High Net Worth Women Who Drove Progressive Giving in the Midterms

Women, and particularly women of color, made historic gains in the 2018 elections. Much of this new political activity was driven by progressive women donors.

The election of Donald Trump has sparked a wave of political activism never seen before, particularly among progressive donors.

According to the Center for Responsive Politic’s data, the top 154 donors spent a combined total of over $700 million this election cycle, with Democrats and progressives spending an estimated total of $327 million in this election, and Republicans and conservatives spending an estimated $350 million.

While the Center for Responsive Politics is reporting that this year’s midterms were by far the most expensive in history, with a large share of that spending coming from the right, another large share of that spending involved progressive women donors opening their wallets to fund the protection of key civil liberties including reproductive rights, health care, and social inclusion.

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Seattle: New Global Nexus for Feminist Giving?

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Senator Kamala Harris spoke at WDN Connect 2018, the yearly gathering of Women Donors Network members and allies.

I can see the travel brochures now: Come to Seattle, home of some of the biggest feminist funding gatherings in recent history!

Not only did the Women’s Funding Network and Women Moving Millions convene in Seattle this year, but now the Women Donors Network has also paid a visit to Emerald City, making Seattle a central destination for feminist philanthropists in 2018. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsored Women Moving Millions for their event in September, and hosted the Women’s Funding Network for an evening event at the same time.

Women Donors Network’s gathering began just two days after the mid-term elections, offering a unique opportunity for women donors to analyze how a more reflective democracy will influence key issues including climate change, health, and gun violence.

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Women’s Funds Welcome New Reflective Democracy

Women, and particularly women of color, made historic gains in the 2018 elections.

How do you create better leadership? By electing quality leaders that reflect the values of the people. With the 2018 elections, Americans have elected more leaders than ever who share a vision to make the country more inclusive and safe,  particularly for women, minorities, and marginalized populations.

As feminist philanthropy leaders praise the outcome of the 2018 elections, they are also using this moment to continue advocating for the causes of women’s rights and reproductive freedom.  “Women’s Funding Network was created 30 years ago to increase women’s leadership in all arenas – media, corporate, policy, philanthropic. Progress is made every day,” tweeted Cynthia Nimmo, CEO of the Women’s Funding Network.  “Today, so proud to see a more inclusive democracy in America.”

“Thank you to those who took risks and those who found courage to push back against hate, racism, sexism and white supremacy,” tweeted Teresa Younger, CEO of the Ms. Foundation for women. “We are in this together and will continue to move forward. I am energized by what I continue to see and hear about our commitment to build power for good.”

Here in Rhode Island, where women are poorly represented in government and in danger of losing reproductive freedom, progressive women candidates made historic gains in political representation. Planned Parenthood Votes! Rhode Island (PPV!RI) reported that, along with growing the number of their endorsed candidates who got elected to 44, Rhode Island also elected a record 42 women to the state legislature, including 16 in the Senate and 26 in the House.

The Democrats’ regaining the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives was largely driven by women voters, who are being heralded as “pivotal” to the election’s results. And overall in Congress, at least 102 women will be sworn in early next year, up from 84 women currently serving in Congress.

Much of this change has to do with an intentional investment by progressive women donors in helping women learn about, prepare, and act on their goals of running for public office. Organizations like Vote, Run, Lead, EMERGE America, She Should Run, Running Start, and Higher Heights have been working for years to increase the number of women taking on the immense challenges of funding and winning political campaigns.

So it’s time to say thank you to the women donors who are thinking strategically, and who recognize the deep connection between political representation and progress for gender equality. Hopefully you feel validated for your efforts by this election’s outcomes, and will continue to expand your commitments to growing gender equality in government.

Related:

From Resistance to Renaissance: Women Must Embrace their Power for Funding Social Change

Interview with The Woman Project: “Reproductive Freedom is Essential”

Feminists Everywhere: Seattle Hosts WMM and WFN at Same Time

Kathy LeMay on Regenerating Courage as a Social Change AgentRead More

Did You Vote? Do It Now, for the Sake of Reflective Democracy

democracy
Political Activism: Philanthropy Women publisher Kiersten Marek voted today in Rhode Island, and gave support to  local candidates running for city council, including Gail Harvey and Sarah Lee in Cranston.

It’s an election like no other, with record numbers of women running for office at the local, state, and national levels, and women everywhere becoming activist voters who want to see themselves represented in government. We are finally beginning to see more reflective democracy in action as women make it onto the ballot.

It’s a great time to be publishing about women’s philanthropy, as more women take on funding nonprofits that are supporting gender equality, not only in the U.S. but also globally. So far this year we’ve seen significant growth in new organizations committing to addressing gender-based violence and education for girls worldwide, including Girls, Inc, the Obama Foundation, and the #MeToo Fund headed by Tarana Burke.

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Become a Subscriber: Support Journalism about Feminist Philanthropy

Dear Readers, I have good news: Philanthropy Women continues to flourish and gain momentum. Our readership continues to grow and our traffic is about 40% higher on average than it was a year ago. Our visibility is also growing, and our premium access subscriber base is beginning to generate income that allows us to expand what we are doing.

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Please support journalism about feminist philanthropy by becoming a subscriber to Philanthropy Women.

Now we are reaching out to you, dear readers, and asking for you to become premium access subscribers. Our ability to become sustainable in the long-term will depend on building a diverse subscriber base. By becoming a subscriber, you will help fund our work and the feminist community. You will have access to all of our content, including exclusive interviews with top funders and thought leaders in the gender equality philanthropy field. Your support will also be helping us sustain our mission of showcasing the exciting and evolving landscape of feminist philanthropy.

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Feminist Grantmaking’s Connection to the New Relational Culture

Feminist Scholar Rebecca Walker is pictured here with Helen LaKelly Hunt and Harville Hendrix, after delivering a lecture at Southern Methodist University in October of 2017. Walker and Hunt were in town to discuss the history of feminism and ways to develop a more relational culture.

The recent Kavanaugh hearings resurfaced a very old story about gender, power, and the truth of experience.  When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford bravely testified, people everywhere had to grapple with the fact that early life relationships, and particularly sexual traumas, can drastically impact our lives.

In fact, while our dominant culture remains in denial about the prevalence and negative effects of sexual violence, thought leaders in feminist psychology and sociology have been calling attention to the problem for decades.  While sexual violence is an extreme form of domination and abuse, these thought leaders have demonstrated how gender-based violence is part of a continuum of control and exploitation that most women begin to experience more of as they hit adolescence.

As David Brooks wisely points out in his recent op-ed, Two Cheers for Feminism, “For thousands of years social thinking has been dominated by men — usually alpha men — who saw life as a place where warriors and traders went out and competed for wealth and power. These male writers were largely blind to the systems of care that undergirded everything else.” Brooks references Carol Gilligan, Niobe Way, Alisha Ali and Pedro Nuguero, in their new anthology called  “The Crisis of Connection,” for their ability to identify how the stereotypically masculine values of “self over relationships, individual success over the common good, the mind over the body, and thinking over feeling” have perpetuated harmful gender dynamics in relationships.

One way to reduce the harmful effects of gender inequality in our lives is by consciously practicing a different kind of being with our power — experiencing ourselves as having “power-with” other people, rather than “power-over” them. Despite growing social inequality, in our personal relationships, it is still possible to practice a “power-with” approach. One such approach is facilitated by a process called Safe Conversations.  

I recently attended a Safe Conversations training in New York, so that I could learn and teach others the skills to help people unpack the patriarchy and power dynamics in their personal lives. After decades of research and practice, Helen LaKelly Hunt and Harville Hendrix have come out with Safe Conversations, a new way to engage in relationships, that makes it possible for people to experience deeper empathy and understanding.

How Does Safe Conversations Work?

The training I attended in New York involved multiple practice sessions, during which we broke out into groups of three’s and practiced being both members and facilitators of the structured conversations.  Within an hour of beginning the training, we had begun to engage in conversations that went deeply into a space of emotional revelation.  Facial expressions softened as the groups tried out speaking to each other with new, unfamiliar sentence stems like, “Let me see if I’ve got that. You said…” and “Is that what you are feeling?” and then listened in new ways, with an ear toward being able to reflect back as much of what they heard as they could.

This wasn’t the first time I had practiced the techniques. I had attended an online workshop with my husband in February of 2017, and since then, had been introducing the technique in small ways in my private practice, with astonishing results. I had seen mothers and daughters reach new understandings of their longtime emotional struggle. I had seen couples practice the technique and come away with a renewed commitment to making their relationship work. Even as people sometimes felt awkward or resisted, I saw how speaking in this new way, using Safe Conversations, was impacting them positively.

Safe Conversations helps us identify ways in which we experienced early relational challenges, and how those challenges impact our identity, as well as our sense of hope and possibility about ourselves, our families, and the larger community. The process teaches us how to both share appreciation for people in our lives, and how to safely tell the story of our own emotional challenges. Built into the process of Safe Conversations is a feedback loop that fosters validating and empathizing with each other’s emotional struggles. Essentially, Safe Conversations teaches us that everyone needs to be part of the answer to a more gender equal and relational world, and gives us the skills to connect better with others.

A parallel process of sorts has been building momentum in philanthropy recently with a strategy called participatory grantmaking, which helps donors and grantees build stronger relationships. Participatory grantmaking invites donors and grantees to become partners, with the central premise that the grantee has the experience to lead the way toward solutions. Organizations like NCRP, the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and the Fund for Shared Insight, are adding to the chorus of philanthropy experts calling for more participatory grantmaking, with many large foundations joining the Fund for Shared Insight in the past year.

Three decades ago, Helen LaKelly Hunt was part of a small army of pioneering feminist founders of some of our country’s largest and most successful women’s foundations. By funding the start of these women’s funds, Hunt helped establish new community hubs for participatory grantmaking. Most women’s funds have been under-recognized practitioners of participatory grantmaking since inception, and these practices — of moving into relationship with the grantee, listening to and incorporating their feedback, and even of including grantees on boards and in the grantmaking process — have made women’s funds some of the most effective change agents in the philanthropic landscape.

In philanthropy, participatory grantmaking is teaching us to listen and value feedback in the donor-grantee relationship. This is a significant shift, but just as important are shifts that can take place in our own everyday relationships. With new techniques like Safe Conversations, we can all be stewards of stronger, more gender equal families and communities.

Editor’s Note: Kiersten Marek is trained as a Safe Conversations Leader and will be teaching her first Safe Conversations workshop on November 7, 2018. To learn more about future Safe Conversations workshops for both helping professionals and the general public, please email Kiersten at kiersten@philanthropywomen.org

Full disclosure: The Sister Fund (of which Helen LaKelly Hunt is co-founder) is a Lead Sponsor of Philanthropy Women. 

Related:

Women’s Funds Show Philanthropy the Way to Transparency, Diversity

Thought Leaders Discuss Origins of American Feminism, Parallels to Third Wave

Priscilla Chan and The Future of Inclusive Philanthropy

How to Reach Critical Mass for Gender Equality Movements

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Women Donors: Help Rhode Island Take Out Anti-Feminist Politicians

rhode island politics
The Woman Project, a grassroots coalition born in South County, Rhode Island, has called on both Speaker Mattiello and Rep. Keable to resign.

Rhode Island politics is heating up. The Woman Project, a grassroots coalition of progressive women activists in Rhode Island, is calling on House Speaker Nick Mattiello and State Rep. Cale Keable to resign, in light of new evidence that Keable engaged in sexual harassment of Rep. Katherine S. Kazarian, and the House Speaker did little to address the problem.

The Woman Project noted that it is “unthinkable” that Speaker Nick Mattiello would “keep Representative Keable in a leadership role and take no formal action.”

Nick Mattiello is currently being challenged by Republican Steve Frias, who came very close to beating him in the last election, with only 85 votes making Mattiello the winner.

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$1,000 a Month: How Womensnet Empower Women Entrepreneurs

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Since 1998, Women’s Net has been providing grants to women entrepreneurs with no strings attached. This is an exceptionally successful model that could potentially be replicated in a world where women in business are rising.

One thing is for sure: there are not enough financial supports out there for women. As a woman myself developing the sustainability of my publishing work, I am always on the look-out for ways to get a stronger foothold in my own business/nonprofit niche, and I know many women who are in the same boat.  Banks and investors routinely discriminate against women entrepreneurs when giving small business loans and venture capital, so where can women entrepreneurs turn when they are angling to start successful small businesses? But some women are starting businesses to offset all of this, and one of those businesses is WomensNet.

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NY Women’s Foundation Centers on Gender with New Justice Fund

The Justice Fund initiative was unveiled at a panel discussion titled A New Paradigm for Justice: Centering Women and Families presented by The New York Women’s Foundation and New York Philanthropy.

People who have been incarcerated face a number of barriers in reintegrating into society. For women, girls and transgender communities, the difficulties can be even steeper. Oftentimes, the effects of incarceration can worsen problems related to housing and employment, and can have a devastating impact on children.

To address these problems, particularly for women, The New York Women’s Foundation recently announced the creation of The Justice Fund, which will aim to do more to dismantle mass incarceration, particularly for women, girls, and transgender people.

This effort is part of a seven-year mobilization of funding to address issues related to incarceration. A press release announcing the initiative stated that,”The fund is the first of its kind in the country to engage in criminal justice reform through a lens of gender and racial equity.”

“Our initiative will create a new paradigm for justice that dismantles unfair and biased systems and creates new paths for stability and opportunity in the lives of New York City women, families, and communities,” said Ana Oliveira, President and CEO of The New York Women’s Foundation, in a press release announcing the new initiative. Part of the goal of this initiative in New York City will be to close Rikers Island and find alternative ways to promote justice, safety, and well-being.

More from the press release:

The fund will harness financial and other resources of a diverse set of funders committed to justice reform for women, TGNC (transgender non-conforming) individuals, families, and communities in New York City.  Its framework for grantmaking will target organizations engaged in systems change and reform and community solutions and leadership.

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Giving Circles Funding: New Infrastructure Support from Big Funders

With the advent of new technologies to accelerate donating money and distributing grants, giving circles are the cutting edge of how many communities are finding and funding their causes. Now, a significant group of giving circles and funders are coming together to enhance the potential for giving circles to impact the philanthropy landscape.

Giving circle networks are getting anchor support from big funders including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in order to grow giving circle activity across America.

This new partnership is led by five giving circles and collective giving networks, many of which bring unique social and cultural foci to the collaboration.  These five networks are coming together to “engage dozens of stakeholders across the philanthropic sector to design efficient and effective infrastructure to scale and strengthen the American giving circle movement.”

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