Lara Schnitger’s “Suffragette City” procession taking place in Dresden, Germany. (Courtesy of the artist and Anton Kern Gallery, New York, Photo Credit: Swen Rudolph)
Feminist art may soon becoming to a town near you. San Jose, California was the most recent city to host a feminist procession that has been traveling the globe for the past several years, and could be coming to your town soon. Suffragette City, created by artist Lara Schnitger, is “a participatory procession and protest” and is both free and open to the public.
The ritual allows participants to “celebrate female empowerment in a culture of patriarchy,” according to a press release announcing the procession’s occurrence in San Jose. The procession in San Jose started at the Museum of Art, and involved participants wearing costumes and chanting while carrying portable sculptures and banners.
The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Corporate Politics of Development is by Kathryn Moeller.
So much of what I worry about with corporate philanthropy is just how much it is used to grease the pill, so to speak, of the public swallowing all the damage that corporations do in the world. Corporate giving asks us to believe, for example, that Nike cares about gender equality, even as much of its subjugation of labor in developing countries puts added pressure on women as both workers and providers, with very little given in wages in return.
Such is the subject of Kathryn Moeller’s book, The Gender Effect: Capitalism, Feminism, and the Corporate Politics of Development, which makes the case that even feminism can be co-opted by corporations and turned into a tool for shifting more of society’s burdens onto women and girls without addressing the structural factors that produce poverty.
Type Media Center, formerly the Nation Institute, is women-led and majority women-owned, and invites women donors to fuel their growth.
“When the Nation Institute was founded more than 50 years ago, we were a modest organization affiliated with the Nation Magazine — but that name no longer reflects the breadth and impact of what we do today,” said Taya Kitman, Executive Director and CEO of Type Media Center, regarding the rebranding of the organization.
Type Media Center, the rebrand of the 52-year old Nation Institute, will be dedicated to “world-class independent journalism and publishing”and will be a nonprofit media company with two major programs rebranded as Type Investigations and Bold Type Books.
Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation, and author of Be Fearless: Five Principles for a Lifetime of Breakthrough and Purpose.
Recently I interviewed Jean Case for Inside Philanthropy and learned about how her early years as a survivor of hardship helped her prepare for a lifetime of success in business and philanthropy. We also discussed how to maintain a fearless attitude in both business and philanthropy, so that you don’t become afraid of all the risks, hassles and pitfalls that drive a lot of people to drop out of pursuing plans in both spheres.
Toward the end of the interview, I asked Case about her perception of women in philanthropy and how their influence is shifting the landscape:
Another part of our culture where Case sees growing fearlessness is in women’s influence on money, both in philanthropy and in the private sector. “It goes way beyond philanthropy and into investing,” said Case.
Case sees a different culture being fostered both in business and philanthropy, in which “women care very deeply about supporting other women,” and are willing to back each other’s work with financial as well as other forms of support. “Our work [at the Case Foundation] in the inclusive entrepreneurship realm is all about that.”
But she was clear that the gender gap still needs to be remedied in order to achieve the diversity needed for a healthier economy. “We need all the players on the field, and today, we don’t have them.”
“Women and millennials are looking at social justice issues and seeing how we can do things differently,” said Case. In the business sector, she recognized that corporations are paying more attention than ever to the Sustainable Development Goals and the need for gender equality to be part of the equation for a healthy global economy.
The Cognizant U.S. Foundation has announced $4.1 million in grant funding for the National Center for Women & Information Technology. (PRNewsfoto/Cognizant)
Whenever corporate funders part with millions for gender equality initiatives, this is good news for feminist philanthropy. Recently, Cognizant U.S. Foundation announced that it has made a $4.1 million grant to the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT). The grant will fund both digital skills education programs and an awareness campaign aimed at increasing interest in tech careers for women of all ages.
Cognizant U.S. Foundation is a nonprofit focused on supporting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education and skills initiatives for U.S. workers and students. NCWIT is a non-profit community comprised of more than 1,100 universities, companies, non-profits, and government organizations across the U.S. With this new award, NCWIT will establish coding skills camps for women and girls, and provide training for school counselors in communities underserved communities. With an initial focus on the Southern United States, NCWIT will launch programs in areas where it can provide corporate internships.
A powerful coalition of investors is taking action to steer the tech industry toward better practices that protect human rights in the digital age.
The companies listed above have all been issued the Investor Statement on Corporate Accountability for Digital Rights from the Investor Alliance for Human Rights. This Alliance wants Google, Facebook, and other tech companies to know that they will withdraw their investments if these companies do not take action to address human and digital rights abuses.
This coalition contains some familiar names in the socially responsible investing field such as Pax World Funds and Cornerstone Capital Group, but the largest number of signatories are Sisters of various religious orders: Sisters of Saint Joseph of Chestnut Hill, Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and this is only a few of the religious funds signing on to this statement.
A new learning institute for women of color will be made out of Madam C.J. Walker’s estate in Irving, New York. (Photo credit: David Bohl/Historic New England/Courtesy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation)
A new learning institute for women of color will be created out of the former estate of Madam C.J. Walker, as the New Voices Foundation announced last week that it will purchase the site and repurpose it for women of color entrepreneurship.
Madam C. J. Walker was the founder of a hair care empire and a noted philanthropists of the early twentieth century, and is considered the first African-American woman to become a self-made millionaire. A daughter of a slave who once worked as a laundress for less than a dollar a day, Madam C. J. Walker became a civil society champion for organizations like the YMCA, the Tuskegee Institute, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Ariadne Labs, a “joint health system innovation center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health” is launching a new collaboration in 2019 to help more women access guidance in the birth and parenting process. (Image courtesy of Ariadne Labs Facebook page.)
A health care foundation, a nonprofit initiative, and a for-profit health information company are collaborating to get tools, data, and a clinically-validated health information into the hands of pregnant women across the country. Launching in the first half of 2019, Ovia Health will be collaborating with the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Ariadne Labs and the California Health Care Foundation in order to help more women and families navigate pregnancy, birth, and parenting.
Funny Girls, a program created by the Harnisch Foundation, teaches girls five key skills of leadership in subtle yet profound ways. (Photo credit: Brittany Buongiorno)
“Funny Girls is a philanthropic investment in building the pipeline for female leadership,” says Jenny Raymond, of the Harnisch Foundation’s (HF) program employing improv techniques to build girls’ leadership skills.
Raymond, who is HF Executive Director, and Carla Blumenthal, Funny Girls Program Manager, spoke to me by phone from the HF offices in New York.
It’s an auspicious time for a program devoted to building the next generation of female leaders as 2018 saw a historic number of diverse women elected to political office. “That didn’t happen overnight. It was brewing for a long time,” says Raymond, who sees Funny Girls as a tool to build on these gains.
Programs fostering self-esteem and leadership skills in girls are not uncommon. What is unusual is the use of improv as the tool to achieve these ends. Funny Girls is not trying to develop comedians or actors: the participants are diverse groups of eight to thirteen-year old girls enrolled in after-school programs with a social justice focus. The improv methods are used to cultivate core leadership skills, particularly in low-income populations typically lacking opportunities for such development. “It’s about getting girls to recognize that they have a voice and deserve a seat at the table,” says Raymond.
The HF was founded in 1998 and its mission is to create a “fair, equitable and inclusive world.” It’s angle: empowering girls and women, particularly through storytelling, which can include everything from supporting women-centered film-making, TED Fellows and journalism, to leadership summits, coaching and social justice initiatives.
Funny Girls was developed in 2015 and its name (“it’s fun, it’s funny, it’s about girls,” says Raymond) came from a brain-storming session between Raymond and HF Founder and President Ruth Ann Harnisch. The Foundation looked at Stanford and M.I.T. executive training programs to see what particular challenges women were facing, and how they were being addressed. Women and girls face hurdles including boldness being reduced to “bossiness,” and their authorship of ideas being challenged. Working with experts in leadership curriculum development, Harnisch and Raymond chose specific leadership skills that overlapped with the main tenets of improv comedy, and built a curriculum for girls based on leadership, improv and creative movement.
While leadership can be one of those “I know it when I see it” attributes, the five key concepts of self-awareness (understanding one’s own perceptions of self, and how one might be perceived by others), learning agility (responding quickly and sharing one’s own insights), collaboration (prioritizing a goal and working together to meet it), empathy (recognizing others’ emotions), and resiliency (employing multiple strategies and learning from mistakes) are as good a place to start as any.
“These five skills have been a fantastic marriage with improv,” says Raymond. Funny Girls partnered with NYC’s Magnet Theater and the Pilobolus dance company to develop the curriculum. Pilobolus emphasizes collaboration in movement, a perfect fit with Funny Girls says Raymond. The attraction to Magnet was simple, “We observed all of the local improv companies and liked them the best.” The “story aspect” is key, Raymond says, “Magnet is very focused on developing a character; that is the tenor we wanted to represent in our curriculum.”
Funny Girls seeks to instill a “growth mindset” in girls to they can discover their own definition of leadership. (photo credit: Babita Patel)
The eleven-session Funny Girls program is now up and running and has six partners, all of them after-school programs with a social justice focus. “We train the instructors, who are drawn from the organizations we work with,” says Blumenthal. Each instructor receives 17 hours of training in combining leadership skills with improv. “We don’t do it for them,” says Blumenthal, “the instructors go back to their organization and run the program.”
Blumenthal says one program goal is to instill a “growth mindset” in the girls, and to have them explore their own definition of leadership. This is vital as different individuals, and cultures, have varying conceptions of what constitutes leadership. One improv concept that is valuable in this area is “yes, and …,” in which a participant accepts what someone else has said, and then expands on it. This encourages creativity, collaboration and open-mindedness.
With its emphasis on leadership development, Funny Girls works with the New York City school systems to provide its program. (Photo credit: Brittany Buongiorno)
Blumenthal also describes an improv game targeting resiliency in which one girl is a dolphin trainer, and another girl a dolphin. The trainer thinks of a gesture to teach the dolphin and tries to impart that lesson without using words. The dolphin-girl must figure out the gesture and perform it. The exercise can be both hilarious and frustrating, and take five minutes or more to complete. “By the end they embody resiliency – the girls had to try a lot of strategies to get where they needed,” says Blumenthal.
Funny Girls’ participants predominantly hail from communities of color in New York City (and one program in Richmond, Virginia). “The instructor brings their organization’s identity to the program,” says Raymond, and adds, “the instructor may know youth development, and certainly knows her own community, but likely not improv.” Funny Girls has proved to be a good fit with New York City after-school programs, as the city’s Department of Education mandates that programs receiving city funding incorporate leadership training in their curriculum.
The Funny Girls program was piloted in 2016 in three NYC schools, and currently has six partners:
The Arab American Family Support Center in downtown Brooklyn; Casita Maria Center for Arts & Education in the Bronx; Girls for a Change, supporting girls of color in Richmond, Virginia; Global Kids, providing a global perspective within a human rights framework for under-served NYC youth; The Red Hook Initiative, supporting youth development and empowerment for low-income youth in Red Hook, Brooklyn; and SAYA (South Asian Youth Action), providing academic, personal and professional development for youth in New York City.
The program concludes with a showcase that demonstrates games tied to leadership skills. “The girls make presentations in which they explain leadership skills and how they embody them in action,” says Blumenthal.
“Funny Girls is part of the continuum of work the Foundation has done from the beginning,” says Raymond. The Foundation has worked with thousands of women since its inception in 1998, and its leadership initiatives have included VoteRunLead and The OpEd Project, among other programs designed to “get women’s voices out into the world.” These efforts have been successful; still, “Countless women have told me,” says Raymond, “‘I wish there had been an opportunity when I was younger to develop leadership skills.’”
“We see a thirty percent drop in self-confidence among girls between ages eight to fourteen,” says Raymond. She notes that by the time they become teenagers, many girls stop raising their hand in class because they fear social repercussions for doing so; boys typically are not burdened by this fear.
“It is such a fragile time in the development of self,” Raymond notes, citing statistics from the Girl Scout Research Institute indicating that four-fifths of girls don’t believe they have the skills to be a leader. That’s the bad news. The good news: nine tenths of girls believe that leadership skills can be taught. “We are trying to shift girls’ perceptions of themselves as leaders so that they can use that mindset to engage civically, in the work place and in the home,” says Raymond. “We are arming our girls with self-confidence, whatever direction they ultimately head in.”
The recent elections saw a wave of women running for, and being elected to, political office. Naturally, not all girls are interested in the political sphere, nor is Funny Girls trying to push them in that direction. Leadership skills are transferable across a range of professions and interpersonal situations. “The girls are talking about leadership and breaking it down to see what skills women leaders have, whether they are Hilary Clinton or Beyoncé,” says Program Manager Carla Blumenthal.
Funny Girls is a new program and is limited in scale, with only a half-dozen participating organizations at present, all of which receive a grant to run the program, and some supplemental funds for the organization itself. Raymond notes that HF chooses its Funny Girls partners carefully, “Not all organizations need us, or are a good fit,” she says. There must be buy-in from the organization, and the program needs to fill an unmet need.
Funny Girls is off to a strong start and has a format that could be widely replicated. “I’d love to take this to hundreds of organizations,” says Raymond, “but I can’t give that level of support at this point.” HF is a private foundation, and Raymond notes, “We are in the enviable position of concentrating on programming, not fundraising.” The downside is that program budgets are limited.
What will be interesting to see in years to come is how “graduates” fare. The premise, and the promise, is intriguing, but will Funny Girls really build leadership skills? Raymond acknowledges the institutional and cultural barriers women face in exercising leadership, but maintains that one of the best ways to develop women as leaders is by starting when they are still girls, and using unique programming to develop core skills which can be built on throughout a lifetime.
Editor’s Note: The Harnisch Foundation is a lead sponsor of Philanthropy Women, providing support for our work to expand feminist philanthropy journalism. Read More
As we round the bend on our second year here at Philanthropy Women, it’s time to celebrate a new batch of recipients for our leadership awards. The people and organizations chosen for these awards have all demonstrated exceptional leadership in the field of gender equality philanthropy this past year, and represent the growing diversity and strength of this work.
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 cover more ground, and have a wider field to cull from for the awards.
Enjoy!
The People
Breakthrough Award for Thought and Strategy Leadership
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Tarana Burke, Founder and Leader of the Me Too movement and Ana Oliveira, President and CEO of The New York Women’s Foundation, at The Foundation’s 2018 Celebrating Women Breakfast on May 10. (Photo Credit: Hannah Schillinger)
This year’s award for thought and strategy leadership in feminist philanthropy goes to two amazing trailblazers who are collaborating to bring new funding to sexual assault prevention: Ana Oliveira and Tarana Burke.
By founding the new Me Too Fund, Oliveira and Burke are accelerating a social movement that is turning civil society on its head and bringing needed attention to women and girls. Their bold pursuit of this work has added new dimensions to the movement to end violence against women, and has helped to shift the culture’s focus toward helping survivors and making perpetrators of assault accountable for their actions. For these reasons, we award Ana Oliveira and Tarana Burke the Breakthrough Award for Thought and Strategy Leadership in feminist philanthropy.
She Persisted Award for Feminist Philanthropy Research and Development
Kathleen E. Loehr, author of Gender Matters, is Philanthropy Women’s recipient of the She Persisted Award for Feminist Philanthropy Research and Development.
It takes tremendous patience and stamina to keep going in the world of feminist philanthropy, despite that the topic is so compelling. That’s why we are awarding Kathleen E. Loehr the She Persisted Award for Feminist Philanthropy Research and Development.
Kathleen has been researching and writing about feminist philanthropy for over a decade, and her writing on the topic elucidates key aspects of the work. Her new book, Gender Matters: Growing Women’s Philanthropy, is particularly good at answering the important question of how fundraisers and those committed to women’s giving can take specific actions that will increase women’s philanthropy.
Famously Feminist Award for Celebrity Leadership on Gender Equality
David Schwimmer and Sigal Avin, who collaborated to create new media that highlights the many forms that sexual harassment can take. (Photo Credit: Build Series, #thatsharassment)
Men as collaborators was a big theme in feminist philanthropy this year. One man who did a particularly good job of helping the movement for women’s health and safety was David Schwimmer, who, in collaboration with Sigal Avin, created a series of public service messages called That’s Harassment, helping to flesh out the picture (pardon the pun!) on what sexual harassment looks like and feels like.
Because we know that media and stardom influence so many things today, and because we know from the research that men need clear examples of how to give to women and girls, we are giving this year’s Famously Feminist Award for Celebrity Leadership on Gender Equality to David Schwimmer and Sigal Avin.
The Organizations
One World Award for Feminist Leadership in International Philanthropy
This past year, Root Capital partnered with an Australian Program to provide loans for women in agriculture in South East Asia.
Leaders in international feminist philanthropy like Chief Executive of Women’s World Banking of Ghana, Charlotte Baidoo, called on microfinance institutions to do more when it comes to lending to women. One organization that broke new ground in doing this lending to women internationally was Root Capital.
Bridge Builders Award for Network and Collaborative Giving Leadership
Rachel’s Network distributes $60 million annually to address both climate change and gender equality.
The need for coordinating funding efforts is stronger than ever, and particularly the need to collaborate between environmental movements and women’s movements is of increasing importance as the impacts of global warming become more evident.
One organization that is serving as a lynchpin in bringing together gender equality and environmental work is Rachel’s Network. With its project work, research, and partnerships with groups like the Sierra Club to oppose the border wall with Mexico, Rachel’s Network has shown exemplary leadership in connecting the dots between feminism and environmentalism, and taking specific action to address problems. For these reasons, we award Rachel’s Network the Bridge Builders Award for Network and Collaborative Giving Leadership.
Rising Star Award for Emerging Leadership as an Organization
The Obama Foundation showed that it will be taking a considerable stake in addressing issues for women and girls when they launched the Global Girls Alliance.
When a retired president decides to actively take up the cause of promoting gender equality for girls worldwide, there is reason to celebrate. When he is married to a feminist visionary like Michelle Obama, there is even more reason to cheer.
This past year, the Obama Foundation launched into the world of funding for women and girls when they created the Global Girls Alliance, and began collaborating with as many as 1,500 nonprofits to bring education and well-being to girls around the world. The best news of all: this is just the beginning. Imagine how much progress and strength women’s movements will gain as the Obama Foundation ascends to their rightful place in the feminist philanthropy landscape. For this reason, we award The Obama Foundation the Rising Star Award for Emerging Leadership as an Organization.
Influencing the Corporate Agenda Award for Feminist Philanthropy
Girls Inc. announced the new #GirlsToo movement, which will work to prevent sexual abuse and harassment of girls.
Nonprofits can play a dramatic role in bringing together coalitions of corporate partners to underwrite a new movement. That was certainly the case this past year when Girls, Inc. launched the #GirlsToo movement. Girls, Inc. brought together a wide array of corporate partners and nonprofits to support this initiative and is providing a strong framework for how we can embed respectfulness in relationships. For this reason, we award Girls, Inc. the Philanthropy Women Influencing the Corporate Agenda Award for Feminist Philanthropy.
Outstanding Corporate Giving for Gender Equality
Girl Up is one of three organizations to receive $1.25 million in funding for the advancement of girls and women in tech from TE Connectivity.
Corporations have the potential to play a vital role in addressing gender equality. One corporation that did outstanding work in providing needed support for girls in tech education this past year was TE Connectivity. With a $1.25 million grant to Girl Up, which provides support for women and girls in tech, TE Connectivity provided an excellent model for other corporations to follow as they seek to deploy more of their profits into a more gender equal world. For this reason, we award TE Connectivity the Outstanding Corporate Giving for Gender Equality award. UPDATE: A reader has reached out to provide a counterpoint for this award, which was covered by the Boston Business Journal here. A PDF of the article is here: #MeToo’s darkest side_ Dialogue about workplace sexual harassment overlooks threat of physical assault or rape – Boston Business Journal
League of Their Own Award for Gender Equality Philanthropy
With its funding of large-scale initiatives in feminist philanthropy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is working to address gender equality with several different strategies.
No awards list for gender equality philanthropy would be complete without acknowledging the increasingly significant role that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is playing in this landscape.
From supporting convenings of women funders to adding $200 million to a global initiative for the world’s poorest women to growing infrastructure development for women’s giving circles, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped forge new paths for feminist philanthropy in many different directions. For this reason, we award the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation the Philanthropy Women League of Their Own Award for Gender Equality Philanthropy.
Lady Justice Award for Leadership of Women’s Funds
All women’s funds and foundations are the recipients of Philanthropy Women’s Lady Justice Award, due to their inspiring work to help more women get elected to office this past year. Great work, women!
This year, it was hard to imagine choosing one women’s fund leader over another, as there was so much going on, and every women’s fund’s recipe for success is so different. Hence, this year’s Lady Justice Award for Leadership of Women’s Funds goes to all the women’s fund leaders (you know who you are!) who pressed for political engagement this past year, and in doing so helped us elect record numbers of women to office. This was a historic year for women in many ways, and leadership and advocacy coming from women’s funds helped make it much moreso. By boldly responding to #MeToo events and the Kavanaugh hearings, and by coming together to talk about ways to get more women elected, women’s funds pressed for change at an important historical inflection point. For these reasons, we award all women’s fund and foundation leaders the Philanthropy Women Lady Justice Award for Leadership of Women’s Funds.
As we round the bend on our second year here at Philanthropy Women, it’s time to celebrate a new batch of recipients for our leadership awards. The people and organizations chosen for these awards have all demonstrated exceptional leadership in the field of gender equality philanthropy this past year, and represent the growing diversity and strength of this work.
