Category: Community Foundations

How Women’s Foundation California Celebrates 40 Years of Social Change

On October 17th, 2019, the Women’s Foundation California (WFC) celebrated its fortieth anniversary with a major announcement: the organization pledged $40 million to gender justice, and began its groundbreaking campaign to raise the funds to facilitate another forty years of gender justice grantmaking.

Surina Khan, CEO of the WFoC, celebrates her 5-year anniversary as CEO alongside the Foundation’s 40th birthday. (Photo credit: Women’s Foundation of California)

Less than a month later, the WFC is more than halfway to its goal of $40 million. This stunning fundraising effort is the result of a steadfast community of donors, supporters, and activists, which the Foundation has built over forty years of campaigning for social change.

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Helping Women Entrepreneurs Build Assets in Fresno, California

Jenny Flores, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Bank of the West

Editor’s Note: This Q&A is with Jenny Flores, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility for Bank of the West. Grameen America recently announced a new collaboration with Bank of the West, which is donating $2 million to assist with the launch of a new Grameen branch in Fresno, California.

What is the relationship between Bank of the West and Grameen? Does Bank of the West provide the funds and Grameen evaluate the loans and administer the program?

Building on a relationship started in 2017, Bank of the West made an initial $1.5M investment to provide lending capital to Grameen’s Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York branches, helping to establish Bank of the West as one of Grameen’s key business partners in the U.S.

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Giving Through Celebration: Batonga Foundation Hosts NYC Benefit

One of the best ways to leverage support for a community is by celebrating its culture. Angélique Kidjo and the Batonga Foundation seek to amplify their campaign for women and girls in West Africa through a one-of-a-kind benefit dinner hosted later this month in New York City.

Angelique Kidjo invites YOU to a night of West African flavor in New York City! (Source: Batonga Foundation)

Kidjo, a three-time Grammy Award-winning singer and musician, was born in Benin and grew up steeped in the rich musical and social culture of West Africa. She attended school at a time when girls’ education was not considered socially acceptable. In answer to taunts from boys in her classes, Kidjo would shout back, “Batonga!,” an invented word that has since translated into Kidjo’s music and philanthropy.

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Joining Forces To Empower Women in Senegal

Local girls enjoy clean water from a rehabilitated well in Senegal. Photo Credit: CREATE! (@createsenegal)

Where are the effects of climate change felt the strongest?

West Africa shoulders some of the heaviest impacts created by climate change, particularly in communities where families live off the land. Many communities in Sub-Saharan Africa have laid claim to lush, verdant farmlands for hundreds or thousands of years—but today, those families find themselves fighting against the very land they’ve called home for generations.

Between desert encroachment, deforestation, and the effects of a rising global temperature, rural populations in Senegal experience some of the worst effects of climate change. Farming families struggle to cope with a shorter growing season, while communities across the continent suffer from a shortage of clean water, food, and fuel.

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The International Battle for Women’s Water Rights

water rights
Five years later, the battle for clean water still rages in Flint, Michigan. (Photo Credit: Flint Rising)

Superheroes no longer wear capes: they wear gym shoes. And when it comes to water rights, these superheroes put more miles on those shoes than most.

A few days before we spoke on the phone, Gina Luster represented Flint Rising at an activist event in San Francisco. A red-eye flight took her to Grand Rapids, Michigan, then to her home in Flint at 7:30 in the morning. Next, Gina drove to Detroit for a panel appearance at the NAACP’s annual conference. She arrived in the city exhausted and ready for a shower before our interview, only to find out she couldn’t check into her hotel. 

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New Microgrants Cultivate Collective Giving

Members of the co-design team working to grow the power and amplification of giving circles. (Photo credit: Catalist)

On August 20, 2019, an initiative to connect and catalyst the field of giving circles announced their intention to donate $32,000 to collective giving organizations. The funds, distributed in thirteen microgrants ranging from $500 to $5,000, will go toward circles and networks that “showcase, scale, strengthen, and sustain the field of collective giving. 

This initiative is born out of a yearlong co-design process spearheaded by the organizations Amplifier, Asian Women’s Giving Circle, Catalist, Community Investment Network, and Latino Community Foundation. 

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How One Feminist Giving Pioneer is Changing Lives

When you hear the word “relationship,” what do you think of first? A couple in a romantic partnership, or two people sharing a conversation?

Two participants embrace at a Safe Conversations workshop.
(Photo credit: Relationships First)

Most of us would lean toward that first option–which is part of the reason Relationships First is setting out to change the way we think about human interaction.

Relationships First is a nonprofit founded on the idea that healthy relationships are key to physical, financial, and emotional health–not just for people, but for the communities and countries they live in. When our relationships suffer, it shows. We tend to disconnect from our jobs, our friends, our children, our family members. And when this happens, performance drops, stress mounts, and communities feel the heaviest effects. This nonprofit seeks to break this vicious cycle by teaching new ways of communication.

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Learning How to Shift From Domination to Partnership

Members of the feminist giving community: An upcoming webinar co-led by Helen LaKelly Hunt could be the perfect opportunity to learn some new skills for healthier relationships.

The Center for Partnership Studies and Relationships First (co-founded by Helen LaKelly Hunt and Harville Hendrix, pictured above) are hosting a webinar on September 12 to teach Safe Conversations methods of communication. (Photo Credit: Relationships First)

Relationships First and the Center for Partnership Studies (CPS) are joining forces next month for Safe Conversations: Shifting from Domination to Partnership in Relationship. Held 11:00 – 12:30 PR (2:00 – 3:30 ET) on Thursday, September 12th, 2019, this FREE webinar focuses on the ways people can improve their relationships through quality communication skills.

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Refresh and Pour Into One Another: Black Women Giving in Omaha

Grant recipients for the IBBGives first round of grants in 2018. (Photo credit: IBBGives)

Editor’s Note: This post was written by the I Be Black Girl Collective, and is shared on Philanthropy Women during Black Philanthropy Month in order to highlight local efforts across the country to grow Black Philanthropy.

“We know that the people most affected by an issue are not the people making the decisions around solutions,” said Ashlei Spivey, co-founder of I Be Black Girl, a collective of Black women in Omaha, Nebraska. “IBBGives is a space that allows everyday Black women, no matter their association, to invest in their community.”

I Be Black Girl (IBBG) is a collective for Black women and girls in the Omaha metro; its founding is modeled after the work of bell hooks. IBBG organically came to fruition after a Facebook post by Ashlei Spivey that called for Black women to get together to refresh and pour into one another. Based on the overwhelming response, IBBG formally became a collective in 2017, offering networking sessions and leadership development programming. 

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California Gender Justice Funders Launch $10 Mil Culture Change Fund

It’s time to change the way we think and talk about gender.

The Gender Justice Fund, developed by California Gender Justice Funders Network, will fund culture change around gender issues. (Image Credit: Gender Justice Fund)

For many of us — women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, people of color, and others — the last few years have been difficult to digest. There are too many significant human rights issues happening in our country today to easily decide which to give priority.

In response, the voices of activists, philanthropists, and organizations in this social and political climate are louder than ever before. Together, funders and campaigners are making strides to support the causes they believe in, finding new platforms and new opportunities for growth every day. We’ve made progress in legislation, but at the same time, we’ve seen massive legal backslides — like laws barring transgender people from certain bathrooms and abortion bans in nine states — that make it difficult to celebrate our progress.

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