Gender Equity Funding Archives

Is the World Fundamentally Unserious About Gender Equality?

As someone who has spent the past five years of her life studying the way we fund gender equality movements, this is the question I am often left with at the end of the day: Is the world fundamentally unserious about gender equality?

Because the more you look at the data, the more it seems that funding for gender equality is so sidelined and misdirected and poorly tracked and evaluated, that it’s really no wonder that progress is as slow as it is.

A new report entitled Tracking Philanthropic and Gender Equality Financing aggregated data from SDGFunders to come up with the following totals of funding from the top 10 private foundations doing this work in Kenya. (Image credit: Publish What You Fund)

Now, a new report by Publish What You Fund and partners helps to elucidate just what funding for gender equality looks like in different nations around the world, and shows us just how little we know about what is going on with this sector of social change funding.

Electing Women is Key to Happiness: New Report

When men and women are paid more equally and more women are in elected office, a country tends to be more economically successful and happy. Now the Biden Administration is offering more of this kind of happiness in the U.S.

Riane Eisler and Robyn Baker make some excellent points in a recent article in Ms. Magazine entitled Want to Make Your Country Happier? Elect Women.

The article discusses how the 2021 World Happiness Report has some startling news for the globe: research indicates that generous government spending on society’s infrastructure – the services and systems that improve people’s quality of life – is key to happiness.

How Jack Dorsey’s $3MM Will Fund Girls’ Ed in Sub-Saharan Africa

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on April 14, 2021.

Women’s History Month was definitely one for the books, especially with Jack Dorsey’s #StartSmall initiative dispersing $3 million in grants at the end of the month. This newest funding was allocated to four grassroots organizations focused on breaking down educational barriers for women in sub-Saharan Africa.

Representatives from WGEP, AGE, AAF, and WISER at the Obama Summit 2019 with Michelle Obama. (Image credit: WGEP)

AGE Africa, Asante Africa Foundation, WISER International, and Women’s Global Education Project are the well-deserving organizations receiving $750,000 each to support their already ingrained and successful efforts. The Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance is responsible for this cohort of collaboration joining forces to eradicate female inequity in the most rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

Shira Ruderman: Show With Actions, Not Just Words

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Shira Ruderman, Executive Director of the Ruderman Family Foundation, a private family foundation that invests in three primary areas of focus: advocating for and advancing the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout our society, strengthening the relationship between Israel and the American Jewish community, and modeling the practice of strategic philanthropy worldwide.

Shira Ruderman is the Executive Director of the Ruderman Family Foundation. (Image Credit: Ruderman Family Foundation)

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

I wish I knew philanthropy is a life journey that you cannot get separated from. I view it like parenthood, you learn as you go. Philanthropy makes you recognize your passions, skills, views on life.

Rajasvini Bhansali: Democratic Future of US Not Guaranteed

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Rajasvini Bhansali, Executive Director of Solidaire Network.

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

I wish I had known to counter any external and internalized messages about individual leadership accomplishments with the recognition that we are deeply interdependent on others for our success. I would have been even more vulnerable and drawn strength from my community and led in a way that created conditions for even greater connectedness amongst different organizations, networks, and alliances. Sometimes I focused on my own team and organization’s needs over all sectoral, movement building and ecosystem level concerns. But if the ecosystem doesn’t thrive then each organism within it also suffers. So as feminist leaders, we have to continuously nurture the whole ecosystem.

Co-Impact Announces Launch of New One Billion for The Gender Fund

Editor’s Note: The following announcement is from Olivia Leland, founder of Co-Impact, and the Co-Impact team.

Co-Impact has announced the launch of a new fund, The Gender Fund, to focus grantmaking on gender equality and women’s leadership. (Image credit: Co-Impact on Twitter)

Dear Friends, Colleagues, and Partners,

As we begin the Generation Equality Forum, a key moment and platform to lay out joint agendas and commitments to action around gender equality, we have a chance to do something truly transformative – to be catalytic to a degree not previously possible and to re-imagine a world that serves all people equally.

That is why I am so excited to write to you today to announce the development of Co-Impact’s second fund – the Gender Fund – which seeks to raise and grant US $1 billion over the next decade to accelerate progress towards gender equality and advance women’s leadership.

How is New York Women’s Fdn Supporting Underserved Communities?

The New York Women’s Foundation has given nearly $3M in grants to organizations helping underserved communities post-pandemic.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 14: The group Developing Artists performs onstage during the 32nd Anniversary Celebrating Women Breakfast at Marriott Marquis on May 14, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for The — NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 14: The group Developing Artists performs onstage during the 32nd Anniversary Celebrating Women Breakfast at Marriott Marquis on May 14, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for The New York Women’s Foundation)

On June 28th, The New York Women’s Foundation announced almost $3 million in grants reflecting the organization’s fundamental strategy of early and long-term investment in community-rooted organizations led by women and gender expansive people addressing critical issues in underinvested communities. The Foundation’s latest round of grants are critically important to women, gender expansive people and their families in a post-COVID reality. The Foundation is charging ahead and bolstering investments in advancing racial equity, ending mass incarceration in New York City, increasing economic stability for low-income families, and eliminating gender-based violence.

New Fund for LGBTQ+ in Arkansas, From Alice Walton & Walton Family

The Alice L. Walton Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation have create a new statewide fund to improve life for the Arkansas LGBTQ+ community.

The Walton Family Foundation and the Alice L. Walton Foundation have launched a new statewide fund, which will be overseen by the Arkansas Community Foundation (Image credit: Walton Family Foundation and Alice L Walton Foundation)

A new statewide fund will support organizations working to improve the quality of life for LGBTQ Arkansans. The initiative is launching with philanthropic support from the Alice L. Walton Foundation and from Olivia and Tom Walton through the Walton Family Foundation. Organizations offering legal, health, education and advocacy services, along with other high-demand needs will be eligible for grants. Arkansas Community Foundation will oversee the fund with support from a grant selection committee.

Brown’s Pembroke Center Receives $5M and New Director

The Brown University Pembroke Center, hub for research on gender, has received a $5M donation, bringing in a new director, Leela Gandhi.

Leela Gandhi will begin a three-year term as Director of the Pembroke Center on July 1st, 2021 (Image credit: Nick Dentamaro/Brown University)

On the eve of its 40^th anniversary, which it will mark during the 2021-22 academic year, Brown University’s Pembroke Center already has two big reasons to celebrate.

The Pembroke Center, a hub of research on gender and sexuality that brings together scholars from multiple fields of study, received its largest gift to date this spring. In July, it will welcome an accomplished humanities scholar as its new director, a role endowed for the first time ever by the new gift.

Announcing $540K To Fund Women Ascending In States’ Legislatures

The Ascend Fund has committed $540K to nonpartisan nonprofits in Michigan, Mississippi, and Washington working to advance women in politics.

Donate Now | The Ascend Fund by Panorama Global — The Ascend Fund works to increase the number of women in U.S. politics, committing $540K to organizations helping women in states’ legislatures. (Image credit: The Ascend Fund)

The Ascend Fund, a collaborative fund dedicated to accelerating the pace of change toward gender parity in U.S. politics, announced $540,000 in available grant funding to nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations in Michigan, Mississippi, and Washington state to increase the number of women serving in the states’ legislatures.

“Critical policy decisions are made by state legislators. By investing in women, we are not just creating a more reflective democracy, we are investing in the health and stability of our political institutions,” said Abbie Hodgson, Director of The Ascend Fund. Women are more than half the population, but less than one-third of elected officials. At the current rate of change, women won’t reach political parity in the U.S. for nearly 100 years. To accelerate the rate of change, organizations selected to participate in this two-year, three-state pilot will receive up to $100,000 in funding to:

Category: Gender Equity Funding