Philanthropy Women

LiveGirl: Building Confident Leaders who Embrace Diversity

In the next ten years, how can we guarantee more women in positions of leadership? How do we address the lack of diversity in our organizations and communities? And how do we empower the next generation of women and girls to never take no for an answer, pursue their goals, and find boundless success?

Confident future leaders gather for a photo at a LiveGirl event. (Image Credit: LiveGirl)

LiveGirl seeks to answer these questions through leadership and skill-building courses that reach middle school girls where they’re at: By empowering young women to reach for the stars while lifting each other up, LiveGirl aims to support the next generation of brave, inclusive leaders.

“We coach girls to embrace their original, quirky selves and to understand that self-confidence comes not from others liking you, but from you loving yourself,” says Sheri West, Founder and Chief LiveGirl. “Our mentors show them that when they truly believe in themselves, they will become unstoppable and astounding things will happen!”

Catherine Berman: Together, We Can Move Mountains

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Catherine Berman, CEO and Co-founder of impact investment platform CNote.

Catherine Berman, courtesy of Catherine Berman

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

Question what others deem impossible.

2. What is your current greatest professional challenge?

Education. We see values-based investing as a game-changer for both investing and creating a more sustainable, equitable world. We spend a lot of time helping investors and donors learn about the measurable difference they can make with their investments without sacrificing returns or operational ease. Many of us grew up learning the only way to support the causes and communities we care about was through grants. That is no longer the case. We see impact investing as an important opportunity to double-down on the causes you care about and a way to authentically represent your values with every dollar; where you spend, where you donate, and where you invest.

Announcing the Winners of the About Women Art Contest

As a writer and publisher, I was excited to recently rediscover my passionate interest in creating and supporting visual art. The pandemic has had many terrible impacts on our lives, but one positive impact it had for me was getting me more engaged in my own love for art. During the extended times many of us have been spending socially distancing, I began to paint, first doing portraits of African Americans, and then moving on to still life paintings and impressionistic landscapes.

Street Vendor by Eva Lechner is our Third Place Winner in the About Women art contest.

In an effort to support women and LGBT+ artists, we launched our first art contest recently. The theme for the contest was “About Women” and we received more than 100 entries of some stunning and moving visual art pieces. There were 185 votes on the entries, and the winners were chosen by public vote, so popularity was more of a factor, as opposed to a contest that is judged by a jury of artists.

What Kamala Harris Represents for Donor Activism and Inclusion

Kamala Harris has officially made history.

The landmark selection of Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate in the 2020 election represents a huge win for diversity in politics. What’s more, Harris represents the positive impact of campaigning, fundraising, and donating in the world of feminist philanthropy.

What does the selection of Kamala Harris say about the future of feminist funding? And what does it represent for how far we’ve come? (**Image Credit:** Joe Biden, Twitter)

Harris’s own presidential campaign says a lot about what we can do with feminist funding for political campaigns. Her decision to eschew funding from PACs likely played a major role in her eventual drop from the 2020 race, but her commitment to funding sources outside the norm of American political campaign speaks to just how far we can go with feminist funding.

August 27 Webinar: Women in Media Changing the Game

How can funding women’s media “change the game” when it comes to social change? When more feminist voices are heard, how will that impact the world?

In the next Philanthropy Women webinar, “Women in Media Changing the Game,” our Editor-in-Chief and superstars of women’s media will drill down on how funding women’s media is impacting social change. You don’t want to miss this one! Our star-studded guest roster includes Lori Sokol of Women’s ENews, Ruth Ann Harnisch of the Harnisch Foundation, and Johanna Derlega of The 19th, the new media epicenter for women in politics.

This webinar answers the question of what happens when more women are at the center of media: We’ll drill down on the ways that feminist funding can help elevate voices, amplify campaigns, and throw the label of “fake news” out the window.

Sheri West on Getting Closer to an Inclusive, Equal World

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Sheri West, the Founder, CEO & Chairperson of LiveGirl, a nonprofit organization that builds confident leaders.

Sheri West is the Founder, CEO, and Chairperson of LiveGirl, a nonprofit organization that builds confident leaders. (**Image Credit:** Sheri West/LiveGirl)

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

Prior to founding LiveGirl, I worked at a large, multi-national company for almost seventeen years. So, I had to “unlearn” corporate bureaucracy in order to embrace the competitive advantage of nimbleness in a small organization. Yes, we vet ideas and have approval processes, but we focus on moving fast when responding to the world. We mine for ideas that our team feels passionately about, and then we make them happen. I feel it’s more important to do what you truly believe in and pursue what makes you happy and excited.

Survivor Leadership to End Human Trafficking — Liveblog

The anti-trafficking movement is one of the most important movements for women’s equality, since a large proportion of survivors of trafficking are women. But often, the voices of the actual survivors of trafficking get excluded from approaches to solving this problem.

Webinar speakers for How Anti-Trafficking Funders Can Support Survivor Leadership included Amy Rahe (moderator), Claire Falconer, and Natasha Dolby.

Recently, the Freedom Fund hosted a webinar to discuss ways that funders can work to include survivors in leadership. Amy Rahe, interim director of the Freedom Fund, moderated the discussion. Guest speakers included Mahendra Pandey, Senior Manager, Forced Labor & Human Trafficking for Humanity United, Natasha Dolby, Co-Founder, Freedom Forward, and Claire Falconer, Head of Global Initiatives and Movement Building, The Freedom Fund.

Cast Your Vote and New Listings in our Knowledgebase

Thank you to all the readers and new subscribers who are joining us daily. It’s really great to feel the Philanthropy Women community growing. As editor, I want to alert readers to the resource of our Gender Equality Funder Database. This is the place where you can find funders for gender equality across categories of corporate, private, and family foundations.

vote gender equality knowledgebase — Protesters take a knee for George Floyd at protests in Uptown Charlotte, North Carolina on 5/30/2020 (Image credit: @clay.banks)

We aim to list all funders for gender equality in both the U.S. and globally and have been steadily building this database out for over a year. We now have over 500 listings and are currently adding about 8 new entries to the database every week, so we hope these additions are helping feminist nonprofits find more resources for their work.

Jenny Xia Spradling on Financial Well-Being with a Mission

Editor’s Note: This interview in our Feminist Giving IRL series features Jenny Xia Spradling, Co-CEO of FreeWill, a digital estate planning company that has helped more than 150,000 people make wills. Before FreeWill, Jenny worked at McKinsey and Bain Capital, where she helped launched the firm’s first impact investment fund. She is also a cofounder of Paribus, later acquired by Capital One.

Jenny Xia Spradling is the Co-CEO of FreeWill, a digital estate planning company that has helped more than 150,000 people make wills. (**Image Credit:** FreeWill)

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

You can have a job where you believe in the mission and have really fast career growth. I always felt like this was a trade-off in choosing a career – you could have growth or mission, but not both. The movement of social enterprises has really grown even over the past 10 years, and I think there will be more and more opportunities for people to have financial well-being while also achieving impact they are passionate about.

Sexism in Ballet: Dance Data Project Report is En Pointe

A newly published Dance Data Project (DDP) “Season Overview” report indicates that men choreographed 72 percent of works produced by the United States’ top 50 ballet companies during the 2019-20 season. While the gender disparity is significant; the figure represents an improvement over 2018-19 when 81 percent of works were choreographed by men. Nevertheless, as the report indicates, ballet equity has a long way to go.

Tamara Rojo as Frida in “Broken Wings” by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Photo by Laurent Liotardo.

“The entire DDP team is inspired by the rising number of commissioned women’s works,” said Liza Yntema, DDP Founder and President. “Yet, inequity is still present in some of the most notable categories of performance. Works choreographed by men continue to overwhelmingly populate the main stage, while women’s works are often relegated to special programs and sandwiched into male-dominated mixed bills.” Yntema also worries that women’s gains will be lost if company directors perceive that hiring more men represents a “safe choice” in a turbulent economy. Such thinking will make it more difficult to attract the new audiences that are critical to ballet’s survival.