Smithsonian Curates History of Feminism With Museum-Feel Book

feminist revolution
The Feminist Revolution: The Struggle for Women’s Liberation provides an extensive history many major contributions to global feminism, including the 1966 founding of the National Organization for Women.

A new volume for feminism history buffs has arrived on the shelves — and it’s a biggee. The Feminist Revolution is based in history, the book reflects the current zeitgeist of the women’s movement, which is continuing to grow and become more intersectional. Roxane Gay, who gives the forward to the book, credits Kimberlé Crenshaw (one of our top posts is an interview with Crenshaw exploring her work to fund women and girls of color)  with helping keep feminism “alive and well” and advance the movement in recognizing the complexity of identity in modern culture.

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Media Blackout on Women’s Marches, and #PowertothePolls

Some interesting pieces have been written about this year’s global Women’s Marches, but none beats the Washington Post story by Helaine Olen, which posits that the media has largely ignored this major political event, despite its indication of massive social upheaval happening right under our noses.

While estimates of the size of Los Angeles’s march ranged from 500,000 to 600,000, and Las Vegas hosted the launch of a national voter registration campaign called #Powertothepolls, the political talk shows on Sunday morning barely made mention of the uprising in the streets.

power to the polls
Providence Women’s March, 2018. (Photo credit: Ellen Taylor)
powertothepolls
Providence Women’s March, 2018. (Photo credit: Ellen Taylor)

Matt McDermott, Director of Whitman Insight Strategies, calls the Women’s March and other activities of the Resistance, “the most underestimated, unappreciated, and underreported political movement in modern American history.”

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How BRAVA Investments is Taking Gender Lens Investing Mainstream

Natalie Molina Nino is CEO of BRAVA Investments, which takes a value approach to investing in products and services that benefit women.

One of our goals at Philanthropy Women is to explore different ways to invest in reducing the gender gap and building a better economy — ways that operate in both philanthropy and in regular business markets. Alongside gender lens grantmaking, progressive women donors also have another important way they can deploy their capital for gender justice: gender lens investing. One new investment instrument that recently came to our attention is BRAVA Investments, headed by CEO Nathalie Molina Niño, with partners Trevor Neilson and J. Todd Morley.

BRAVA is not primarily focused on supporting women owned start-ups or getting more women into the c-suite of corporations (though this is something they look at), but on investing in industries that economically benefit employees or consumers that are disproportionately women.

“I don’t think investing in women will become mainstream and be taken seriously until we prove that it is lucrative,” said Molina Niño, in a recent phone interview with Philanthropy Women.

Founded in August of 2016, BRAVA brings together Molina Niño’s expertise in large-scale business development and operational growth, with a value-based approach to investing that contrasts sharply with what many other gender lens investors are doing today.

Where did Molina Niño get the idea for her unique approach? To introduce her reasons for developing BRAVA’s approach, she referenced a recent study by Project Sage, which rounded up 58 gender lens investing instruments for a detailed analysis. Molina Niño said she did similar research in preparing for the launch of BRAVA.

“I did a mini-version of Project Sage a couple of years ago,” said Molina Niño. “What I saw was that a lot of my friends and colleagues were starting funds for women and they were struggling to raise cash, so they were these little micro funds worth like $2 million to $15 or $20 million tops. And they were all focused on early stage, very early stage, and higher risk. And they were doing it in the traditional venture capital way, where you invest in 100 companies and you hope that 10 of them will at least provide some return and one or two will really take off.” But Molina Niño didn’t want to take that approach.

“I wanted to do later stage investing, and I noticed nobody in the gender space was doing that,” she said. She liked later stage investing because it meant lower risk, and she also liked being more attractive to large scale institutional investors.

“For me it has always been about scale.,” said Molina Niño. “Even if you’re doing amazing work, but you’re doing it with $10 million a year, that’s pretty small potatoes. It’s never going be part of a big endowment or a big pension fund, it’s never going to be something that moves the needle in a big way. So for me, scale was important, as well as investing in companies that I think we can grow, and not expecting 90% of my companies to go bust.”

Another thing Molina Niño noticed, when she looked around at colleagues in gender lens investing, was that nearly all of the gender lens investing instruments created over the past 10 years are dominated by white women. “Even though I know many of the people who started these funds, and so I believe it’s in no way intentional, but it’s as though somebody wrote a memo and said, ‘Okay people, we’re only investing in white women.'”

So that was another challenge for Molina Niño. “Women of color get .1 % of venture capital,” she said. “You don’t hear many people talking about that.”

Molina Niño wanted to change that, but she also saw some problems in taking an approach of primarily funding women-led start-ups, since that also had limitations in terms of impact. “At BRAVA what we do is, we consider investing in women not to mean necessarily investing only in women entrepreneurs,” she said.

By way of example of the kind of business BRAVA is tracking, Molina Niño described a company called Honor in San Francisco that is a platform for matching people with elder care professionals. “They do a great job of building trust, because the site helps you find people who are vetted, and they have a great reputation for that. Part of how they got that reputation is by attracting and retaining their talent. ”

The way they do that, said Molina Niño, is by paying their workers $20 an hour, in a industry where workers generally receive no more than $12 an hour. “That’s huge. That’s life changing, the difference between $12 and $20 an hour.” Molina Niño also sees the writing on the wall for the need for elder care services in the US. “You have 10,000 people who are turning 60 every day in this country. This is a massive growth play.”

For Molina Niño, the litmus test for deploying capital is that the investment be measurably improving the economic lives of women, at scale, as part of their core business model. “It makes zero difference to me whether the founders are women. It makes zero difference if the board is made up of women. I would love for that to be the case, and maybe after I invest in them, I can influence that to be the case. But it doesn’t make all the difference to me, because they clearly have a model that takes large numbers of women and substantively changes their lives.”

BRAVA Investments hones in on opportunities for making the most impact in gender equality by investing in mid-level growth companies in health care, education, and consumer products, that are economically benefiting women. “If I think about how am I going to make the most impact, by making one woman entrepreneur successful, or by focusing on a company like Honor that is going to help thousands of women rise out of poverty, I’m always going to choose that latter model,” said Molina Niño.

BRAVA’s investment’s focus is on high growth business models that economically benefit women. “I don’t believe that making the one woman a billionaire is going to translate into thousands of women being better off,” said BRAVA’s co-founder and CEO, Nathalie Molina Niño.”I think if you believe that, you’re basically talking trickle down economics. And I don’t believe it.”

This graphic, courtesy of Brava Investments, shows where Brava’s focus differs from traditional investing, with its higher impact on women.

The good news about BRAVA’s approach is that it attracts serious investors with deep pockets, who hear that BRAVA is working at a larger scale and also using a strategy economically benefiting large populations of women. “We’re focusing on domains where women are the majority — either they have a majority of women in their workforce, or a majority of women in their consumer base.”

BRAVA is taking a much different lens than other gender lens investing instruments, capturing the value of investing in economic sectors that influence women’s lives instead of in corporate structures that value women’s leadership.

“I worry that gender lens investing has been too focused on women in the corner office,” said Molina Niño. “So if you look at Sheryl Sandberg and her book, she is focused on the fact that there’s a lack of women in the C-Suite. I step back and think, what percentage of the total women in the world are going to be worried about getting into the C-Suite?”

It’s not that Molina Niño does not want to see more women in leadership across all sectors, but there are different ways to create prosperity for women. “As a woman entrepreneur, I’m personally very impacted by issues around women’s leadership in business, and I co-founded a center for women entrepreneurs at Barnard College at Columbia University, so nobody can say I don’t care about women entrepreneurs, but I have a hard time making the entire story be about that tiny sliver of the population. What about the other 99% of women who will never start a business and who will never make it to the c-suite? They deserve to be invested in, too.” And she believes the evidence shows this broader lens also makes for better investment returns.

A final key point for Molina Niño is the essential role of strong alliances with men in the financial sector and beyond. “Men need to be a big part of this equation,” said Molina Niño. So while the end game is about benefiting women, Molina Niño sees plenty of room for men to be involved, especially when it comes to raising capital. “It’s silly to exclude the people who have all the power, influence, and capital, and so my business partners and co-founders are men. I did that on purpose.”

More about BRAVA Investments here.

Related:

Women’s Growing Financial Power: Gender Lens Investing Explodes in 2017

Want to Invest with a Gender Lens? Put this Women-Owned Firm On Your Interview List

Women Leading Change Event in Providence Features Jackie VanderBrug

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Countdown to the Women’s March, and Who Are the Funders?

The women’s march: It’s not just about women. It’s about everyone.

women's march
The Las Vegas, Nevada Women’s March will launch Power to the Polls, a national voter registration drive.

And it’s not just one day. It’s the entire weekend.

And it’s not just about marching. It’s about participating in democracy.

The Women’s March for 2018 is about what it means to be part of a society that values equality and freedom, and it’s about getting more people to the polls to elect the defenders of those values.

After the overwhelming success of last years’s Women’s March, the creators of the event developed a nonprofit organization called Women’s March Alliance in order to facilitate movement activity. This year, over 200 events for the Women’s March will happen on both the 20th and the 21st. On the 20th, New York City will start its rally at 11 AM at 72nd street, marching past Columbus Circle by 12:30. In Washington, DC on the 20th, the march will start at the Reflecting Pool and go to the White House, with speakers to present on the steps of Lincoln Memorial.

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Announcing the 2018 Philanthropy Women Leadership Awards

The Philanthropy Women awards focus on leadership in the gender equality philanthropy sector.

This is our first year here at Philanthropy Women, and these our inaugural awards. They go to recipients who have demonstrated exceptional leadership in the field of gender equality philanthropy. These awards draw on the database of Philanthropy Women’s coverage, and are therefore inherently biased toward the people and movement activity we have written about so far. As our database grows each year, we will cover more ground, and have a wider field to cull from for the awards.

Enjoy!

The People

Bridge Builders Award for Network and Collaborative Giving Leadership

Donna Hall, President and CEO, Women Donors Network.

The need for coordinating funding efforts is stronger than ever, and certain leaders are doing much of the legwork to bring together different constituencies under the same tent.  Donna Hall is one of those leaders. With her collaborations with others to create Emergent Fund, which was later joined by Democracy Alliance, Donna Hall has been networker extraordinaire for the purpose of bringing together donors who share a cause and purpose. For these reasons, we award her the Philanthropy Women Bridge Builders Award for Network and Collaborative Giving Leadership.

General Organa Award for Thought and Strategy Leadership

Helen LaKelly Hunt, Author of And the Spirit Moved Them.

The Star Wars reference helps to conceptualize the longstanding nature of Helen LaKelly Hunt’s thought and strategy leadership in feminist philanthropy. Like high-ranking General Organa of the Resistance, Hunt has weathered decades of storms for gender equality philanthropy and has emerged time and again with more strength and courage. Her multifaceted powers are an inspiration to many not only in philanthropy but also in history and social science, as Hunt has made a strong case for revising feminist history in her book, And the Spirit Moved Them. She has also helped create many of the women’s foundations that are the heart of grassroots feminism today. Along with all this, Hunt, in collaboration husband Harville Hendrix, has developed an amazing model for therapy called Relationships First (I know because I use Relationships First skills in my own work as a therapist and experience the way feelings change from anger to curiosity with the model.) For these reasons, we award Helen LaKelly Hunt the Philanthropy Women General Organa Award for Thought and Strategy Leadership.

One World Award for Feminist Leadership in International Philanthropy

Emily Bove, Executive Director of the Women Thrive Alliance, which supports grassroots organizations in gender justice work globally.

Emily Bove is at the helm of Women Thrive Alliance, and does amazing work to bring the agenda of global gender equality into public view. This past year, Bove showed us the way SDG’s need to be the focus in order to coordinate efforts in the fight for gender equality. Bove continues to be a frontline advocate in political spheres for more attention to women and girls. For these reasons, we award Emily Bove the Philanthropy Women One World Award for Feminist Leadership in International Philanthropy.

Influencing the Corporate Agenda Award for Feminist Philanthropy

Gloria Feldt, Founder of Women Take the Lead and former Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Gloria Feldt, who tirelessly pushes the envelope for women’s leadership, also spearheaded a most excellent alliance this past year with Lyft, the up-and-coming taxi company giving Uber a run for its money. Feldt and her team at Take the Lead made Take the Lead Day, November 14, a Lyft discount day, and also got the rideshare service collaborating with local domestic violence shelters in Arizona to provide rides for survivors.  Take the Lead Day had strong participation across the globe, with 217 cities and 26 countries around the world taking action for women’s leadership parity. Getting Lyft and others to sign on as sponsors was a great way to help corporations pay attention to gender equality. For these reasons, we award Gloria Feldt the Philanthropy Women Influencing the Corporate Agenda Award for Feminist Philanthropy.

Wonder Woman Award for Leadership in Women’s Funds

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat, Executive Director,  Washington Area Women’s Foundation

Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat started last year strong as her foundation led 100 Days of Action for Women and Girls.  She finished up even stronger, launching Together We Lead, a women’s leadership initiative that brought in several corporate founding sponsors including Capital One, Deloitte, Nestle, Edelman, and Audi. Lockwood-Shabat is well-known in women’s philanthropy circles for developing and sustaining one of the strongest and most effective women’s funds in the country, with a  particular focus on young women and girls of color. For these reasons, we award Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat the Philanthropy Women Wonder Woman Award for Leadership in Women’s Funds.

She Persisted Award for Feminist Foundation Leadership

Teresa C. Younger, President, Ms. Foundation for Women

Every time a new political calamity would occur this past year, I would wonder who would be out front with a strong statement and response from the feminist community. Time and again, the early and often responder was Teresa C. Younger and the Ms. Foundation for Women. Younger also had a hand in writing A Blueprint for Women’s Funds: On Using Finance as a Tool for Social Change which helps to identify a path for restructuring finance with further integration of capital with the agenda of gender equality. For these reasons, we award Teresa C. Younger the Philanthropy Women ‘She Persisted’ Award for Feminist Foundation leadership.

Famously Feminist Award for Celebrity Leadership on Gender Equality

Jessica Chastain narrated an important film that we covered this past year, I am Jane Doe, directed by Mary Mazzio, which has helped address sex trafficking of children in America, and expose how corporate and nonprofit interests cloak themselves in “freedom of speech” language as they fund the protectors of this lucrative life-destroying business. Chastain has since proven herself to be a powerful member of the coalition of Hollywood women coming forward for #Timesup, the follow-up to #Metoo, which demands accountability in the film industry for sexual harassment and abuse. For these reasons, we award Jessica Chastain the Philanthropy Women Famously Feminist Award for Celebrity Leadership on Gender Equality.

The Organizations

Rising Star Award for Emerging Leadership as an Organization

FRIDA is a young, global feminist organization dedicated to social change.

Starting and sustaining a new feminist organization in today’s regressive political climate is extra challenging, but good ideas and women just can’t be kept down. That’s what we see when we look at FRIDA, a new global feminist organization focused on social change. FRIDA is leading the way in grantmaking at the grassroots for media and attention to gender equality in places like Poland, Egypt, and Colombia. For these reasons, we award FRIDA the Philanthropy Women Rising Star Award for Emerging Leadership in Women’s Philanthropy.

Best Corporate Giving for Gender Equality

Ray Morris, CEO of CREDO, which has given more than $9 million dollars to gender equality and is the largest corporate funder of Planned Parenthood.

CREDO gives a large percentage of its corporate philanthropy dollars to gender equality, and Ray Morris, as CEO of CREDO, appears to be continuing the company’s 30-year commitment to gender equality funding. In fact, gender equality accounts for about 11.7% of CREDO’s funding for progressive causes. Imagine if every corporation gave 11.7% of their philanthropy dollars to gender equality. We would be able to accelerate the progress of gender equality movements and reach critical mass sooner. For these reasons, we award CREDO Mobile the Philanthropy Women Best Corporate Giving for Gender Equality award.

League of Their Own Award for Gender Equality Philanthropy

The Young Women’s Freedom Center in California, supported by NoVo Foundation,  fights for the rights of system-involved girls.

No awards list for gender equality philanthropy would be complete without acknowledging the significant role of the NoVo Foundation, which has devoted substantial funds to address the rights and freedoms of young women and girls of color. One of the larger grants that NoVo recently made was to the Young Women’s Freedom Center in California, to fight for girls involved in the juvenile justice system, who are some of the most vulnerable and marginalized young women in our communities. Co-founded by Peter and Jennifer Buffett, NoVo Foundation provides an excellent model for how couples can partner for gender equality philanthropy. For these reasons, we award NoVo Foundation the Philanthropy Women League of Their Own Award for Gender Equality Philanthropy.Read More

New Hot Topics: Philanthropy Women’s Top Ten Posts for 2017

2017 was a tremendous year to be writing about gender equality philanthropy. In the wake of Trump’s election in 2016, women in progressive circles rallied their resources for fighting back against the coming regression. Our top ten posts help to recall the many ways that women joined the resistance and continued the fight. At #6, for example, Emily Nielsen Jones delves into the experience of coming together for the Women’s March last January. Meanwhile, at #2, one of the most unusual giving circles in the country celebrates its ability to reach women on the other side of the globe. At #5, we hear from Kimberle Crenshaw, law scholar and fierce advocate for philanthropy to reach out more to women and girls of color.

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Hell No, We Won’t Go! A Guide to Repealing the Trump Tax

trump inequality
Expect to hear a lot more about repealing the tax law here at Philanthropy Women over the coming year. It’s time to pull out all the stops and take back our democracy.

With Christmas over, it’s now time to get down to business and develop a strong agenda for 2018. At the top of that agenda for progressive donors, in my opinion, is repealing the Trump Tax that recently passed. This legislation does more to hurt the middle class and nonprofits than can be tolerated in a society that still prides itself on equality and freedom.

Here are just a few choice details about how this law will deter giving for the middle and upper middle class. The law’s discouragement of itemized deductions by raising the standard deduction for married couples to $24,000, is estimated to reduce the number of itemized tax returns from the current 30% to only 5%. That means only 5% of people will have enough charitable and other deductions to qualify for itemizing their taxes. This change strikes a devastating blow to families in the $70,000 to $200,000 income level, who often stretch their giving in order to qualify for the charitable tax exemption at $12,000. Between the mortgage interest deduction and the charitable deduction, some middle class families would be able to qualify for the $12,000 deduction threshold. By giving an extra two or three thousand or more, they are often supporting nonprofits in the community (their local church, food bank, or domestic violence shelter) getting a tax break, too.

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How Funny Girls is Growing Improv-Driven Leadership for Tweens

Funny Girls, a new program being piloted by the Harnisch Foundation around New York City and in Richmond, Virginia, engages girls in improv to build leadership skills. (Photo credit: Stephanie Buongiorno.)

Learning how to laugh as much as possible can be a key component to sane living, particularly in today’s regressive political and social scene. The Ms. Foundation for Women recently hosted its 22nd Annual comedy night, calling it “Laughter is the Best Resistance,” where Gloria Steinem did stand-up. Meanwhile, women like Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are moving into the executive producer role for hit comedies like Grace and Frankie.

With all this emphasis on comedy, you might think that this is what the Harnisch Foundation‘s new program, Funny Girls, is all about. But there’s more to it, actually. Much more.

Jenny Raymond, Executive Director of the Harnisch Foundation, agreed that it’s a ripe time for women in comedy in a recent conference call with Philanthropy Women. “But Funny Girls isn’t teaching girls to be funny. It’s boosting and bolstering girls’ leadership skills. That being said, Funny Girls is experiencing the power of humor through improv, and paying attention to it.”

Funny Girls teaches leaderships skills through improv comedy to girls in grades 3 to 8. The  curriculum focuses on teaching five key leadership skills   collaboration, agility, resiliency, empathy and self-awareness as outlined by this video. Funny Girls is teaching the value of listening, persisting in difficulty, and collaborating, which will pay off in both healthier living and more women’s leadership over time.

“It’s about girls realizing the power of their own presence,” said Jenny Raymond, Executive Director of the Harnisch Foundation. (Photo credit: Stephanie Buongiorno.)

It’s currently being implemented through five partnerships, four in New York City and one in Richmond, Virginia, and hopes to deepen those relationships and add new ones in other geographic areas. The Foundation is staying in close touch with all its partners so they can learn as much as possible about things like cultural variance and program effectiveness.

“I went on a site visit in a primarily South Asian community in Queens, New York and it was so fascinating to see, culturally, how the girls responded to the curriculum in similar but different ways than I saw in the South Bronx the week before,” said Raymond. Offering the curriculum to others remains an important objective for the foundation, which aims to make Funny Girls as widely available as possible.

As part of the program, the Harnisch Foundation is training artists from within organizations and the community to implement the Funny Girls curriculum. One of the Funny Girls partners, DreamYard, is implementing the program in the Bronx. “Several of the organizations we are working with not only offer Funny Girls, but are also focused on social justice issues, and advancing the work that gets at the root of inequality that these girls are facing,” said Jocelyn Ban, Communications Specialist for theHF.  “For example, DreamYard is investing in girls not only to be leaders, but also to be a part of the solution to the problems they face in their communities through the arts.”

2018 will mark the 20th anniversary for the Harnisch Foundation, and adding Funny Girls to its portfolio has been a big shift for the organization, which has not traditionally done programmatic work. But it connects the foundation importantly to its own roots investing early and building out the pipeline for women leaders at every level of society. “This builds on the foundation’s history of investing in the leadership of women. Now we are putting a stake in the ground for supporting girls and investing in their leadership journeys, too,” said Ban.

Editor’s Note: Ruth Ann Harnisch, Co-Founder of the Harnisch Foundation, is a lead sponsor for Philanthropy Women.

Related:

Ruth Ann Harnisch on Getting the Most Bang for Your Social Change Buck with Women’s Funds

Funders Take Note: #MeToo is Time Magazine’s Person of the Year

We’re Scaling Up: Announcing Philanthropy Women’s First Lead Sponsors

 

 

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Women of Wealth to Congress: Stop the GOP Tax Scam

While Donald Trump is predicting that his “monumental” tax bill will pass next week, women donors came together to demand that Congress reject the tax plan currently being finalized by the GOP. “This is not the decent and fair America we seek to build,” a letter from over 200 women states, as it blasts the GOP for its reckless and irresponsible tax bill.

Women of Wealth, powered by Women Donors Network and Patriotic Millionaires,  invites “all women who consider themselves ‘wealthy’ to join us in our fight to build a society of true abundance.”

Calling the tax legislation “morally bankrupt, intellectually corrupt, and economically indefensible,” the letter signed by over 200 Women of Wealth members.

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An Unusual Women’s Giving Circle in Boston Fuels Social Change Globally

Members of the NEID Women’s Giving Circle, from left to right, front row: Diana Rowan Rockefeller, Rebecca Obounou, Odette Ponce, Emily Nielsen Jones, Jackie Jenkins Scott, Amy Brakeman. Back Row: Constance Kane, Liz Sheehan, Mary Kay Miller, Laura DeDominicis, Ina Breuer, Clare Reilly, Nika Elugardo, Ellen Remmer, Kathy LeMay.

We know from the research coming out of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute that giving circles are growing, and women’s giving circles in particular are on the rise. But what does a giving circle really look like on the ground? How do they make decisions that are well-informed and that carry out the group’s intentions?

To find out more, I recently attended the New England International Donors (NEID) Global Changemaker’s Gala in Boston, an event that brought together a wide range of givers and giver groupies to celebrate the NEID Giving Circle’s donations to social change. The event featured a keynote conversation between NEID member David Campbell and Petra Nemcova, supermodel and philanthropists specializing in disaster relief rebuilding and education (she has funded the creation of 165 schools), who spoke to the group about the way in which disaster relief tends to focus on first response. Nemcova takes a more holistic (and, I would argue, feminist) approach to disaster relief — committing to long-term support to help countries affected by natural disasters.

Petra Nemcova, supermodel and philanthropist, with grant recipient for Dandelion Africa, Wendo Aszed.

At the gala, Nemcova and Campbell had an exciting announcement of their own to make — the merging of two nonprofits that they lead, Happy Hearts Fund and All Hands Volunteers, to create a new organization called All Hands and Hearts.  It seems here at Philanthropy Women, we are constantly discovering more women leaders in the field  who can articulate problems in a new and compelling way. Nemcova is a strong voice worth following in women’s philanthropy, and I look forward to watching her new collaborative venture, All Hands and Hearts, unfold.

Karen Keating Ansara, Founder of NEID, who also spoke at the gala, pointed out that while giving circles are a growing trend, only a small number of giving circles donate internationally.  In fact, according the WPI’s recent research on giving circles in America, only 7% of giving circles have an international focus to their giving.

When I attended the first meeting of the NEID Giving circle in January of 2017, the sense I got from the group was that their passion for international giving was aligning, in the wake of the Trump presidency, with an awareness that more needed to be done to lift up women and address gender equality. The group expressed both a desire for more collaboration in philanthropy on the ground (the giving circle model) as well as a desire to stretch their reach internationally.

With that first meeting in late January 2017, NEID’s giving circle got right to work — the work of discussing how gender roles may have influenced their own journeys in philanthropy. Eleven months later,  the circle had raised $70,000, and he night of the Global Changemakers Gala at the Park Plaza Hotel, NEID received another $15,000 gift to the giving circle. Inspiring $15,000 gifts on the spot after hearing about NEID’s Giving Circle — that is some powerful collective grantmaking.

What made $70,000 in global grantmaking for women and girls possible in 11 months? Ina Breuer, NEID Executive Director, credits NEID Board member and donor activist Emily Nielsen Jones, who is also the Founder and President of Imago Dei Fund. “Emily has such a wonderful way of asking questions about gender — she makes it both personal and manageable,” said Breuer. “It gets people thinking about their own biases and experiences, and how things might be different.”

Emily Nielsen Jones has been pioneering her own brand of gender lens grantmaking for almost ten years through the foundation she and her husband, Ross Jones, created in 2008, Imago Dei Fund. With the NEID Giving Circle, Emily and her husband strengthened their networks on the ground in Boston, engaging both new and experienced donors for the purpose of empowering women and girls.

“It’s not easy to collaborate, to really do it well,” said Jones. “We had NEID to provide the support to incubate a giving circle. Not everyone can do that.” Jones and her colleagues at NEID used that support well by developing a new model for how women can collectively engage and deploy funds  particularly aimed at gender equality.

“The two of us were very aware from the beginning that what we needed to do in supporting the circle is ‘make decisions easy,'” said Breuer. “We wanted to facilitate the conversation in a way that felt natural, and we also wanted to enhance people’s ownership of the process so they could take action.”

“I was trying to be organized with all the data I collected,” said Odette Ponce, who handled much of the administrative load for the giving circle’s process. “I tried to back up every decision with data as much as possible.”

This kind of support had a strong impact on the giving circle participants, particularly those new to philanthropy. “I certainly do not think the same way I did just six months ago about international philanthropy,” said Rebecca Obounou, one of the nineteen members of the NEID Giving Circle. For Obounou and many other members of the group, the giving circle experience was transformative for them personally.

One thing NEID Giving Circle members did early on was make an effort to reach out and diversify the group.  “After the first meeting, we recognized that we had very little diversity in the circle, and so everyone made an effort to invite different voices in,” said Breuer. “And we were successful in some ways. We didn’t have diversity in terms of males, but we did bring in more diversity in terms of race and culture.”

Ina Breuer, who comes to NEID after 17 years as Executive Director of Beyond Conflict, had a revelation about the way in which the giving circle was a “safe space” where newcomers could consider carefully how to get involved in international philanthropy. “Once we had that 19 group gathered, I realized we were bringing in people who were new to philanthropy, and this was a safe space for them to go through the process of learning what it feels like to be an international donor. What sort of questions do you ask a grantee when you’re thinking about who you might want to give some money to?”

“I’m always thinking in the back of my mind, ‘How can we expand the table around giving for the advancement of women and girls,” said Jones. She acknowledged that it was extra helpful to have the administrative support of NEID, so that she and other members could focus on bringing together different voices in the circle. “It made it more interesting that people were all over the map in their learning,” added Jones.

Keynote Speaker Petra Nemcova with 2017 Giving Circle Honorees. From Left to Right: Louise Ruhr (CREATE!), Petra Nemcova (All Hands & Hearts), Gretchen Steidle (Global Grassroots), Wendo Aszed (Dandelion Africa), Lauren LeBlanc (Komera).

“We made the process anonymous so that everyone could nominate the organizations they were passionate about even if they had some connection to them,” said Ponce, a key aspect of the giving circle’s process. At the same time, NEID staff sent information and articles about women’s giving to the giving circle members.

“We tried to give people a sense of what is out there,” said Ponce, so she sent information and articles, including a report from Women Moving Millions that described many women-led organizations working internationally. “We also brought in a few organizations to have meetings with us.  So the donors got exposed to the people themselves doing this work.”

Jones described how the giving circle shifted into a different mode when it came time to land the plane and decide where to give the grants. “We just got started without knowing 100% how we would shift from getting to know one another and learning about the global gender terrain to the actual proposal vetting process. In sort of an organic way, we came up with a process that felt right and ‘narrowed the funnel’ of so many incredible organizations to a shortlist we felt good about making grants to.”

“We had everyone vote beforehand, and then were presented the vote as people were coming into the room. And then we discussed, ‘Did we get this right?’ in terms of the vote,” said Breuer.

“The way the voting system worked was like a ranking system, from 1 to 5, with 5 meaning the organization fully matched the Giving Circle’s selected criteria. That allowed me to easily add up points, and created a point system for winners,” said Odette Ponce. “We then let the giving circle make the decision and used the point system to back up that decision, and it worked out really well.”

People seemed to get more engaged in the process, and excited about the process, as the NEID Giving Circle moved toward decision time, and all that excitement appeared to bring most members to feeling very good about their giving — confident that the vote represented their intentions quite well.

And the Awardees are: (Drumroll, please!)

Dandelion Africa: Based in the Rift Valley of Kenya, Dandelion Africa’s mission is to improve the livelihoods of women and youth in marginalized areas. Wendo Aszed represented Dandelion Africa at the Gala, and talked about her own experiences of growing up as a woman in her community, where female genital cutting is a time-honored ritual, and where many women lack access to basic information about birth control. NEID awarded Dandelion Africa $30,000 to support the organization’s work educating both boys and girls on gender issues, including female genital cutting, in order to improve health and education outcomes for girls.

CREATE!: This organization works in rural Senegal to empower women and girls. CREATE! partners with women’s cooperatives to foster economic growth and teach sustainable agriculture. The program improves food security and access to clean water using renewable solar energy. NEID Giving Circle awarded $20,000 to CREATE! to support women and girls in rural Senegal participating in training in sustainable market gardening.

Global Grassroots: This organization works in Rwanda and Uganda, with a mission to “develop women and girls as leaders of conscious social change in their communities.” Global Grassroots runs a social venture incubator for underserved women, helping women design and construct their own water enterprises. NEID Giving Circle awarded $10,000 to Global Grassroots to support leadership training to build non-profit water ventures run by women.

Komera: The mission of Komera is to work with young women in Rwanda. Komera invests in adolescent girls and their families. Komera provides educational scholarships, community mentoring, and sports to adolescent girls. NEID Giving Circle awarded $10,000 to Komera to support leadership and business training for young women transitioning into adulthood.

And what does the future hold for NEID’s Giving Circles? It appears the success of the first circle has spawned a replica. This coming year there will be two circles — one focused again on women and girls, and a new one which will be focused on climate change.

The circles are also considering exciting possibilities for expanding outside of Boston.  “We want to make the circles available to people outside of the Boston area,” said Breuer. “What we’re proposing to do, if people in another area want to participate — you have to have a minimum of 5 people in each location. Those groups will meet separately on the same days as we meet in Boston, and then we will create online sessions when all the different nodes come together to assess different potential grantees.”

Sounds like another innovation to the NEID giving circle model is in the works. With its global focus, but local community-building impact, NEID”s giving circle model adds an important page to the growing literature on giving circles in America.  Stay tuned to NEID’s next moves by visiting their website. And if you are interested in joining, please reach out to Odette Ponce.

Editor’s Note: Emily Nielsen Jones is a Lead Sponsor of Philanthropy Women.

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