New #MeToo Funding Fuels Empathy and Justice for Survivors

funding #metoo
The Fund for the Me Too Movement and Allies has provided $840,000 in grant funds to organizations across the country doing work to address gender-based violence.

Within the past year, the Women’s Media Center reports that coverage of #MeToo in the mainstream media has grown significantly. As awareness about the detrimental effects of sexual assault continues to grow in our culture, the New York Women’s Foundation is fostering real efforts to aid #MeToo survivors. In May of 2018, the foundation created the Fund for the Me Too Movement and Allies, and now that fund has made $840,000 in its first round of grant funding.  This is a collaborative effort, housed and managed by The New York Women’s Foundation, with the grantmaking decisions being made jointly with Tarana Burke, founder and leader of the #MeToo Movement. 

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WPI Study: Rage Giving is Driven by Progressive Women Donors

rage giving
A new report from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute shows that women’s giving to progressive causes outstripped men’s by six-fold after the 2016 election.

A new trend in women’s philanthropy: rage giving. According to a new study by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, giving by women to progressive causes after the election of Donald Trump took off like never before. In fact, the study shows that women’s giving to progressive causes outstripped men’s by six-fold.

These findings add significantly to the growing evidence that women are using their financial power to drive political change. More from WPI:

Key findings from Charitable Giving Around the 2016 Election: Does Gender Matter? include:

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Priming the Pump: Exploring Ways to Grow Women’s Giving

Gender Matters by Kathleen E. Loehr explores how fundraisers can widen the aperture on their lens for approaching donors in order to maximize women’s giving.

Once you study women’s philanthropy for long enough, you begin to recognize that a confluence of events relating to women and giving are changing the philanthropy landscape in significant ways. One of the scholars who has studied women’s philanthropy and done this dot-connecting is Kathleen E. Loehr. In her new book, Gender Matters: A Guide to Growing Women’s Philanthropy, Loehr addresses the important question of how fundraisers and those committed to women’s giving can take specific actions that will increase women’s philanthropy – already an area of giving scheduled for a large uptick in the near future.

“It is time to rumble with our stories about women’s philanthropy,” says Loehr in the first chapter of the book, referencing a Brené Brown concept about rumbling with the truth to find the real story. In the introduction, Loehr describes a method for asking questions called Appreciative Inquiry, which “involves the art and practice of asking unconditionally positive questions” as a way to increase potential, by maximizing imagination and innovation in the responses being elicited. Loehr has written the book with an Appreciative Inquiry framework, which informs much of what Loehr recommends in terms of a strategy for approaching women donors.

In the book, Loehr combines the ideas of Appreciative Inquiry with an approach to leadership that works to align strengths in an organization, so that weaknesses are so insignificant that they are not even worth noticing. With these approaches in mind, Loehr starts with a call to look more closely at the data about the donors you are trying to reach. With specific examples guided by fundraising campaigns of colleges like Duke and William & Mary, Loehr demonstrates how a closer look at the data yielded a decision to shift fundraising approaches in order to collect the unharvested revenue of women’s giving.

But research is, of course, not enough. Loehr then provides guidance around how to create a high-quality action plan that will increase your donor engagement with women. In part two of the book, entitled Dream, Loehr invited readers into transformative reflection where they can “create a compelling mental picture of what is possible.”

By doing so, Loehr helps drive readers toward the next big step in carrying out their plan: declaring a vision. Through the process of declaring a vision, Loehr shows how intention is amplified, resulting in a stronger approach that will pull in donors, particularly women. Loehr also calls on fundraisers to build networking and collaboration into their vision, since research shows that women are more receptive to giving when they see themselves as joining with other women on a similar mission and participating in design of the project.

What Happens When We Ask Big Questions

Loehr is particularly adept at providing questions in the book that will “prime the pump,” to so speak.  She recommends questions that help prospective women donors articulate their own experiences with giving so that fundraisers can fully engage in appreciating those experiences and use them to create that compelling mental picture that will grow women’s support. Here is a small sample of some of those positive, open-ended questions you can pose to donors about their past giving experiences:

  • What has been your most exciting experience in giving? It does not need to be related to this organization.
  • Tell me the story. What happened?
  • What enabled this gift? What role did you play? What role did the organization play? What role did the staff person play in relationship to this experience?
  • What else made this experience possible?

Loehr suggests that asking these questions help women donors contextualize their giving experience and focus their attention on remembering what that experience was like for them. While such an approach might sound obvious, it is not in the old playbook of “best practices” for development and fundraising professionals.

Loehr also highlights significant research for guiding the ongoing donor-grantee relationship, including how much to communicate with women donors. “It is unlikely that women will feel they are getting too much communication,” writes Loehr, a research-based insight that is important to keep in mind when redesigning fundraising campaigns with women more in mind.

Gender Matters is an important new resource for those who see the potential for women’s giving to influence both philanthropy and civil society as a whole.  The guide will help readers notice their own assumptions and how they might be driving their behavior, so they can imagine and explore better ways to reach women as philanthropists.

Learn more about Gender Matters here.

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Jacki Zehner Lets It Rip As She Exits Women Moving Millions Leadership

Jessica Houssian, Jacki Zehner, and Kathy LeMay, September 2018 Annual Women Moving Millions Summit in Seattle, sponsored by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Wow, what a read. I had to keep stopping at points to walk around the block and get my core energetics realigned. Jacki Zehner literally pours her heart out in this stunning blog post where she shares about her experiences rising to the C-Suite at Goldman Sachs, as well as her intense love for gender equality philanthropy, which has been expressed in over a decade of devotion to growing one of the most important organizations in gender equality philanthropy, Women Moving Millions.

Zehner starts by letting readers know that this writing is more or less automatic — that is, she is going for a Jacki Unfiltered here. What we learn by reading this piece is that Zehner is a complex leader with significant life experiences that inform her activism for women’s rights.

Ever-considerate of others, Jacki warns us that 14 pages have emerged from this attempt to shine a spotlight on her thinking and feeling life. She then goes on to enter into some of the most exciting (and sometimes painful) thoughts and memories. As just an example, check this out:

If there was such a thing as a ‘finance professional Olympics’, becoming a partner at Goldman, especially as a young woman, would represent a gold medal. Of course, I know that there may be someone who reads this and posts in the comments section something along the lines of “die you wall street whore” as they have in the past when I blog freely about Goldman, but so be it. To that potential person I say in advance, “I hope that has helped you feel better about yourself.” […]

Beyond unflinching glimpses like these into Zehner’s mind, the post also delves into many significant life events, including some serious traumas. Her writing is the kind of material that future (or present) movie-makers will want to read in order to gather key scene details for the inevitable biopic of Zehner’s life. For example, here is just one in a bulleted list breaking down the timeline of Zehner’s progression:

  • Finding Women Moving Millions – 2002 to 2009.  As the years from 2002 onward moved forward, I was spending more and more time with philanthropic groups focused on girls and women, and in particular women’s funds. My interest in supporting women’s leadership poured in to my work with various non-profits, and one of the main reasons I loved Women’s Funds so much. I had joined the board of the Women’s Funding Network, and it was there that I got to the know the incredible Chris Grumm. She became, and still is, a role model for me for courageous leadership. She is the one who invited me to consider joining the Women Moving Millions Campaign, as she was a co-founder of it. WMM at the time was a campaign to encourage women to make million dollar commitments to women’s funds. Again, holy shit, I could go on and on and on right here, but I won’t. The need to know piece for the rest of this story is that this moment was transformational for me. Why? Because the act of making that commitment, the moment of stepping onto a stage at the Brooklyn Museum to have a group photo taken by Annie Leibowitz to mark that moment in history where for the first time women of means came together to fund women at the million dollar level, helped me to see clearly what the next stage of my life would be about: helping to unlock the resources of high-net worth women to support other women, and more broadly, gender equality. […]

It’s quite wonderful that Zehner has the clarity to speak about these experiences and mark how these transformations happened for her. By doing so, she is increasing the chances manyfold that other women will get up their courage to do the same.

One other sentence toward the end really popped out at me for how it evoked the shared effort that Women Moving Millions summits are, and how this results in shared experiences that can refuel our courage and make us more powerful. Zehner writes:

The WMM summit 2018 could not have been more incredible
from start to finish. (My next long post will be about it all.) I am in awe of how beautiful the program was (thank you JESS), how perfectly it was executed (the WMM and TES team), how open people were (thank you attendees), how much people shared (thank you speakers), and how everyone trusted that we, WMM, had created a safe place for everyone to be their most vulnerable and by definition, their most powerful.  

I don’t want to overshare or overanalyze here. I just want to thank Jacki Zehner (as I have privately and will now publicly) for her brave years of service to the community through Women Moving Millions. And then point everyone to Jacki’s blog to read the post and let it open your heart and mind.

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Feminists Everywhere: Seattle Hosts WMM and WFN at Same Time

Women Moving Millions is having its annual summit and member day on September 13 at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At the same time in Seattle, Women’s Funding Network is convening its membership at The Collective in Seattle. Both groups will come together in the evening at the Gates Foundation.

Both the Women’s Funding Network and Women Moving Millions are in Seattle today, meeting with their members. The Women Moving Millions event is co-hosted by the Gates Foundation, and both groups will be meeting up to discuss their work in the evening at the Gates Foundation.

One might wonder if this is an indicator of the increasing involvement of the Gates Foundation in gender equality philanthropy. And, in fact, the evening will close with a cocktail hour for the Women’s Funding Network hosted by Women Moving Millions at the Gates Foundation, so there will be some time for the three networks to compare notes.

The focus of the Women’s Funding Network meeting is Women+Power. The program includes an overview of the day from Tuti Scott, Founder and President of Imagine Philanthropy, and includes panels on diversity, equality, and inclusion, as well as an evening cocktail reception hosted by Women Moving Millions at The Atrium, at the Gates Foundation. Teresa Younger, CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women, will also be presenting on a panel with Melanie Brown, Senior Program Officer for U.S. Policy and Advocacy, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Cat Martin, Vice President of Global Philanthropy for JPMorgan Chase. The full program is here. 

At the same time that all this was going on, Melinda Gates’ investment and incubation company, Pivotal Ventures, announced the formation of the Reboot Representation Tech Coalition, which will aim to increase gender diversity in STEM occupations. In response to a survey produced by Pivotal Ventures, showing the poor representation of women, particularly women of color in STEM, a coalition of companies will now devote $12 million in funding to address the problem. More on that here. 

We at Philanthropy Women look forward to learning what these two powerful women’s funding networks come away with from these Seattle meetings. We’re hopeful that more of the Gates Foundation’s resources can be redirected to gender equality causes, since there is a strong need for this kind of movement-building. If a more substantial amount of philanthropy focused on feminist strategies, movements for justice, inclusion, and systems change would have more fuel than ever, and we might start to see how women’s leadership can guide us toward a more sustainable planet.

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Rhode Island Women Progressives Prevail in Primary Polls

rhode island women progressives
Moira Jayne Walsh, Incumbent Democratic candidate for Rhode Island State Legislature, District 3, Providence, prevailed yesterday in a contentious primary race in which the Rhode Island Speaker, Nick Mattiello (considered one of the most powerful people in Rhode Island politics) pulled out all the stops to try to take her down.

It felt great to fall asleep last night to the sound of rain, and even better to wake up this morning to the news that many women RI progressives prevailed in the primary elections. Nearest and dearest to me is the win for Lammis J. Vargas for Ward One City Council in Cranston. Beyond that, Moira Jayne Walsh, Marcia Ranglin-Vassell and Bridget Valverde all prevailed, despite not being nominated by the Democratic party here in Rhode Island, which tends to be heavily pro-life and pro-gun.

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FTW Ayanna! The Future of Political Leadership Just Got a Little Brighter

Last night, history was made when Ayanna Pressley won the primary over a 10-term incumbent in Mass. District 7. Now, women like Marcia Ranglin-Vassell will face primary opponents in Rhode Island and will need help prevailing next week.

Exuberant emails from organizations like Higher Heights for America PAC say a lot about what an exciting win progressive democrats had yesterday in Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District. History took a decided turn for progressives as Ayanna Pressley prevailed in a primary over a 10-term incumbent, and will not face a Republican opponent, so has taken the seat in Congress.

How did this happen? Kimberley Peeler-Allen of Higher Heights shared about one important strategy that may have led to this win:

Over 100 members volunteered to send texts to voters in Ayanna’s district over Labor Day weekend and IT MADE A DIFFERENCE!

Our members talked about the race on social media and shared our endorsement with your network and IT MADE A DIFFERENCE!

Our members contributed to Ayanna’s campaign and contributed to Higher Heights for America PAC to support her candidacy and IT MADE A DIFFERENCE!

Higher Heights’ Peeler-Allen recently participated in a Women’s Funding Network panel that discussed the need to support women candidates this fall, particularly women of color. The progressive PAC has a growing roster of candidates they are supporting for a win this November, including:

Jahana Hayes (CT-5)
Ilhan Omar (MN-5)
Lauren Underwood (IL-14)
Lucy McBath (GA-6)
Linda Coleman (NC-2)
DD Adams (NC-5)
Stephany Rose Spaulding (CO-5)

I have heard from many progressive women donors say that they are watching the elections closely this fall because there is no better way to push for systemic change than to become part of the system. Contributing to Higher Heights for America now is one way to ensure more political wins this election cycle.

Another progressive woman candidate facing a primary on the state level is Marcia Ranglin-Vassell. Despite being a Democratic progressive champion in the Rhode Island statehouse, Democratic leaders endorsed Ranglin-Vassell’s opponent. Next week, on Wednesday, September 12, Rhode Island voters will go to the polls for primary races.

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Measure and Inspire: How a New Tool Tracks Women, Peace, and Security

The new global Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index tracks the number of missing girls in the world, showing that China and India have the highest numbers of missing girls.

“I firmly believe that data not only measure progress but inspire it,” said Hillary Rodham Clinton recently, referring to the potential uses for the inaugural Women, Peace and Security Index, a new tool for measuring the role of women in making progress on global peace and security. Clinton recognized “the work that remains to confront the violence, injustice, and exclusion that still hold back too many women and girls around the world,” but she believes this new global index on women, peace and security will help “to inform public debate and discussion and hold decision-makers to account.”

With our current GOP administration, the threat of war has increased substantially. Now, perhaps more than ever, the role that women play in achieving sustainable peace needs to be recognized. The Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index, created and introduced by Georgetown University Institute for Women, Peace, and Security and The Peace Research Institute Oslo, is a significant tool for helping women get a foothold on the climb to greater influence in global peace and security.

The index ranks 153 countries (98% of the world’s population) on three dimensions of well-being: inclusion, justice, and security. The index is based on a shared vision that countries are more secure and economically successful when women have equal rights, and public efforts are made to accelerate progress toward equal opportunity for women.  Such a shared vision has been a long time in the making. “It has taken 17 years from the adoption of the first resolution on women, peace and security for this index to become a reality,” said Børge Brende, Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Much has been said about justice, security, and inclusion being interlinked, but only now have the data been put together that show us how.”

Brende referenced the fact that women are often the first to be impacted by war, and added that the Women, Peace, and Security Index “has the potential to sensitize us to dangerous situations and could ultimately contribute to conflict prevention efforts.” Ultimately, the participation of women in peace and security policy, and the promotion of gender equality, are key drivers of security both within and between states.

Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, linked the importance of this new index to the sustainable development goals. “As the world works to realize the sustainable development goals (SDGs), we will need robust tools to measure progress. I welcome this new global Index—the first gender index to be developed for women’s role in peace and security—as a mechanism to assess countries’ progress against the SDGs, thus creating inclusive, just, and peaceful societies for all.”

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women, recognized how the new index is part of a “global gender equality compact” that holds great promise for transforming the lives of women and girls. “Like any promise, it needs to be kept—and that means we need to track progress.”

How Does WPS Index Track?

The new WPS Index fills a gap in the gender equality research on conflict monitoring, analyzing the fragility of states, and estimating political instability, along with including several other indicators created by other research hubs.It is guided by the confirmed correlation between the treatment of women at all levels of society and the degree to which any given society can maintain peace. If a state uses violence to resolve disputes, justifies its abuse of women’s rights, has low levels of women in the workforce, and a preference for the birth of sons, chances are that society is also not able to maintain peace and may be ripe for war.

So What Does the WPS Index Tell Us?  

The big leaders in terms of gender equality related to peace and security are Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The U.S. ranked 22nd, doing well in marks for inclusion in finances, employment, and cell phone use, as well as justice indicators such as the number of men who believe it is unacceptable for women to work. The U.S. has high rates of intimate partner violence, though, with rates that are 10 percentage points above the mean for developed countries.

Who are the Funders for the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security (GIWPS)?

Bank of America Foundation recently made a $1 million dollar grant to be shared between GIWPS and the Global Social Enterprise Initiative. The Compton Foundation provided a $100,000 grant to GIWPS in 2018. (If you want to get a picture of a whole slew of funding going toward peace and security, take a look at the Compton Foundation’s giving overall.) Other funders include Ford Foundation and the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice.

United States Began Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Act in 2018

Related to this index, the United States has been slowly moving forward in recognizing the role that women must play in building global security, with 2017 being a breakthrough year in U.S. policymaking on the subject. In 2017, Congress passed the Women, Peace, and Security Act, a piece of legislation that evolved from 2011 to 2017 under the Obama Administration, in order to recognize that women’s participation in the field of peace and security is more than just a matter of parity — it’s a matter of global security.

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How Sexist is Your State? A New Study Breaks Down the Data

sexism
A new study from the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago breaks down sexism state by state.

Just how sexist is the state you live in? As it turns out, we live in a relatively low-sexism state, Rhode Island, whereas states like Utah, Arkansas, and Alabama have some of the highest rates of “mean overall sexism,” as reported in a new study from the Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago.

The title of the paper is “The Effects of Sexism on American Women: The Role of Norms vs. Discrimination,” which boils down to these findings:

  • The paper explains that sexist beliefs, especially those embedded early in life, have a significant impact on a woman’s ability to earn and to move  up the social class ladder.
  • Both sexism in your birth state and in the state you live currently impact your wages and likelihood of having a job if you are a woman. Background sexism, the type of sexism a woman experiences as a girl, impact a woman’s outcomes “even after she is an adult living in another place through the influence of norms that she internalized during her formative years.”
  • Residential sexism, the sexism a woman experiences where she currently lives, impacts wages and job opportunities, due to male-dominated markets practicing discrimination.
  • Prejudice-based discrimination, founded on prevailing sexist beliefs and cultural norms that vary across states, drive lower wages and less job opportunities for women.

This study is helpful to have handy in case anyone tries to make the argument that the playing field is level for women in the United States.  In fact, the playing field is full of major pits and grooves and is still giving men a decided advantage in the job markets. We have a long way to go before we are anywhere near leveling the playing field for women.

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Big Research News: Women in Government Root Out Corruption

The Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization published new research in July of 2018 which furthers the argument that women have a significant impact on the quality of political leadership.

We’ve made the point here before, but we’ll make it again: the research is looking quite promising for supporting the idea that women make better political leaders.  Some new findings recently published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization could become a big deal in today’s gendered political world, and could have huge implications for the future of civil society.

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The research discovers that when women are more plentiful in the government body, that body tends to be less susceptible to corruption. Women donors would do well to invest in funding more social science research on this finding. With evidence that women are less likely to take bribes and more likely to support efforts for fair competition for contracts, this is big news for movements for gender equality in governments worldwide. More on this from Science Daily: 

Study Finds Less Corruption in Countries Where More Women Are in Government

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