Supporting Women & Girls of Color to Innovate

Our current five-year program strategy seeks to leverage the voice, power and expertise of women and girls-of-color, including transgender women and girls-of-color, to transform systemic conditions so that they can live full, secure and health lives, and to ensure safety, health and economic opportunity for all. There is an emphasis on supporting women and girls of color-led organizations, and a priority focus on the U.S. South. 

We are in the process of updating and developing new strategies for expanding our grantmaking, as detailed below: 

• Capacity Building: As a high-engagement funder, the Ms. Foundation maximizes its grantmaking investment by offering various ways for grantees to access capacity building and technical assistance. In the past, we have provided a diverse range of one-on-one and cohort-based capacity building support including leadership transition and executive coaching, advocacy and communications support, financial management coaching, and technical assistance to respond to opposition attacks.

In 2019-2020, we are in the process of updating our capacity building strategy and tailoring our capacity building approach to better support organization's led by women and girls-of-color. This corresponds to our new program strategy and theory of change and will be intentionally aligned across our three issue area portfolios of women's safety, health, and economic justice (SHE) with the    possibility of focused supports around organizational strengthening and leadership development. Initial surveys and one-on-one conversations with grantees have also highlighted the need for increased spaces for women of color leaders in diverse progressive movement spaces to be in community with one another and the need for developing second line leadership building opportunities. As part of this development processes, we plan to engage grantees leaders as well as conduct interviews with foundations and leadership development organizations.

• Girl's Initiative: We are developing a new grantmaking initiative to support girl-centered/girl-led work, in partnership with the NoVo Foundation. We are in the process of designing our approach to support these movements, aligned with our overall strategic and programmatic direction. We will be in peer learning with a cohort of other grantees and look forward to gaining expertise, insights and learning with each other and the broader movements. In this process, we intend to advance the collective liberation of girls through collective impact.

• Activist Response Fund: We have begun a planning process to create a new Activist Response Fund for grantees and other progressive movement leaders and organizations to respond to a range of both short-term and long-term opportunities. We envision such a fund to support the building of power for women and girls-of-color, and to be in service to the larger movements fighting for gender and racial equity and justice.

Our initial concept for the activist response fund is to support leaders on a range   of urgent movement issues to take action, convene strategic dialogues, explore   solutions and new ways of working together, and test out cross-movement building strategies. As the fund this project develops, we see the potential to    attract other philanthropic partners and pool resources together in the future.

• Mapping the Dollars: We know that philanthropic investment in women is low overall, and even lower for women and girls-of-color. Research estimates that seven percent (7%) of all foundation funding is specifically towards women’s and girls’ programs, and that investment in women and girls-of-color is roughly four percent (4%).^[1] However, these are rough estimates and there is a gap in knowledge about the flow of funds to women and girls generally and women and girls-of-color specifically. In partnership with Strength In Numbers, we have begun a new research effort to map the dollars, as well as analyze our own past 40 years of grantmaking. We look forward to sharing more about this exciting effort as it takes greater shape. 

Regional Focus: We know that there is a dearth of support for movement building in the U.S. South and we seek to expand grantmaking and increase capacity building in this geographic region. Over the past several years, we have deepened our commitment to building power in the South to amplify and move resources in a region where women-of-color are most marginalized in partnership with Grantmakers for Southern Progress (GSP). Our current grantee partners in the South include Women with a Vision, EveryBlackGirl, PowerU, Mississippi Low income Child Care Initiative (MLICCI), Blueprint NC, West Virginia Free, Miami Workers Center, and the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative. We see opportunity to build upon our existing grantmaking in the South with more collaborative approach across our focus areas, including support for girl-led/girl-centered work.

Links:

• Honoring Women of Vision 2019