The Artomystic
Women's Fund
An emerging fund for Nigerian women building something of their own.
The Fund is being built from Artomystic revenue first, beginning with contributions from The Rite and art sales. As it grows, the intention is to bring in individual donors, sponsors and grant funding.
I know what it costs a woman to keep almost getting there — to have the idea, the skill, the plan, and get stopped by the one thing everybody underestimates: the machine, the registration fee, the bus fare, the person who could watch her kids for three hours so she could finish the thing.
This fund exists for that gap — the narrow, unglamorous, completely solvable gap between a woman and her own life.
Don't only fund the opportunity. Prepare the woman to hold it.
We have a hypothesis: financial support may be more useful when a woman has also had the opportunity to examine the behaviours and decisions that will determine what she does with it. We don't know yet — this Fund is how we find out, one documented woman at a time.
The Fund has two forms of support: preparation and material support.
The preparation is free. The money is for the woman's actual project.
Before anything moves, there's a short conversation about the project itself — what you're building, and what happens once the money is in your hands.
- What are you building?
- What is actually stopping it?
- What will this money make possible?
- What decisions will you need to make once you have it?
- Where might you retreat, overgive, undercharge, defer, or hand authority away?
- What support would make the opportunity usable?
- Equipment — machine, tools, whatever the work needs
- Market stock — restocking a stall, buying inventory in bulk to resell
- Business registration — for the woman who wants the paperwork, not a requirement to qualify
- Studio materials — what she actually needs to make the work
- Professional training — a course, a certification, real skill
- Childcare — so she can finish the thing without her children paying for it
- Transport — getting to the job, the market, the meeting
One grant, sized to one defined piece of work — "I need ₦350,000 to buy the machine, register the business, and produce my first fifty units." Sized to what the project actually needs, however much or little that is.
Tell us what it is. We pay for it directly.
You write down what you need, plainly, and what it costs. We read every application ourselves, and we pay the machine, the school, the registration office, or the driver — whoever holds the thing you need — sized to what it actually costs.
Put money behind the specific thing a woman is already building.
Maybe you've watched a woman around you — your mother, a woman who works for you, a woman down the street — carry something for years that a specific, nameable amount of money would have moved in a week. A sewing machine. A registration fee. Three months of childcare.
You can fund that directly, or tell us the amount you'd want to put toward it and we'll match you to a woman whose named need fits.
Support a Woman DirectlyTell us what you need
Say it plainly, in your own real words. What is it, what does it cost, and what does it change for you.
Start ApplicationPut money toward a woman's real life
Give to the fund generally, sponsor one woman's specific need, or give every month.