Women’s Funds Step Up Efforts to Win Support From Female Donors

As women’s economic influence and power grows, the dozens of foundations that raise money to help women

and girls are changing their approach.

Most of the funds were created in the past 30 years, and have spent much of their time focusing on the share of foundation and corporate grants aimed specifically at women and girls — and demanding that grant makers give more to such projects. But now many women’s funds are modifying their solicitations to foundations and increasing efforts to raise money from wealthy women.

“Rather than saying ‘women are victims, they should be supported,’ we’re now talking about what women bring to the table,” says Christine Grumm, chief executive officer of the Women’s Funding Network, a San Francisco umbrella organization for more than 100 women’s funds. “Women have the answers. It’s not about handouts, it’s about building assets and investing in your community.”

To that end, the network last month announced an aggressive goal to increase the assets of the nation’s women’s funds to $450-million by 2008, up from the $280-million they now hold. To reach its goal, the network is collaborating with the Association of Women’s Business Centers, in Camden, Me., to raise $50-million to $100-million. The association’s nearly 200 centers provide services annually to more than 100,000 female business owners and entrepreneurs who will be asked to give money.

Some women’s funds have also begun to hire fund raisers to actively solicit bequests and other planned gifts for the first time. Although the funds have long received unsolicited bequests, most of them had previously made no investment in seeking them. “This is an attitude shift,” says Nicky McIntyre, the Global Fund for Women’s vice president for development and communications. “We have shied away from asking for big gifts from other women.”

Emphasis on Results

One reason women’s funds are changing their approach is that their leaders realize women are increasingly capable of making large gifts, so the funds don’t have to rely so heavily on foundations and corporations for support.

But some officials at women’s groups say the organizations need to do more than simply say that projects benefiting women get fewer dollars than those that benefit men.

“While the fairness argument was an appropriate way to make the case for funding women and girls in the early days of the modern women’s movement, the appeal for equity is no longer enough,” says a new report from Women & Philanthropy, a Washington group of grant makers.

Foundations have become increasingly interested in measuring results and the effectiveness of their grants, the report notes. That is why charities that seek money from grant makers for projects to fight social ills such as poverty, disease, or lack of education should determine whether women are more or less affected by such problems and if they are affected in different ways, the report says.

Grant proposals by organizations working to help poor people find jobs, for example, might cite statistics showing that single mothers with children are the most likely victims of poverty, and their lack of access to low-cost child care hampers their ability to find and hold a job, the report says. That way, the organizations can argue that child care is essential to ensuring that a job-hunting program will work, and that foundations should support those services for women, the report says.

Armed with research that shows what works and what does not, women’s organizations can bring new vitality to the women’s movement while at the same time helping grant makers achieve their goals, says Anne Mosle, a Women & Philanthropy board member and president of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation. By approaching grant makers with a solution rather than a problem, she says, “we are no longer coming from a position of weakness; we are coming from a position of strength.”