July 31, 2009

New Report on the Role of Women’s Funds Highlights Milwaukee-Area Women’s Fund

According to the report,
Accelerating Change for Women and Girls: The Role of Women’s Funds, released by the Foundation Center and the Women's Funding Network (an international association of more than 140 women's funds), charitable giving by funds focused on girls and women rose faster between 2004 and 2006 than overall foundation support.  The 55 women's funds in the report increased their giving by 24 percent between 2004 and 2006, compared to the nearly 15 percent rise in foundation giving overall in that same time period.

Grantmaking at the Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee, one of the 55 women’s funds that were interviewed for the report, reflects these numbers. Giving rose by more than 100 percent between 2007 and 2008 thanks in part to success in leveraging national matching grants from the Tides Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. This represents an increase in monetary support to organizations that serve women and girls in the greater Milwaukee area from $130,000 in 2007 to $276,000 in 2008. In addition, the Women’s Fund’s program ratio—the percentage of an organization's total expenditure that is devoted to programs and services—improved by 10 percent every year over the past three years to almost 75 percent in 2008.

The Foundation Center study reveals that women’s funds are guided by the principle that women catalyze and lead the way to change in neighborhoods and communities; 98 percent of the women’s funds surveyed indicated that achieving social change was a high priority for their fund.

Social change through women and girls is the mission of the Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee. Unique to the Milwaukee area, is the Women’s Fund’s component funds that enable community-driven change by engaging groups of women who want to deepen their knowledge of the issues and pool their resources to create change in their specific community. Currently the Women’s Fund hosts the following component funds: African American Women’s Fund Project, Latinas En Acción, Lesbian Fund, and Young Philanthropists Fund. 

The African American Women’s Fund Project is one example of the success of component funds. Through the support of individual donors and the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors “Cultures of Giving” matching grant program funded
by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, AAWFP made $15,000 in grants to nine organizations between 2008 and 2009. One of those organizations is PEARLS for Teen Girls. One hundred percent of PEARLS seniors graduated from high school in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Ninety-eight percent of PEARLS girls avoided teen pregnancy and 90 percent of 2007 graduates were accepted to college. This is a significant accomplishment given that Milwaukee has the second highest percentage of total births to mothers less than 20 years old among the 50 largest cities in the United States.

Soon Native American and Hmong women in the Milwaukee area will also have an opportunity to effect positive social change from within the community through the creation of giving circles at the Women’s Fund.  Members of the giving circles will donate their money or time to a pooled fund, learn more about issues affecting their communities and then decide on which causes to support.

Read more about the Women’s Fund’s programs and grant partners in the 2008 annual report now available here [pdf].

Read the Women’s Fund press release on this report here [pdf].