women’s rights advocates, organisations and movements internationally. In 2005, AWID and Mama Cash co-published a book: The Future of Women’s Rights. The book presented an analysis of the position of women from the perspective of fourteen activists from various parts of the world. This publication concluded with strategic notes about the future of the international women’s movement. During that same year, AWID published its first report on the state of funding for women’s rights: Where is the money for Women’s Rights? The report disclosed the shocking fact that, of the money available for development worldwide, only 3.6 percent was assigned to women’s rights and to gender equality. In the European Union a mere 0.04 percent went to women’s rights and gender equality.
Bathtub race
Bathtub race 2007
The AWID report provided an extra incentive for Mama Cash to increase her fundraising activities. Following the example of the HER Fund in Hong Kong, she initiated her own version of the ´88 Days Campaign´. The first 88 Days Campaign kicked off on the International Day of Human Rights on December 10, 2005 and ended 88 days later on March 8, International Women’s Day.
This first online campaign helped to grow Mama Cash’s online community. During the 88 days of the campaign, her website was frequented more often than it had been during the two prior years. Visitors were invited to send e-cards and to sign a petition protesting the lack of money for women’s rights and directed to the European Commission. Visitors could also vote for one of the six nominees for the Mama Cash ‘(she changes the world)’ Award. Last but not least, they could donate money. The campaign raised a total of 135,000 euros and was nominated for the ePhilantropy Award by the US ePhilantropy Foundation. The 88 Days Campaign ran for four consecutive years, addressing a different issue each year. In 2007 and 2008 the campaign was concluded with a superb bathtub race through the canals of Amsterdam.
WOMEN Inc.
Magriet van der Linden at the Mama Cash stand, Women Inc Festival 2011
Mama Cash kept looking for new collaborators in the Netherlands. She felt the need to create a contemporary platform for the women’s movement. Therefore, she initiated, together with the Founding mothers, an ad hoc network of women from various civil society organisations: WOMEN Inc.. WOMEN Inc. is now a platform where women of all ages, backgrounds, and disciplines can meet and unite their voices and strengths. WOMEN Inc. organises talk shows, networks and actions as well as a bi-annual well-frequented women’s festival. During the numerous events organised by WOMEN Inc., Mama Cash has been a prominent guest. Together with Women Inc, Mama Cash has organised several March 8 (International Women’s Day) events.
Seventy million
In 2007, Mama Cash started to advance her plan to get governments, foundations and non governmental organisations to invest more money in women’s rights. In that year, the Dutch government created the ‘MDG3 Fund’ in accordance with the United Nations Millennium Development Goal 3: equal rights for women and girls by 2015. Mama Cash worked together with several organisations, including Hivos, Cordaid and Oxfam Novib, and assisted the government to develop criteria and guidelines for the new fund. Mama Cash herself was not eligible for the MDG3 subsidies, but she was committed to enabling marginalised groups within the women’s movement to receive a financial boost. She succeeded in having the subsidy threshold lowered to 300,000 euros from the initial 700,000 euros, thereby ensuring that smaller organisations would be able to request financial support. The MDG3 Fund was a great success. Because of the quality of the requests, the Dutch government granted 70 million euros to 45 women’s rights organisations and funds in 2008, instead of the projected 50 million euros. Fourteen of those 45 groups were former Mama Cash grantees.
International Board Members
Mama Cash board in 2008
Mama Cash’s grantmaking and donor advocacy was international in scope. Now her internal profile became more international, too. The Programme Team in particular was strengthened with women from various women’s movements worldwide. English became more and more the language of communication in the office. Four women from the international women’s movement joined the originally all-Dutch Board in 2006. Executive Director Kamphuis: ‘As an international organisation granting subsidies, raising funds and hiring personnel internationally, it is only natural to have an international Board as well’. The following year, the Chair position was shared by the Russian women’s rights activist Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck and Dutch medical doctor and activist Marjo Meijer, who had been one of the founding members of the network of Women with Inherited Wealth. The annual report had been written in both Dutch and English since 1996, but from 2008 onward, it would only be published in English. A Dutch translation was available in digital format on the Mama Cash website.
Catching up
While Mama Cash had always fought for women’s rights around the world, the workers’ rights of her own team of over twenty employees had been, relatively speaking, neglected. To meet the Dutch requirements for employers, staff representatives were appointed in 2006. Given Mama Cash’s history as a volunteer organization, salaries had remained low. This in turn meant that it became increasingly difficult to find qualified personnel. Mama Cash began to review salaries in 2007 in order to better align them with Dutch union rates.
Winds of change
The new Board sent a wind of change sweeping through the organisation. Marjo Meijer, co-chair of the Board: ‘It happens to any organization that at a certain point growth and development are weakening. That’s when you need a boost of new energy’. (watch interview) The Board appointed Nicky McIntyre – who had worked for Mama Cash’s sister, the Global Fund for Women in the United States, and who had been the Director of Fundraising and Communications at Mama Cash the year before – as the new Executive Director in 2008. McIntyre was the first non-Dutch Executive Director of the organisation.
During the period 2004 – 2008 Mama Cash granted 12,159,000 euro to 1234 groups. In the year 2008, 24 full time staff and 28 part-time volunteers worked for Mama Cash.
