Scholars have demonstrated that foundation grants channel social movements by
encouraging professionalization and favoring moderate tactics, but they have overlooked critical
mechanisms of foundation influence. Advancing Tim Bartley's (2007) field-building
framework, I identify new mechanisms-including grants and activities other than
grantmaking-through which five foundations helped channel the international Reproductive
Health movement between 1990 and 2005, shaping its composition, trajectory, and outcomes.
The first of its kind, this study combines an analysis of an original data set including 8,103 grants
made by five major philanthropic foundations from 1990-2005, interviews with foundation staff
and leadership, and archival data, with an historical narrative of the population field and the
Reproductive Health movement. I explain foundations' roles in the Reproductive Health
movement's successful campaign targeting the 1994 United Nations International Conference on
Population and Development (ICPD). There the movement transformed the population
field's frame from Family Planning-reducing fertility through increasing access to
contraceptives-to Reproductive Health-meeting women's broader reproductive health
needs and advancing gender equality.
