The Resilience Fund is investing in women/non-binary-led organizations building climate resilience for women and communities across global value chains in South and Southeast Asia.

Apply for Funding

The Resilience Fund is launching a new funding round to support women/non-binary-led community-based organizations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and Vietnam working at the intersection of women’s health, safety and economic resilience, community-led climate adaptation, and global value chains. Selected partners will receive $15,000–$50,000 USD in flexible, unrestricted funding over two years, alongside opportunities to connect, share and learn with other grantee partners through the Resilience Fund’s Learning Hub. Please review eligibility criteria and the FAQ sections carefully before submitting an application. Phase 1 applications are now closed.

For this funding round, the Resilience Fund is focusing on three interconnected priority areas that shape the health, wellbeing, and resilience of women across global value chains. We are looking to support organizations whose work connects across all three areas:

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS - CLOSED

We are now closed for applications. Proposals selected for funding will be notified by Jan 31, 2027. We will not be able to answer application status-related questions until the grantmaking process concludes. For any other questions, please email resfund@unfoundation.org.  

Have questions about the application or need support? Message us on WhatsApp +91 9559780178

Click here for FAQ in Bangla | Hindi | Marathi‍ ‍| Odia | Tamil | Khmer | Vietnamese

  • For this funding round, the Resilience Fund is looking to support organizations whose work brings together three areas: 

    1. Women’s health, safety and resilience: work that strengthens women’s health, safety, livelihoods, financial security, leadership, decision-making, mobility, and ability to participate and thrive in their communities and workplaces. 

    2. Community-led climate adaptation: work that helps women and their communities prepare for, respond to, and adapt to climate and environmental impacts, such as extreme heat, flooding, drought, storms and changing weather patterns. 

    3. Connection to global value chains: work with women workers and/or communities connected to global value chains (defined further below). 

    Applicants should conduct work that addresses all three areas, but we recognize that your organization may have deeper or longer-standing experience in some areas than others. You do not need the same level of experience across all three. 

  • The Resilience Fund is looking to support those organizations working with communities in, near, or related to businesses and workplaces that manufacture or produce apparel, food, technology, and other products for export around the world. This includes women working in factories and farms, migrant workers, informal and gig workers. We believe that strengthening these communities by supporting women-led organizations will improve the lives of women workers and their ability to join and thrive in the workforce. Health and safety are essential for women in these communities to strengthen women’s economic opportunities. We will support a wide range of organizations whose work strengthens these communities and directly or indirectly touches current or future workers and their families. This includes but is not limited to communities near manufacturing or agricultural workplace and communities where women migrate long distances for work.

  • The Resilience Fund welcomes applications from women/non-binary-led, community-based, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and Vietnam whose work addresses the Fund’s three focus areas described above. Applicants must be formally registered and authorized to receive foreign funding, with an annual income of at least $10,000 USD. Organizations should be embedded in and representative of the communities they serve. Income figures from 2024, 2025 or 2026 will be used as the baseline for determining eligibility. 

  • Yes. Previous Resilience Fund grantee partners are welcome to apply for this funding round, provided they meet the current eligibility criteria. Previous funding from the Resilience Fund does not guarantee selection, and all applications will be reviewed through the same selection process.

  • Applicants may request between $15,000 and $50,000 USD in total funding over two years. The grants will be distributed over a two-year period. Non-profit organizations must have an annual income of at least $10,000 USD to apply for a two-year grant. Applicants may request up to 150% of their organization’s annual revenue, but the total grant request cannot exceed $50,000. For example, if your organization’s most recent budget was $20,000, you are eligible to apply for up to $30,000. 

  • All grants awarded through this funding round will be two-year grants. The Resilience Fund provides flexible, longer-term funding to support organizations strengthen their work and respond to the evolving needs and priorities of the women and communities they serve. These grants are not intended for short-term emergency relief. 

Eligibility & Funding Criteria

  • Yes. We encourage applicants who are in the early stages of exploring or integrating climate adaptation into their work. You do not need to be a climate-focused organization or have many years of climate programming experience. What is important is that you can demonstrate some existing experience responding to climate or environmental impacts affecting the women and communities you serve, and an interest in deepening this work overtime. 

  • The Resilience Fund gives priority to women- and non-binary-led organizations. For this funding round, this is defined as having a woman or non-binary Executive Director/CEO and at least 50% of staff identifying as women or non-binary. Our definition of a women-led organization is: “a woman CEO or director and at least 50% of senior leadership are women.” If your organization does not meet our definition of women led, but you believe you are in fact women led, you may provide us information to support this belief for consideration. The term “women” includes women in all their diversities. This includes women with disabilities, those who are of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, women of color, indigenous women, women of oppressed castes, younger and older women, or those who are affected by racism, or poverty, or those who are migrants, and women in other marginalized groups.  

  • No*. Your organization must have the legal approvals and have met all government regulations to be able to receive foreign funds to apply for this grant.  

    *ONLY For applicants in India without FCRA -  if your grant application is successful and you choose to submit a prior permission request with the Government of India; the Resilience Fund team will support the organization with their application.  

  • No. Resilience Fund grants are unrestricted for the organization, and do not require applicants to develop a new or standalone project. Funding can be used to strengthen, deepen or adapt your organization’s existing work, including work that brings climate adaptation more intentionally into your existing programs and priorities. Applicants will be asked to describe how they expect to use the funding and what they hope it will help them achieve. 

  • Applicants can use Resilience Fund grants in the ways they believe will best strengthen their organization and advance their mission, whether for programmatic or organizational needs. We trust our partners to know where resources are most needed and how they can best support the women and communities they serve. Applicants will be asked to briefly explain how they expect to use the funding but will have flexibility to adapt how funds are used as needs and circumstances change during the grant period. All grant funds must be used in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including requirements governing the receipt and use of foreign funding, and in accordance with the terms of the grant agreement.  

  • Grant funds may not be used for any kind of lobbying, electioneering, political campaigning or microcredit/microfinance and must be used in full compliance with your country's laws and policies for foreign funding. 

Applications will be reviewed through a two-phase process. In Phase 1, all eligible organizations are invited to submit an initial application, which will be reviewed against the Fund’s eligibility and selection criteria. Selected organizations will then be invited to Phase 2, where they will submit a more detailed application with additional information about their organization, work and proposed use of funding.

  • The application will be broken into two phases:  

    • Phase 1: Opens 18 September 2026  and closes 25 October 2026. After a screening and review, a select number of organizations will be invited to submit further information and details for their application.  

    • Phase 2: Opens end of October 2026 and closes mid-November 2026. This phase will require further details on the proposal, including programmatic detail. 

  • Applications should be submitted in English, but applicants can receive free language and application support throughout the process. Support is available in Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Khmer, Vietnamese, Odia and Marathi, including translating responses and submitting the application. 

    We encourage you to make use of the application support partners, if you need it. We will review all final applications the same way without consideration of whether your organization received help or not. To access this support, applicants from India and Bangladesh can reach out to nainika@auxohub.org and applicants from Vietnam and Cambodia can email resfund@unfoundation.org 

    You can access the application form and FAQs, which have been translated into Vietnamese and Khmer for your convenience, here: resiliencefundforwomen.org/apply.

  • No – you must submit your application online and in English. We are not able to accept applications by email or on paper. Kindly reach out to the application support partners if you need support with uploading your application. 

  • You have the ability to save the form and return to it later if you cannot complete all the questions at the same time. By selecting the box ‘save my progress and resume later’ you will be asked to enter your email and you will be able to save the form and return to it later using the same email. However, if the form is not saved and you experience any technical issues while applying you will have to restart your application. To save time and effort, we recommend creating a separate draft of your proposal and then copying and pasting your answers into the online form once you are ready to submit. 

    If you experience any technical difficulties with the form itself, you can email us at resfund@unfoundation.org. Please note that our staff may not be able to respond to your issues/questions until the next day. We may forward you email to the local technical assistance team if they can resolve the problem. 

  • You will receive an email confirmation with a copy of your responses once your application has been successfully submitted. No further action is required from you. Kindly do not submit multiple applications.

Preparing & Submitting an Application

  • Organizations who are invited to submit further information for phase 2 will be notified by the end of October 2026. Final funding decisions will be announced in January 2027. We unfortunately will not be able to respond to individual requests for status updates. 

  • All applicants will be informed of the final funding decision in January 2027. If you are selected, we will ask you to submit some additional information about your organization. Every selected organization will undergo a short due diligence review by the Fund, including reference checks. Once this review is complete, you will receive a grant agreement to sign and return. Grant processes and timelines will depend on the requirements in each country.  

    Once your grant agreement is signed, we will welcome you to the Resilience Fund’s Learning Hub community through an orientation. We will also hold one-on-one conversations with you to understand how you would like to define impact for your organization and explore your learning goals and objectives. 

  • Grantee partners will be asked to complete light-touch reporting during the grant period. We aim to keep reporting requirements minimal and focused on what is useful for both grantee partners and the Fund. Rather than asking all partners to report against a fixed set of indicators, Fund-level metrics and learning priorities will be developed collaboratively with grantee partners, recognizing that organizations may define and measure impact in different ways. 

    Over the two-year grant period, grantee partners will also participate in the Resilience Fund’s Learning Hub, which provides opportunities to share experiences, reflect on learning and connect with other partners across the Fund. This includes 3-4 virtual meetings with other grantees, investors and fund stakeholders. The Learning Hub will provide translation support and other assistance to ensure grantees can communicate as much as possible in their own languages.

  • Please check back with our website for future funding announcements.