Gender Lens Grantmaking - Philanthropy Women

Cognizant Gives $4.1 Million Technology Ed Funding for Women and Girls

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.

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.

A powerful coalition of investors is taking action to steer the tech industry toward better practices that protect human rights in the digital age.

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.

Announcing the 2019 Philanthropy Women Leadership Awards

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

Third Wave Fund’s new Sex Worker Giving Circle has made its first $200,000 in grants to organizations across the U.S.

With $200,000 in new funding, sex worker organizations and advocates across the U.S. will have more resources to address safety, worker’s rights, and political power in the new year. Third Wave Fund, a 20-year-old foundation, recently announced its inaugural grantees from the first and only Sex Worker Giving Circle, a new collective created by the fund in 2018.

This new giving circle is unique in many ways. The Sex Worker Giving Circle (SWGC) is the first sex worker-led fund housed at a U.S. foundation. SWGC consisted of 10 Fellows who were trained and supported by Third Wave Fund in order to raise more than $100,000 of the grant funding, design the grant-making process, and decide which organizations would receive funding grants, which ranged from $6,818 to $21,818.

Top posts on Philanthropy Women in 2018 featured major investments in women and girls of color, strategies working to increase political leadership of women, and profiles of new leaders in the field.

It was an amazing year for women’s philanthropy. Amid an increasingly hostile political climate, women managed to get elected to public office in record numbers, partially due to the influence of women donors. In addition, the events of #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings served to highlight how prevalent sexual assault and harassment are, and how far we still have to go to become a culture that truly values women and prioritizes their safety and equality.

Ana Oliveira, President and CEO of the New York Women’s Foundation (Image Credit: Donna F. Aceto) The New York Women’s Foundation received $2.25 million from CBS.

CBS corporation announced today that 18 organizations will receive $20 million in funding to address sexual harassment in the workplace. Many of these organizations are longtime players in the women’s rights space, including New York Women’s Foundation, Women’s Media Center, and the National Women’s Law Center, while others are brand new to the field, like TIME’S UP. These grants are part of CBS’s separation agreement with former CEO Les Moonves, which stated that the donations would be deducted from his severance pay.

Happy Holidays from Philanthropy Women Editor and Publisher Kiersten Marek

One of the main reasons I started Philanthropy Women was to shine a spotlight on women givers, because I noticed that knowing more about them made me feel better about the world. Rather than logging on to Twitter and reading the toxic political discourse, I decided to fill up my Twitter feed with women’s funds and other feminist philanthropy thought leaders. The result was astonishing — I was suddenly getting new information about so many issues related to women — their health, their money, their professional lives. The process of turning my attention to progressive feminist philanthropy also turned me into a feminist donor, as I realized how well women’s giving to gender equality aligned with my own social justice interests.

Category: Gender Lens Grantmaking

Cognizant Gives $4.1 Million Technology Ed Funding for Women and Girls

Progressive Investors Decry Digital Breaches of Facebook, Google

New Voices Foundation Buys Walker Estate to Create School

How this Collaboration Helps Women Deliver Babies More Safely

How Funny Girls Become Leading Women through Improv Programs

Announcing the 2019 Philanthropy Women Leadership Awards

Third Wave Fund’s Sex Worker Giving Circle Announces First Grantees

Philanthropy Women Top 10 Posts of 2018

18 Orgs Receive $20 Million in #MeToo Funding From CBS

Year-End Thoughts and My Interview for Women’s Fund of Rhode Island

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