IHRFG is a network for and by funders. All of our programming is peer-led, and we maintain low barriers to entry through voluntary dues and low conference fees to ensure diversity within our membership.

As a peer-led funder network, all of IHRFG’s successes are driven by our members. Two examples stand out:

• The Fund for Global Human Rights, which provides long-term funding and strategic support to human rights defenders on the ground, grew out of an IHRFG Working Group in 2002
• Members of IHRFG’s Disability Rights Working Group came together in 2008 to form the Disability Rights Fund, which supports disabled persons’ organizations in the Global South and East

IHRFG and our members also benefit from collaboration with peer donor networks. Through joint Working Groups, research, and events, we incorporate voices from diverse sectors and regions into the human rights funding conversation:

• We co-host Working Groups with the Peace and Security Funders Group, on Conflict and Atrocity Prevention, and with Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA), on Human Rights and HIV
• IHRFG members have also established a Working Group on Cross-Border Philanthropy for funders to collaborate and strategize around the closing space for civil society. Ariadne and the European Foundation Centre co-host the group
• IHRFG, in partnership with Foundation Center, Ariadne, and the International Network of Women’s Funds, has released a series of tools mapping the landscape of human rights grantmaking by issue, population, and region supported to help funders be more strategic in their grantmaking

These collaborations, along with our work to map the field, have illuminated how truly global the human rights movement is. IHRFG is excited to see how international perspectives have grown within our network:

• We organized a funder visit to Tunisia in 2012 with Ariadne, exploring the effects of the Arab Spring, and last year visited Brazil to examine human rights within emerging economies
• The number of non-US-based funders in our research grew by 27% from 2012 to 2014
• Increasingly active Working Groups for Latin America and Asia and the Pacific host telebriefings and organize sessions at our conferences