Who We Are

The Connective Paths Foundation (CPF) is a nonprofit, non-stock, non-governmental organisation registered in the Netherlands. We aim to practice participatory grantmaking, and share the power with our partners working closest to the communities.

Our Vision: An international development sector wherein NGOs, CBOs and communities from the global south have access to more equitable grant partnerships that support community-led change; and they also have greater freedom and capacity to choose their development partners.

Our Mission: To facilitate the use of international development assistance for community-led change that increases aid effectiveness, is rooted in listening and learning, and shifts the power and decision-making to the communities in the global south. We have 2 main objectives:

1. Strengthen Institutional Capacities

With a focus on women’s rights organisations and community-based organisations (CBOs) in the global south, we aim to strengthen institutional capacities in 5 skill areas:

Project management, financial management and increasing organisation effectiveness

Resource mobilisation and fundraising

Gender analysis, mainstreaming and inclusion strategy development

Using and generating research and data for evidence-based social norm change

Advocacy, local governance and community mobilising

2. Support Community-led Solutions

Addressing the most important development priorities identified by and with the NGOs, CBOs and communities in the global south, we work in 5 issue areas:

Women's health, rights and empowerment

Community well-being and poverty alleviation

Violence-free households and communities

Healthy and participatory democracy

Community philanthropy and volunteerism

Our Approach

In order to model true participatory grant making, CPF will promote trust-based partnerships and ‘ally-ships’, centre local expertise, and support grassroots innovation for international development. This means it will acknowledge and work with local expertise; respect priorities of community women, men and youth; and work towards their aspirations in a way that ensures the relevance of the programmes and increases chances of community buy-in and sustainability—beyond project cycles.

CPF aims to provide longer-term grants to women’s NGOs and CBOs spanning three to six years in order to allow the organisations sufficient time to work on issues that are most relevant to them, strengthen institutional capacity and to build meaningful engagement with community members, other CSO and government actors.

CPF's work is focused on catalysing Community-led Change. We do this through:

Participatory grantmaking - to share power with our global south grantees (women's rights organisations and their communities);

Research & advocacy - to empower all actors and influence more decision-makers and 'purse string holders' to #shiftthepower ; and

Organisation development - of our own institution and our grantees' over a long-term horizon, in order to sustain all empowerment gains that our collaborations yield.

Central to our approach is operationalising the principles of co-design, modeling co-implementation and pioneering co-evaluation approaches throughout the grantmaking process.

This is how we unite our intention with our method of grantmaking!