Management Response

: Fund for Gender Equality
: 2014 - 2017 , Fund for Gender Equality (HQ)
: Independent Evaluation of UN Women's Fund for Gender Equality (2009-2017)
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: Fund for Gender Equality
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Recommendations accepted with responses in Management Response.
: Approved
Recommendation: Prioritise innovation in access to funding and reaching the furthest behind first
Management Response: UN Women acknowledges this recommendation and agrees with the finding. Current funding limitations have posed a challenge for UN Women and the Fund to prioritise grant making of women CSOs. However, new opportunities in the ever-changing development arena are creating entry points for UN Women to ensure that future grant-making and knowledge management improves access to funding for women’s CSOs to reach the furthest behind first. As shown through the results of this 2009-2017 Independent Evaluation of the Fund, FGE is a strategic mechanism/programme to continue to strengthen UN Women's work in this key area of funding women's CSOs and leaving no one behind. Following this recommendation several new opportunities will thus be explored, including but not limited to: - Using the lessons learned from the Fund (& Trust Fund EVAW) to create a UN Women small grants policy that intends on opening the space for women's CSOs that have limited resources and capacity so in order to build their work, expertise, and networks. - Tailoring the FGE model into a UN reform tool that will include opening regional and thematic windows aligned to UNCT strategic entry points and partnering with UN agencies.
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Description: Focus future grant-making and knowledge management on improving access to funding for women’s CSOs to reach the furthest behind first
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind, Knowledge management
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, Organizational efficiency, Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Relevance, Sustainability, Impact, Gender equality, Human Rights
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. UN Women will implement a small grants policy to focus on CSOs that are "furthest behind' and help support their capacity development. FGE and the UNTF EVAW are being actively consulted in this process. A viable entry point would be to build upon current Funds mechanism/systems as a way to increase efficiencies and avoid duplication. UN Women Programme Division 2019/06 Overdue-Initiated
Recommendation: Leverage FGE’s comparative and collaborative advantages in addressing social norms to align with New Ways of Working across the UN system
Management Response: Linked to Recommendation 1 above, UN Women is to explore, in the 'transformation or tailoring' of the FGE as it currently exists, new ways of working across the UN System including through creating partnerships with UN agencies, in line with the UN Reform process. These could be "light touch" partnerships with relevant agencies depending on the thematic or geographic windows of a grant-making mechanism like the FGE or, transforming FGE into an inter-agency fund that works more like the UNTF modality (this would include a re-branding of the FGE as it currently is).
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Description: Advocate with UN Development Group members – including but not limited to UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP, FAO, IFAD, ILO, IOM, UNEP, and UNHABITAT – for a joint fund for gender equality that will address social norms to advance women’s political and economic empowerment
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Knowledge management, Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind, Oversight/governance, Alignment with strategy, Internal coordination and communication, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM, Organizational efficiency, Partnership, UN Coordination, Normative Support
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Gender equality, Impact, Relevance
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. UN Women's Senior Management exploring new ways of working within the organization and in line with UN reform and change management process in order to build upon the efficient, effective, grant-making mechanisms that already exist Senior Management and FGE 2019/12 Overdue-Initiated
Recommendation: Incubate the strategic and organisational capacities of women’s CSOs and networks
Management Response: UN Women has an innovation team that explores ways in which innovation can accelerate the attainment of gender equality and women's empowerment across the globe. UN Women's Fund for Gender Equality is one unit that has already pro-actively started working on this key emerging issue. Indeed, FGE has spearheaded work on innovation by making innovation a prime focus in its fourth grant-making cycle through its scaling & social innovation and incubation initiative. Through this initiative, FGE is focused on strengthening grantee capacities in a transformative way including through generating outside the box thinking, strengthening research capacities, measuring/monitoring of women led CSO's adaptation/implementation of social innovation programmes, etc.
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Description: Build on the FGE support and strengthen pillars to create an incubator programme for women’s CSOs
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Alignment with strategy, National ownership, Knowledge management, Evidence, Data and statistics, South-South cooperation, Innovation and technology
Organizational Priorities: UN Coordination, Organizational efficiency, Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Relevance, Sustainability, Impact, Gender equality, Human Rights
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. As part of its 4th grant-making cycle, and with the support from the Government of Germany, FGE has launched a Scaling Initiative with a view to increase the impact of selected grantees and their ongoing projects in order to accelerate and foster sustainable economic and political empowerment for women and girls furthest behind. Upscaling grantees will build on successful strategies and aim at exponentially multiplying their reach and impact so as to benefit more women and girls. FGE 2019/12 Overdue-Initiated Nine active women-led CSOs who are current Round 3 FGE grantees were selected in a process that began in 2017 and have been allocated grants of up to US$ 150,000 each with a view to exponentially multiply their impact by expanding and/or replicating their successful models. This exercise will give FGE and its grantees a rare opportunity to pause and take a step back in the middle of project implementation, to make an honest assessment of the initiative and re-think its strategies towards a refined impact-oriented approach, with additional resources to do so. Iterative processes such as these are at the core of social innovation for development. In addition, using an array of social innovation tools and placing a special attention in documenting the process, the initiative will generate knowledge in the rather unexplored area of upscaling for impact in gender equality and women’s empowerment. The upscaling initiative will be implemented between March 2018 and end of 2019. It includes capacity building of local women's CSOs with specialized expert support, face-to-face workshops, individual coaching sessions, and peer networking, to upscale their projects.
2. FGE to complement the financial and technical resources for upscaling with an additional opportunity for pilot testing social innovation techniques through the so-called “Re-think. Experiment” incubation strategy. Re-think. Experiment. will help grantees learn to shift their traditional project approaches and re-design some of their strategies through testing of new solutions with specialized training and coaching; and for a select few, a small-scale grant of up to $15,000 for the most promising solutions. FGE 2019/12 Overdue-Initiated Using a beneficiary-centered design approach, FGE provided upscaling projects additional grants of $15,000 each for experimentation and with the objective of gaining a deeper understanding of the needs of the most marginalized women as the ‘end users’ of their projects. In a safe space for experimentation and failure, they are exploring new approaches, ideating, prototyping and testing innovative solutions. The objective is to come up with tested models that solve challenges for women’s empowerment and with potential to catalyze change at scale. Some will succeed, and some will not. All – including the FGE– will learn from it and improve their role as service providers for women and girls furthest behind. These 9 women led CSOs are working in Yemen, Paraguay, Philippines, Tanzania, Nigeria, Palestine, Albania, Algeria and Lebanon
Recommendation: Shift future programming from ‘picking winners’ to ‘connecting innovators’
Management Response: This is an interesting and innovative concept. However, due to limited resources, a scoping study for this specific platform cannot be undertaken at this time. Instead, UN Women will conduct a grantmaking mapping which will feed into the first ever grants policy for the agency.
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Description: Conduct a scoping study into the viability, implications and potential of a multi-sided platform ‘business model’ to better address the structural underfunding of women’s organisations
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind, Oversight/governance, Resource mobilization, Innovation and technology
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM, Organizational efficiency, Partnership
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Gender equality, Impact, Sustainability, Relevance, Efficiency
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. UN Women to undertake mapping of grant-making mechanisms to feed into policy. Programme Division 2019/12 Overdue-Initiated
Recommendation: Redesign the experience of donorship in FGE to build engagement, long-term support, and knowledge exchange
Management Response: Linked to the Recommendations 1 above, UN Women is to explore, in the 'transformation or tailoring' of UN Women's current grant-making mechanism for women's CSOs (FGE) as it currently exists, new ways of working across the UN System including through the re-designing of the experience of donorship to build long term support and knowledge exchange.
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Description: Commission a dedicated specialist position to engage existing and potential institutional donors in a revitalised partnerships strategy
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Knowledge management, Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Partnership, UN Coordination, Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. UN Women's Senior management is exploring new ways of working within the organization and in line with UN reform and change management process in order to build upon the efficient, effective, grant-making mechanisms that already exist; this will include redesigning, as possible the experience of donorship to build engagement, long-term support, and knowledge exchange. Senior Management 2019/07 Overdue-Initiated
Recommendation: Invest in a ground-up revitalisation of FGE fundraising strategy and human resources
Management Response: Please see recommendation 1, 2 and 5.
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Description: Secure continuous access to professional fundraising capabilities dedicated to continuously replenishing the Fund with a target in the range of $10m-$60m per year
Management Response Category: Partially Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, National ownership, Resource mobilization
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM, Organizational efficiency, Partnership, Operational activities
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness
Key Actions
Key Action not added.
Recommendation: Preserve the operational assets established by FGE
Management Response: Given the success of UN Women’s FGE as per results of this independent evaluation, the process of preserving operational assets established by the Fund should be undertaken regardless of the future of the Fund as it currently exists.
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Description: Prepare an asset management plan to preserve and benefit from the considerable and successful investments that have been made by FGE
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Oversight/governance, Capacity development, Knowledge management, Internal coordination and communication, Innovation and technology, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Organizational efficiency, Culture of results/RBM
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Relevance, Sustainability, Impact, Gender equality
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. FGE to document all tools, processes, and knowledge in toolkit. FGE 2019/12 Overdue-Not Initiated
Recommendation: Acknowledge, document and institutionalise the good practices approach, inter-personal dynamics, and contributions of the FGE team
Management Response: UN Women acknowledges and agrees with this recommendation. It will be part of the designated toolkit as mentioned in recommendation 7.
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Description: Commission a UN Women learning note on lessons and results from the ‘accompaniment’ approach with grantees and internal FGE team dynamics
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Knowledge management, Promoting inclusiveness/Leaving no one behind, Capacity development, Internal coordination and communication, Evidence, Data and statistics
Organizational Priorities: Culture of results/RBM, Organizational efficiency
UNEG Criteria: Effectiveness, Gender equality, Impact, Sustainability, Relevance, Efficiency
Key Actions
Key Action not added.