Today’s podcast topic: The True Story of How The Realities of Women’s Lives Turned A Global Financial System Upside Down
In today’s interview you’ll meet: Stephanie Clohesy, Former Board Chairman, Women’s Funding Network and Ruby Bright, Past President and Chief Executive Officer, Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis. Don't miss it!
This social justice playbook is an urgent call for women’s collective leadership to guide humanity through the gravest of challenges — Join the Revolution!
What is certain to be a bestseller, the 2024 book — The Uprising of Women in Philanthropy — tells the inspiring, never-before-told story of the Global Women’s Funding Movement, considered the women’s movement’s greatest secret and how it enabled women from all walks of life to harness the power of money to free themselves from oppression.
Co-authored by 10 international powerhouses — Ndana Bofu-Tawamba, Ruby Bright, Stephanie Clohesy, Musimbi Kanyoro, Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ana Oliveira, Laura Risimini, Jane Sloane, and Jessica Tomlin — this book is an important read for everyone interested in the long-practiced Feminist Funding Principles imparted by the authors. It is a recipe for the feminist alchemy needed to transform society for the betterment of all.
Brimming with feminist epiphanies, this social justice playbook is an urgent call for women’s collective leadership to guide humanity through the gravest of challenges, overcoming patriarchy’s multi-millennium reign through the uprising of women leaders and philanthropists. Founded during the second-wave women’s movement of the early 1970s, small groups of women worldwide, independent of each other, had the same epiphany: it will take a movement of women to raise the money needed to fund women’s freedom.
Since then, the Global Women’s Funding Movement has grown into a global network of radically generous, risk-taking philanthropists who collectively wield financial might to win seismic gender equality victories. The authors document the “Women Effect” that results from gender equality and women’s collective leadership, including improved public health and reproductive justice, expanded public education, more robust democracies, resilient economies, climate recovery, and enduring peace. Click here to learn more.
Buy the book from the publisher, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group — and save!
Click here to read what experts are saying about the book!
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A Force More Powerful
While women’s funds around the globe were organizing and developing, so were women’s funds in the U.S.
Sarah Gould, former President of the Ms. Foundation, recalls her experience:
I came to the foundation in 1986. That was a time, then moving into the 1990s, when philanthropy was actually growing by leaps and bounds. When I got to the foundation, it was extremely small. I was the fifth employee. When I arrived at Ms., we were probably giving $200,000 a year. There was only one way to go, and that was up. Then, Marie Wilson (former president of the Ms. Foundation) came. Literally, I think of it as her taking the foundation world by storm. What was unique about it was it was making grants at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Astraea was doing that. The Women’s Foundation of California also had that analysis; we were leading that analysis that it’s not just gender; it’s race, class, and gender at an intersection. It’s at that intersection that you can make a real impact, and it’s at that intersection that you can attract people into the women’s movement.
What was also unique is we began experimenting with different ways to grant money. I arrived in 1986, and by 1989 or 1990, Marie and I were trying to develop a collaborative fund for women’s economic development, which was, believe it or not, one of the first, if not the first, collaborative funds in philanthropy bringing institutions and individuals around the table to learn to make grant decisions together and to be able to make multiyear grants.
That first collaborative fund made its first grants in 1991. We had 13 funders. They were all institutions, including Ford, Levi Strauss, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Hitachi. There were 13 of them. We had about $2.3 million that we gave away over three years. For the first time, the Ms. Foundation could make multiyear grants of $50,000 a year. And this was in 1991. That was a lot of money. That was revolutionary for the foundation. We had a whole piece of the collaborative fund that was about learning, so we were trying to learn in the field, and certainly, we were trying to influence the funders around the table. We specifically, Ally said if you come to this table of the collaborative fund, it doesn’t mean you don’t fund in this area alone. It means you’ll learn more if you come to this table. We’ll learn together. 450
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“Uprising” is featured in the South Asian Herald! Co-author Jane Sloane explains why the book is “A Force More Powerful”
Dec. 28, 2024, South Asian Herald — “Uprising” co-author Jane Sloane is featured in today’s issue of the South Asian Herald in an article she penned about the book. Entitled “A Force More Powerful: A New Book on The Rise of the Global Women’s Funding Movement,” Jane highlights the significance of women’s funds in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India.
Jane explains: The story of the global women’s funding movement deserves to be better known, and this book, The Uprising of Women in Philanthropy, co-authored by nine women leaders, sets out to do just that.
The Global Women’s Funding Movement is a worldwide network of women’s funds that power gender equity and social justice movements with money and resources. Today, women’s funds are typically public, nonprofit funds whose primary purpose is to mobilize funds for work led by women, girls, and gender-expansive persons to advance women’s rights and gender equality. There is also Prospera, the International Network of Women’s Funds, and the Women’s Funding Network.
One of the great catalyzers of creating women’s funds was the UN World Conferences on Women and notably the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing. The conference was attended by 17,000 representatives from 189 countries and territories. The power of women’s movements was so evident that women realized they needed to mobilize funding for the causes they cared about. Global Fund for Women and Urgent Action Fund in the United States and International Women’s Development Agency in Australia were all created by founders inspired by their experience at the UN women’s conference in Beijing.
Over the years, several women’s funds have emerged in Asia, including Women’s Fund Asia based in Sri Lanka, Tewa, the Nepal Women’s Fund, South Asia Women Foundation India, Bangladesh Women’s Foundation, HER Fund in Hong Kong, and Urgent Action Fund Asia and Pacific. The stories behind the creation of some of these funds speak to the creativity and determination of the founders. This is undoubtedly true of Tewa, the Nepal Women’s Fund, a story told in The Uprising of Women’s Philanthropy. Click here to read more in the South Asian Herald!
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