Category: Activism

Imagining What Is Possible: This Young Feminist Funder is Growing Women’s Media Globally

FRIDA is a global feminist funder dedicated to social change. It has made $1.3 million in direct grants to over 150 groups in over 80 different countries.

Young feminists have been organizing across the globe for decades, but their work, particularly in the media sector, has been woefully underfunded. I know, since I was one of them. In 1969, when I co-founded Women Make Movies, women’s funds didn’t exist.

Over the decades, thousands of young activists have gathered at events like the International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development, the flagship event of AWID (Association of Women’s Rights in Development), and have talked about the need for more funding for young feminists, particularly in media. As the last decade closed, many young activists lamented that no women’s fund specifically addressed their youthful organizing needs. So they decided to start their own, with AWID and Fondo Centralamericano de Mujeres (Central America Women’s Fund) incubating this spark of an idea.

Read more

Philanthropy Publishing Luminaries Discuss the New Landscape of Giving

David Callahan, Founder and Editor of Inside Philanthropy and author of The Givers

David Callahan, editor and publisher of Inside Philanthropy, will participate in a forum at the 2017 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy honorees announcement today. The forum is entitled A New Landscape of Giving: Power, Policy, and Philanthropy and will also include Boston Globe investigative reporter Sacha Pfeiffer and Karl Zinsmeister, vice president of publications, The Philanthropy Roundtable, as panelists, with Stacy Palmer, Chronicle of Philanthropy editor, as moderator. 

This will be a chance to see some of the most knowledgeable people in philanthropy discuss the trends and events that they see reshaping the landscape of giving. It sounds like a great recipe for some thought-provoking conversation, plus you can stay tuned for the announcement of the winners of Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, which is given to honor individuals dedicating private wealth to the public good.  The awards are made by an international selection committee made up of leaders from over 20 organizations established by Carnegie.

Read more

Livestream Today: Ellevate Network Summit on Mobilizing the Power of Women

Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and Co-Founder, Ellevest

One of the things I love about Ellevate Network is the way they are bringing together authority, autonomy, and agency in order to grow gender equality movements. Sallie Krawcheck comes with the authority in finance, she has now launched Ellevate which gives her vision more autonomy, and today Ellevate is taking a big step to increase the agency of gender equality movements by hosting its first-ever summit to mobilize gender equality movements.

From the Summit’s webpage:

Action. Impact. Power.

Read more

Are Conservatives Taking Over the UN? What are the Implications for Gender Justice?

OURS, which sponsored the new report, Rights at Risk, is a working group that included Planned Parenthood Global, Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women, Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), and many other global nonprofits.

Recently, one of our lead sponsors, Emily Nielsen Jones, philanthropist and Co-founder of Imago Dei Fund, raised the warning flag about the growing conservative Christian influence on religious culture in the U.S. Now, a new report has come out that warns of a growing conservative religious influence on the United Nations. The report, entitled Rights at Risk and produced by The Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURS), argues that  “the universality of human rights is under attack by an increasingly coordinated and agile set of anti-rights actors operating in the international human rights sphere.”

Read more

What’s up with this New Philanthropy Hub, and How Will It Involve Women’s Philanthropy?

Giving Compass aggregates philanthropy news and information by topics, including news and information about women’s philanthropy.

Recently, I got an email from Stephanie Gillis, Senior Advisor at the Raikes Foundation, wanting to “explore potential synergies” with the work we are doing at Philanthropy Women. Naturally, I was eager to do so, and soon learned about Givingcompass.org, a new team effort of several foundations and nonprofits, aimed at drawing on the chops of the tech sector in order to provide more resources for the philanthropy sector, particularly around how to assess the quality of philanthropy and get the most impact per philanthropy dollar.

Read more

Behind a Law Scholar’s Push for More Funding for Women and Girls of Color

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Professor, Columbia Law School and UCLA Law School, Co-Founder, African American Policy Forum

I have spent the past few years observing, writing about, and getting more involved in the world of women’s philanthropy. During that time, multiple experts have referred to the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw as being essential to the changes we now see going on in philanthropy, with more efforts to apply both a gender and race lens when framing problems and funding new strategies.

Indeed, with her scholarship, advocacy, and legal expertise, Crenshaw has helped build and disseminate whole new areas of knowledge including critical race theory and intersectional theory. These concepts have helped philanthropists like Peter Buffett and organizations like the NoVo Foundation apply an inclusive gender and race lens that values and addresses the needs of women and girls of color in the United States.

Read more

Ellevate Holding Conference to Activate Gender Equality Movements

Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and Co-Founder, Ellevest

Since its launch in May of 2016, I have started following Ellevate Network on my Twitter feed, and I am always impressed by the quality of their material on both gender equality and gender lens investing. Now, the new startup that aims to capture the $11 trillion women’s investing market, is holding a conference in June to activate gender equality movements. Sallie Krawcheck, the architect and founder of Ellevest, came to my attention last spring when I was creating a list of 9 Gender Lens Investors to Know About.

Read more

NATO: Exhibit A of Why We Need More Gender Equality in the World

President Trump, in Belgium on the fourth leg of his overseas trip, met with NATO and European Union leaders. Analysts said expectations were low.

I will let The New York Times fill you on what happened at this meeting with NATO and European Union leaders, but this picture tells a large part of the story about what global leadership looks like today — it is heavily male-dominated. Hopefully as more philanthropy takes on gender equality, we will see the percentages of women in politics increase.

Source: Highlights: In Brussels, Trump Scolds Allies on Cost-Sharing, and Stays Vague on Article 5

Gender Justice Uncovered — Help Promote Sound Judicial Decisions for Gender Equality

The Gender Justice Uncovered Awards help expose  inequities in the justice system for women and girls.

As a social worker, I know too well how local justice systems do not always render judgements that best serve women and girls. I have had the experience of counseling domestic violence survivors still suffering major injuries from a recent assault, and these victims telling me that the offender is already back on the street, and they are afraid for their lives.

So for me, and the clients I serve, it is exciting to learn about the Gender Justice Uncovered Awards, a way to push for better decision-making in the courts worldwide by giving judges positive and negative reinforcement for their decisions involving women and girls.

Read more