The Global Women’s Funding Movement Emerges, part 3
Gloria Steinem and the founders of Ms. Magazine wanted to do more than publish a magazine. They wanted to change women’s lives by supporting organizations and programs that helped women with employment, domestic abuse, reproductive health, and other issues. To achieve that goal, in 1972, Ms. Magazine established the nonprofit Ms. Foundation, which quickly established a reputation for fearless action. In 1976, they became the first national foundation to give money to shelters for women suffering domestic violence. The following year, they funded a project to defend lesbian mothers threatened with losing custody of their children.
One of the other great catalyzers of the creation of women’s funds was the UN World Conferences on Women in Nairobi in 1985 and, more recently, the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing. This conference was attended by 17,000 representatives from 189 countries and territories. In conjunction with the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Non-Governmental Women’s Forum was held in Beijing between August 31 and September 8. This forum was attended by 31,549 people, including 26,549 overseas participants and 5,000 Chinese participants.23
The power of women’s movements was so evident that women realized they needed to mobilize funding for the causes they cared about. The Urgent Action Fund in the U.S., the International Women’s Development Agency in Australia, and the Victorian Women’s Trust in Australia were all created by founders inspired by their experience at the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing.
As a case study, Kavita Ramdas, who served as the second CEO of the Global Fund for Women, tells the story of the creation of the Global Fund for Women in 1987:
A number of the founders had been at the Nairobi Conference for Women. This was the second UN conference for women, which was held in 1985. There was a formal UN conference, but for the first time, nonprofit organizations and women’s associations held a parallel conference, what was known as the NGO Conference, on the streets of Nairobi.
The three founders of the Global Fund for Women—Frances Kissling, Anne Firth Murray, and Laura Lederer— were watching all these women’s rights organizations, and all of them were saying, “Oh, we just came here, we pieced together the money. We didn’t have money to come.” They came back from the conference, and Frances said, “Isn’t it crazy that there are these amazing groups doing all this amazing work, and they can’t get funding from all these big foundations?”
At a Council on Foundations meeting in 1986 or 1987, Frances asked, “Wouldn’t you give money to something like this? Wouldn’t you feel proud to give money to a fund run by women for women for these amazing groups?” And Anne said, “Yeah, I would.” And other people said, “Yeah, I would.” That’s how the Global Fund for Women was started in 1987. These three women each put in $500 of their own money. They asked other people. The founding donors gave $5,000 each of their own money.
The following year, the Global Fund for Women awarded the fund’s first grants to eight grantees totaling $27,000. By September 2005, the Global Fund for Women had created the Legacy Fund, which is now among the largest endowments in the world dedicated exclusively to women’s rights and donates over $8.5 million annually to women-led funds.
Kavita Ramdas says: The connection between women’s movements and women’s funding movements is very deep because women realized that we could put all our hearts and souls and unpaid labor and care work into supporting these movements. For our movements to have staying power and resilience and a bigger reach and impact, we had to have financial resources at our disposal. That was true whether we were talking about a woman getting an education, whether it was about women fighting rape in their own countries, or whether we were fighting for the right to vote in our own country.
Tomorrow learn about: Building the Global Women’s Funding Movement