Numun is proud and excited to have launched the open call for the third cycle of our main grant stream: Seed, Grow & Sustain 3.0 on 7 August 2026. This grant stream aims to support the core communities and movements that sit at the heart of our mission – feminist groups, networks, and collectives in the Larger World (aka Global South) who engage with technology as the site of their activism and change.
We launched the first cycle of our Seed, Grow, Sustain grantstream in 2022, a year after Numun was seeded, and its 3rd cycle marks a significant milestone in our evolution. It is especially meaningful for us to be able to do this at this time of polycrises, given the challenges that many of our movements face in the current funding landscape, and where feminist resistance to the massive harms of Big Tech is becoming increasingly critical.
To date, we have received over 6,500 expressions of interest through the eligibility check, and more than 1,500 application submissions from more than 170 countries in the Larger Majority World. The response already signals a good sense of the need for feminist tech resourcing. We are ready to put all of our energy and attention to start reading the applications and have a better understanding of the priorities, analysis and strategies that groups and activists are engaging with in their tech activism.
Distributed and community-led decision making has been a part of our grantmaking practice from the start. This means creating systems and processes that enable our communities and ecosystem allies close to the ground – in terms of movements, contexts, and know-how – to take the lead in where resources should flow. For Numun, this translates to a three part process that involves:
- First level eligibility screening: This year, we have an amazing cohort of ten interns who are leading this work. Their hard work and commitment has been invaluable, and we have been learning so much already with them on how we practice accountability and apply discernment in our assessments.
- Building a longlist. This is done fully by Numun, and we are a fairly small core team of eight currently. Each eligible application will be read and assessed attentively against the objectives of the grant call, with weekly meetings for discussions.
- Community-led decision making. The longlist will be shared with a twenty-person Community-led Selection Committee (CLSC), and each application will be read and closely considered by at least two CLSC members, to be brought to larger CLSC decision-making calls for the final selection of SGS 3.0 nodes.
We realised early on that this process requires quite a lot of work, care, collaboration, commitment and time. You can check SGS 3.0 selection process & timeline here. Numun will be going into a team-wide huddle down from 8 September – 8 October, focussing pretty much all of our time on the important work of longlisting to ensure careful and thorough application reviews. We’ll have to put on hold any commitments, meetings, or engagements for this period that are outside of this ambit. For this, we rest on your generosity and understanding as we enter into this phase with great excitement, and will be responsive again once we share the longlist with the CLSC. Much thanks for your support of the process, and wish us good energy!