Sandberg Deploys New $100 MM, Much of It For Women and Girls

Leanin.org, supported by Sheryl Sandberg, works to help address the gender pay gap and move more women into leadership roles.

Good news for the women’s philanthropy sector: Sheryl Sandberg has added another $100 million in Facebook stock to a Donor Advised Fund she uses to fund causes she cares about, with much of this new money going to Lean In, the nonprofit named after her best-selling book about how to succeed as a woman in business.

Sandberg represents a new prototype for women’s philanthropy: the young tech executive who sees gender equality philanthropy as a priority. These new funds will help Leanin.org expand its mission of increasing women in leadership.

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Women on the Map: New NGO for Women Launches at Georgetown

Tomorrow at Georgetown University, a new nonprofit called Women on the Map will launch. WOMAP is a digital network which seeks to advance women in technology and digital affairs.

It’s always good to start the week learning about the launch of a new gender equality nonprofit. Tomorrow at Georgetown University, Women on the Map (WOMAP), an international, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the role of women and girls in fields of technology and foreign affairs, will officially launch. To celebrate the launch, WOMAP will host an expert panel discussion on how technology can empower women and girls. Following the panel, a photo exhibition will be unveiled which celebrates the history of female trailblazers from around the world who have contributed to women’s rights, peace and security as well as international business, development, diplomacy, and public service.

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Today at 11 EST: MacArthur Finalists Plan to End Orphanages by 2050

Today at 11 am EST, I’m going to be tuning in to Lumos and its partners, Catholic Relief Services and Maestral International, as they hold a Facebook event where they will talk about their plans as finalists in the MacArthur Foundation #100andchange global competition, which will make a $100 million grant to one of four finalists.

macarthur

As a supporter of Lumos, I’m thrilled to see that the organization has teamed up with other powerful partners to move forward on its goal of ending orphanages by 2050. If they receive the $100 million grant from MacArthur, that would make a huge difference in their ability to carry out their ambitious plans.

MacArthur Foundation $100 Million Finalists

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We’re Back, and Better than Ever! The Future of PW as Feminist Media

The founder of Philanthropy Women, Kiersten Marek, wearing orange for gun safety.

Sorry for the lack of posting this past week — it has been a time of assessing our growth and figuring out next steps for Philanthropy Women. As the founder, editor, publisher, chief technologist, and business planner for this feminist media site, I needed to take time to research and develop some proposals for our growth. At the same, I also maintain a part-time caseload of psychotherapy clients, which wonderfully keeps me very in touch with the real world, but often requires much of my time and attention. In any case, I hope to share more about our future plans for Philanthropy Women soon.

In the meantime, if you are looking for more feminist media about women and philanthropy, consider subscribing to our daily Paperli called Giving for Good. It aggregates the news from about 150 sources in the progressive philanthropy sector including feminist foundations, women’s funds, and nonprofits working for gender equality. You might also consider following us on Twitter for updates on aggregated news from Klout, Bing, and other search tools.

We have some exciting interviews coming up, and more to share and discuss from Hillary Clinton’s What Happened, which I highly recommend as key reading material for those who seek to understand the election, women’s leadership in politics, and the need for gender equality philanthropy. I will be posting about a few other big philanthropy women news stories over the coming days, so I hope you will stay tuned!

Related:

Big Doings in Feminist Philanthropy For Women’s History Month(Opens in a new browser tab)Collective Future Fund Announces $2 Mil Fund for Survivors in COVID(Opens in a new browser tab)Feminist Giving News: Undercovered and Undervalued(Opens in a new browser tab)

Philanthropy Women at 6 Months: An Update on Our Growth

https://philanthropywomen.org/feminist-foundations/must-care-sdgs/

What’s up with this New Philanthropy Hub, and How Will It Involve Women’s Philanthropy?

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Why We Must All Care About the SDGs – And What They Are

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development lay out key parameters for creating a more just, humane, and environmentally sustainable planet.

Do you know all 17 of the sustainable development goals adopted by the UN in January of 2016?  If so, good for you. Up until today, I was mainly familiar with SDG 5: “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” Now that I read Equal Measures 2030’s research showing that many policy leaders in the development sector do not know very much about the SDGs, I decided it was time to do my homework and learn more about the SDGs myself.

So here they are. They read kind of a like a very long human rights mantra.  Let’s break it down and start with the first five:

1) End poverty in all its forms everywhere

2) End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture

3) Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages

4) Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

5) Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

That all sounds awesome. Each one relates to health and well-being, and by number five, we are recognizing that gender equality is part of that agenda. Onward to basic sanitation, access to energy, and economic growth and work for all:

6) Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

7) Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

8) Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all

9) Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation

The sustainable development goals then span out to address inequality, climate change, conservation, and an ongoing commitment to cooperation among nations for global sustainability:

10) Reduce inequality within and among countries

11) Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

12) Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

13) Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts 

14) Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

15) Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss

16) Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

17) Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development

Particular to women and girls, let’s take a look at the specific targets for SDG5:

  • End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
  • Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
  • Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
  • Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.
  • Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decisionmaking in political, economic and public life.
  • Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences.
  • Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws.
  • Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women.
  • Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.

This is a lot of information to take in, but its important to read it over, probably a couple times a year at least, to remember all the aspects that need to be worked on for a better planet, particularly for women and girls.

Related:

How This Nonprofit is Using the SDG’s to Help Women Thrive Globally

The Global Women’s Philanthropy Network Aligning Health with Human Rights for Women and Girls

With 30 Years of Activism, this Mobile Company Continues the Fight for Gender Equality

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Philanthropy Women at 6 Months: An Update on Our Growth

Philanthropy Women pages have been viewed thousands of times, and our spotlight organizations are enjoying more media attention.

Dear Faithful Readers of Philanthropy Women,

First, of course, thank you for reading. You are bravely joining me on the sometimes harrowing adventure of learning about gender equality philanthropy. I thank you for joining me on this journey.

Also, thank you to our sponsors, Ruth Ann Harnisch and Emily Nielsen Jones. You have provided an amazing opportunity to advance the knowledge and strategy of progressive women’s philanthropy, and for that you are wholeheartedly thanked.

Thank you, as well, to our writers — Ariel Dougherty, Jill Silos-Rooney, Tim Lehnert, Kathy LeMay, Susan Tacent, Betsy McKinney, and Emily Nielsen Jones. Your work reading, interviewing, thinking, and writing about women’s philanthropy has resulted in my receiving tons of positive correspondence about our content. The internal numbers also validate that we are making an impact.

The numbers show that our audience is primarily female on Google analytics. Our Twitter analytics indicate that our audience is comprised largely of progressive foundations, nonprofits, fundraising professionals, and technology specialists. ​This information is relevant to the theory that Philanthropy Women is helping high level foundation and philanthropy leaders access needed information. Many  philanthropy organizations interact with us on social media in a positive way, amplifying and retweeting important content.

Our data also shows that our spotlight organizations are clearly enjoying more media attention as a result of our efforts. Women Thrive, WDN, and the Global Fund for Women, are all receiving a healthy percentage of click-throughs as a result of our presence.

Finally, in terms of our growing authority online, our work has been cited and linked to by the UCLA School of Law Blog, Philanthropy New York multiple times, and many other high level places such as Maverick Collective, Women for Afghan Women, and Giving Compass. We have a large and growing presence on social media, as indicated by the high number of referrals from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media. In addition, I have received high praise from many foundation staff about our writers and our content.

So, all this is to say that Philanthropy Women is successfully growing, and, I believe, making the conversation on gender equality philanthropy richer and more relevant. But I believe we can do more. I hope you will keep reading as we work to grow our impact. We have ambitious, but, I believe, achievable goals. Best, KierstenRead More

Xiomara Corpeño: Fascism Grows As Trans People Lose Human Rights

Xiomara Corpeño
Xiomara Corpeño is the Director of Capacity Building for the Groundswell Fund.

Editor’s Note: The following opinion piece by Xiomara Corpeño is part of a series being provided by Philanthropy Women to help identify and address growing threats to global human rights, particularly for vulnerable groups. 

Several weeks ago, I woke up to the sound of my mother’s TV broadcasting the local morning news. “Breaking News! President Trump has reinstated a ban on Transgender troops this morning.” The White House later issued policy guidelines titled,  A Guidance Policy for Open Transgender Service Phase Out, which would impact 15,000 trans service members.

Trump’s transgender ban is bigger than the right to serve in the U.S. military.  It is part of a longer trajectory by right-wing forces aiming to further oppress and denigrate trans people.

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$20 Million from Gates Foundation to Address Gender Inequality Globally

gates foundation
This pie chart, produced by Equal Measures 2030, shows that many policymakers in the development sector do not have full knowledge of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Timing couldn’t be better. Today, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced it will give $20 million over the next three years to empower women’s organizations globally.

The news comes on the same day that Equal Measures 2030 released a Gender Report along with the Gates Foundation and ONE Campaign Coalition at the United Nations General Assembly, taking place this week in New York.

Some of the new funding from the Gates Foundation will go toward better research and training, as well as multiplying support for grassroots activism in the gender equality sector of development.

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What Happened: Clinton’s Account Reveals Our Broken Democracy

I’ve been listening to Hillary Clinton’s What Happened in spurts over the past few days, and it’s time to start sharing some of the highlights. In her own voice on audio, Clinton speaks on a wide range of topics related to her political life. In particular, Clinton speaks with regret about taking speaking fees from large financial corporations and analyzes how the alt-right’s slandering the Clinton Foundation skewed the election.

I am now on Chapter 9, and this is when What Happened gets very relevant to philanthropy. I highly recommend listening to the book on audio — it really helps to have the words spoken by Hillary Clinton, who is destined for legendary status in the history of women’s advancement, whether she won the presidency or not.

From Hillary Clinton:

My life after leaving politics had turned out to be pretty great. I had joined Bill and Chelsea as a new Board member of the Clinton Foundation which Bill had turned into a major global philanthropy after leaving office. This allowed me to pursue my own passions and have an impact without all the bureaucracy and petty squabbles of Washington. I admired what Bill had built, and I loved that Chelsea had decided to bring her knowledge of public health and her private sector experience to the foundation, to improve its management, transparency, and performance, after a period of rapid growth.

At the 2002 International AIDS conference in Barcelona, Bill had a conversation with Nelson Mandela about the urgent need to lower the price of HIV/AIDS drugs in Africa and across the world. Bill figured he was well positioned to help, so he began negotiating agreements with drug makers and governments to lower medicine prices dramatically and to raise the money to pay for it. It worked. More than 11.5 million people in more than 70 countries now have access to cheaper HIV AIDS treatment. Right now, out of everyone being kept alive by these drugs in developing countries around the world, more than half the adults and 75 percent of the children are benefiting from the Clinton Foundation’s work.

It is shocking to consider the real-world positive impact of the Clinton Foundation’s work, and the degree to which the alt-right’s skewed portrayal of the Clinton Foundation might have influenced public opinion during the election. Hearing Clinton speak about it, it becomes clear that more must be done to investigate what happened.

Clinton goes on to detail the extensive philanthropic work the Clinton Foundation does in improving nutrition and exercise in public schools, protecting endangered species, addressing climate change in the Caribbean, and more. Then, she talks about my favorite part. Read on:

When I joined the Foundation in 2013, I teamed up with Melinda Gates the Gates Foundation a to launch an initiative called No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project to Advance Rights and Opportunities for Women and Girls around the world. I also created a program called Too Small to Fail, to encourage reading, talking and singing to infants and toddlers, to help their brains develop and build vocabulary. […]

None of these programs had to poll well or fit on a bumper sticker; they just had to make a positive difference in the world. After years in the political trenches, that was both refreshing and rewarding.

I can imagine what a difference Clinton was experiencing as she spent more time with the Clinton Foundation and started to build her own sense of strategy into the organization’s mission. But her involvement with her own family’s foundation was destined to have devastating consequences to her political career.

I knew from experience that if I ran for president again, everything that Bill and I had ever touched would be subject to scrutiny and attack, including the foundation.  That was a concern, but I never imagined that this widely respected global charity would be as savagely smeared and attacked as it was. For years, the foundation and CGI had been supported by republicans and democrats alike. Independent philanthropy watchdogs, Charity Watch, Guidestar, and Charity Navigator, gave the the Clinton Foundation top marks for reducing overhead and having a measurable, positive impact. […]

But none of that stopped brutal partisan attacks from raining down during the campaign.

I have written by the Foundation at some length because a recent analysis published in the Columbia Journalism Review showed that during the campaign, there was twice as much written about the Clinton Foundation as there was on any of the Trump scandals, and nearly all it was negative. That gets to me.

It gets to me, too. In a big way.  It is a wrong that must be addressed by a full investigation into the media manipulation that skewed the election. It was nearly impossible to learn real information about Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. Even my 10 year old daughter was coming home from school with talking points for me about how Clinton’s emails needed to be more fully investigated.

Back to Hillary:

As Daniel Borochoff, the founder of Charity Watch put it, “If Hillary Clinton wasn’t running for President, the Clinton Foundation would be seen as one of the great humanitarian charities of our generation.”

That’s right. The fake news on the Clinton Foundation may have had a profound impact, given that there was twice as much of that fake news heaped on the American media consumer than any of the much more atrocious news stories about Donald Trump, including his sexual assault of a woman and his University’s fraudulent dealings.

I hope to share more about the book as I continue on, but there is no doubt that you should listen to it yourself. For what it’s worth, I also find listening to the book recharges my battery for making the democratic party a stronger entity. The urgency of the party’s need to take back the country in the next election has never felt so real. The book also renews my respect for Clinton and her life work. She is not a perfect human being, but she is a darn good one, and she would have made an excellent leader of our country.

Philanthropy Women will also publish a review of the book from Tim Lehnert in the coming weeks.

Related:

The Clinton Foundation is Alive and Well and Looking to Expand Some Programs

https://philanthropywomen.org/feminist-foundations/clinton-foundation-brings-together-40-partners-girl-athletes/Read More

Israel: New Women’s Scholarship Fund Launched by University

israel women
Pictured is the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library at the University of Haifa, which educates students from Israel and around the world. Photo courtesy of the library’s website.

Last week in New York, over 50 female philanthropists came together to launch a new educational scholarship fund for women in Israel.

At the occasion, the American Society of University of Haifa announced the founding of its new Women’s Scholarship Fund. The scholarship seeks to engage women at all levels of philanthropy and support female students at all levels of education.

“We are very committed to education. Education is the key to everything. It is something that you can’t take away and if you give someone an education, it will enable them to help themselves for the rest of their life,” said Lady Irene Hatter, who spoke at the gathering. With their philanthropy, Hatter and her husband, Sir Maurice Hatter, support World Jewish Relief and World ORT, a worldwide Jewish educational NGO.

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