November 27, 2007

WOMEN’S FUND SECURES GRANT FOR DIVERSE COMMUNITIES

Matching funds will accelerate grantmaking

October 5, 2007 – The Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee has secured a $125,000 matching grant from the Cultures of Giving Fund, established at the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors with major support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The grant will match donors’ gifts to the Women’s Fund to endow and support grants to social change programs serving women and girls of color through the following component donor funds: the African American Women’s Fund Project, Latinas en Acción, and the Lesbian Fund.

"This grant is a huge step for our component funds," said Women’s Fund Executive Director Elaine Maly. "It enables them to grow and start making meaningful grants much more quickly while building their investments at the same time." Each fund is challenged to raise up to $30,000 in matching contributions from individual donors over the next two years.

The grant will be a catalyst for attracting, motivating and engaging culturally specific donors to the component funds. The Women’s Fund projects that 80% of donors to Latinas en Acción and the Lesbian Fund will be new donors, and 40% of the donors to the African American Women’s Fund Project will be new.

"One of the Women’s Fund’s goals is to build women’s philanthropic leadership and better support more women from diverse backgrounds as philanthropists," said Maly. "It is critical that underrepresented groups build community capital and become strategic philanthropists while supporting the solutions to community issues through grantmaking."

The grant is also highly significant for the Women’s Fund. "This project has led us to examine our own culture of giving, and find ways to be more responsive," said Maly. "With it we can reverse the model of building endowment before grantmaking, and respond to cultural traditions that place greater value on meeting immediate community needs."

The Cultures of Giving Fund initiative awarded grants to 14 non-profit organizations across the United States, including the Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee.

The Women’s Fund is the first and largest permanent resource in Wisconsin dedicated exclusively to funding and advocacy for the emerging needs of women and girls. Founded in 1986 as a component fund of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, the Women’s Fund became an independent public foundation in 2005. In recent years, the Women’s Fund partnered with the African American Women's Fund Project, and facilitated the organization of Latinas en Acción and the Lesbian Fund in order to promote collective giving as a strategy for creating change in specific communities. The Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee is part of an international association of more than 130 women’s funds.