Feminist Strategy Archives

Trevor Project Granted Amazing $100K from NFL Player Carl Nassib

NFL Player Carl Nassib has come out as gay and is donating $100,000 to The Trevor Project to support LGBTQ+ youth at risk of suicide.

Statement from Amit Paley, CEO & Executive Director of The Trevor Project:

“The Trevor Project is grateful to Carl Nassib for living his truth and supporting LGBTQ youth. This generous donation will help us scale our life-saving crisis services to reach the more than 1.8 million LGBTQ youth who seriously consider suicide each year in the U.S.

Carl Nassib has come out as gay. (Image credit: Associated Press)

“Coming out is an intensely personal decision, and it can be an incredibly scary and difficult one to make. We hope that Carl’s historic representation in the NFL will inspire young LGBTQ athletes across the country to live their truth and pursue their dreams.

Sex Workers in India Need Our Help. Here’s What Donors Can Do

Editor’s Note: The following post from Katarzyna Rybarczyk, a Political Correspondent for Immigration News, details the increased danger for sex workers in India, and provides ways for donors to step in with support.

Despite India being home to some of the most significant populations of sex workers globally, sex workers in India have very few protections and are alienated from the government’s responses. Even before the pandemic, sex workers in India would face unfair treatment, discrimination, and poverty. Now, these problems have intensified to the point where for the majority of sex workers every day is a struggle to survive.

The Pandemic Exacerbated Sex Workers’ Vulnerabilities

Because of the nature of their profession, sex workers rely on physical contact and in-person meetings with clients to earn a living. As red-light districts have been recognised as one of the primary sources of new COVID-19 infections, they have experienced repeated closures and a significant decrease in the number of people using sex workers’ services. Their former clients not only fear contracting the virus, but many have also lost their jobs because of the pandemic and thus can no longer pay for regular meetings.

Gender Lens Analysis of MacKenzie Scott’s $2.7 Billion in New Giving

She’s done it again — outstripped all of philanthropy with her massive capacities to spread capital in the nonprofit realm. Today, MacKenzie Scott announced $2.7 Billion in new giving — funds that will go to those generally underfunded and overlooked. MacKenzie describes her process as “Seeding by Ceding” — seeding social change by ceding her priveleged role to those who need the power more.

The gender lens analysis of this new batch of giving turns up several organizations that we discuss frequently here at Philanthropy Women, including our fiscal sponsor, Women’s Funding Network (woot! woot!), as well as a long list of other organizations taking a range of approaches, including intersectional approaches, to addressing the gender issues in our culture. The list of lucky grantees in this batch include:

Shayna Hetzel’s Vision for Gender Equality: An Open Sky as the Norm

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Shayna Hetzel, Community and Social Impact Investment Director at the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact.

1. What do you wish you had known when you started out in your profession?

My greatest professional challenges, opportunities and successes have been rooted in unapologetic aspirations, insightful mentors and the brilliance of a team. I wish I had known early on how to set better boundaries and ask for help more often, because I have found that boundaries and help are leverage points for productivity, engagement and inclusion. And, fundamentally, community-based, purpose-driven work only gets stronger and bolder with focused, diverse and inclusive contributions. Asking for help not only builds in resilience and wellness for the individual. It also increases team capacity, levels up organizational competencies, and builds a more diverse and inclusive point of view.

How One Corporate Wife Set a New Standard for HNW Divorce

One the founding benefactors of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, Lorna Jorgenson Wendt, has a fascinating backstory, and I’m thankful to Sondra Shaw-Hardy for bringing her to my attention. This weekend, I did some reading and learned how Lorna was able to shake up the entire nation in the late 1990’s by fighting for her right to an equal share of the assets in divorcing her corporate CEO husband.

Lorna Jorgenson Wendt was married to Gary Wendt for 32 years. The two had been high school sweethearts in the Midwest, went to college together at the University of Wisconsin, and then married and moved to Cambridge, MA, where Lorna put Gary through business school for his MBA from Harvard. At the time, in a ceremony conducted by a Harvard Dean, Lorna and other Harvard student wives were awarded Ph.T certificates — honorary awards for “Put Hubby Through” college.

Experts: What Government Must Do Now to Ensure Gender Equality

Editor’s Note: The London School of Economics and Political Science, led by director Baroness Minouche Shafik, has published a statement on gender equality signed by multiple leaders including Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Vera Songwe, Kristalina Georgieva, Christine Lagarde, and Ursula von der Leyen.

COVID-19 has caused a health crisis for billions around the world and inflicted the worst economic pain in decades. And wherever we look a key theme recurs: no matter the geography or wealth of the country, women and girls bear the heaviest burden of economic hardship. That hurts all of us.

As leaders representing leading economic institutions, we share this urgent message: to rebuild our global economy and improve the lives of all people, governments must prioritise gender equality in their economic recovery strategies.

Divorce Gap Alert: Why Melinda French Gates Deserves 50%

Here I am again, wanting to talk about divorce in the billionaire class. Today’s discussion will focus on Melinda French Gates, who recently filed for divorce from Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world.

Sun reflects off the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle. (Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash)

We saw how it went down with MacKenzie Scott. She got about 26.9% of the assets in her divorce from Jeff Bezos. Soon after, we learned that MacKenzie Scott was one of the newest signatories of the Giving Pledge and would now (in theory) be giving away at least half her wealth while living. {sigh} So many more billions of dollars that MacKenzie Scott could have had to work with to do her off-the-charts giving, had she gotten 50%.

Happy Pride Month! On Taking Pride in Funding LGBTQIA+ Activism

Editor’s Note: COVID-19 has exposed the everyday struggles of the most vulnerable like never before. LGBTQIA+ activists are facing homophobia, transphobia and biphobia everyday as they continue to organize and support their community bearing the brunt of a pandemic. What does philanthropy need to do more? How can it better support LGBTQIA+ communities in the present moment? As we advance in the second year of the pandemic, Deepa Ranganathan and Juliana Camara, from FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund, facilitate an engaging roundtable discussion with LGBTQIA+ members of the FRIDA ecosystem.

FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund helps support and empower LGBTQIA+ communities across the globe. (Image credit: FRIDA)

The first year of COVID-19 made donors run to provide immediate response to grantee partners navigating through it in different contexts. Learnings and reflections from this have been widely shared. However, as the pandemic continues to create havoc and shows little signs of stopping, we are acutely aware of stepping into Pride Month amidst this crisis. For philanthropy, this is an opportunity to elaborate further on how to resource LGBTQIA+ communities in ways that allow them to thrive and go beyond merely surviving in these times.

G.L.O.W.: Initiatives that Work For Better Period Education

In honor of Menstrual Hygiene Day on 5/28, Global G.L.O.W. has been working to fight against period stigma and poverty.

Global G.L.O.W. is an international non-profit organization that works with its partners in 23 countries on achieving gender equity. Mentoring young girls plays a large role in their activism. They feature three key initiatives in these mentorship programs.

GirlSolve focuses on the disparities that girls face in formal economic opportunities. GLOW Club helps girls to progress their ability to advocate for themselves, their emotional wellbeing, educational and community engagement and impact. The final initiative is Healthy GLOW, which works to educate girls on maintaining healthy bodies and relationships.

Firelight Finds Lack in Modern Philanthropy; We Can Do Better

A recent report from the Firelight Foundation urges modern philanthropy to transition to “community-driven systems change”.

Firelight Foundation urges the switch to "community-driven systems change", providing guidance to donors. (Image credit: Firelight Foundation) — Firelight Foundation urges the switch to “community-driven systems change” in its new report providing guidance to donors. (Image credit: Firelight Foundation)

International development funders and Global-North foundations and philanthropists have faced intense criticism as they struggled to deal with the challenges of the past year – from COVID 19, to racial justice, to the potential that the world may not realize the SDGs. Critics have accused global north donors of hindering community-led progress and perpetuating white supremacist, neo-colonial approaches to development.

Category: Feminist Strategy