Safety for Women and Girls of Color

The Ms. Foundation for Women deeply appreciates donors to our GlobalGiving project, Safety for Women and Girls of Color. Your investment comes at a critical moment when the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted entrenched and growing disparities for both women and communities of color.

As we have learned, women have borne significant economic, health, and caregiving impacts from the pandemic, and have been vulnerable to violence in particular ways under shelter-in-place regulations and in the escalation of violence we are seeing across the country now. Your support has enabled us to bring a gender equity lens to many important philanthropic conversations about economic recovery and advancing social justice, and allowed us to:

• Continue flexible, reliable “no strings attached” funding to women of color, indigenous and transgender women of color leaders working across the nation.
• Expand multi-year, direct grantmaking to women of color led organizations.
• Strengthen the short and long-term sustainability and the leadership of these organizations by providing training, coaching, technical assistance and healing/wellness resources.
• Expand our Program Related Investments and our Building Connections Initiative nationally to support the diversity of resources for advocacy, power building and leadership, with an emphasis on the South, Midwest and U.S. territories, where women of color have the least access to resources.
• Amplify the voices of women of color leaders and narrative change about feminism in print and digital media through communications.

Since the onset of COVID-19, the Ms. Foundation has stretched to accelerate and increase funding to women and girl of color-led organizations. In our most recent grant cycle we granted over $4M in funding to over 100 organizations. As an experienced funder in grassroots social change at the intersection of race and gender equity, the Ms. Foundation is tracking a dire need for additional rapid response to ensure that a key network of leaders and organizations is able to survive historic strains on capacity and limited (or nonexistent) reserves. The Ms. Foundation is working to ensure that communities of color throughout the United States have critical, life-saving services, access and advocacy.

We’d like to share the work of one organization that benefited from the support of donors to the Safety for Women and Girls of Color project.

 

National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF)

Founded in 1996, NAPAWF is the only organization focused on building power with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and girls to influence critical decisions that affect their lives, their families and their communities. Using a reproductive justice framework, NAPWAF elevates AAPI women and girls to impact policy and drive systemic change in the United States. Ms. is proud to have supported NAPAWF this past year with a special grant and technical support as they responded to the spike in anti-Asian violence, specifically the spa shooting in Atlanta, GA on March 16th. Given that mainstream reporters and media outlets repeatedly overlooked how Asian American women are targeted because of their race and gender, NAPAWF worked hard to amplify a key narrative in mainstream media – that the targeting and killing of six Asian American women was an overt act of gender-based violence and sexual violence – the worst kind of racist misogyny that dehumanizes AAPI women because of their race and gender.

 

The Ms. Foundation for Women appreciates your support that enables our grantees to ensure the safety of their communities. To learn more about our work and to sign-up for our regular email updates, visit our website at: forwomen.org.

Links:

• Learn more at our website
• Get regular Ms. Foundation Communications

Project Summary: Defending women's safety and addressing gender-based violence has been a priority of the MSF since its founding. In the 1970s, we were one of the first funders of domestic violence shelters and sexual-assault hotlines. We support organizations that work to end all forms of gender-based violence, especially towards women and girls of color.

Historically and now in the context of COVID-19, women and girls of color the U.S. experienced high rates of interpersonal and institutional violence and sexual violence. The spaces where WGOC experience violence include in homes with families, at school, on college campuses, at work, and in jails and prisons. Indigenous and Black transgender women also experience even higher rates of sexual assault and murder. We focus on reducing sexual assault, violence, and criminalization while funding the interlocking issues of safety, health, and economic justice.

The Ms. Foundation supports groups that work to:  

• Disrupt the racial and gender frameworks that fail to include gender non-conforming cis- and transgender women, and other women who tend to be marginalized by their social and economic status.  
• Build social power for WGOC to promote human rights.
• Dismantle systems that harm WGOC with a specific focus on sexual assault and violence and criminalization.
• Propose holistic policies and systemic solutions aimed at respecting and protecting human rights.

In 2020, MSF took action to address the needs of women and girls of color, taking into consideration the impact of COVID, especially safety concerns:

1. MSF revamped its core grantmaking program to streamline the application process through a unified RFP. In fiscal 20 and 21, the new SHE Program, an acronym for Safety, Health, and Economic Justice, made 28 grants totaling $1,960,000, ranging in size from $10,000 to $100,000. Our key focus areas—safety, health, and economic justice —are central to our theory of change and address the multiplicity of challenges that affect women and girls of color. As a group, women and girls of color live at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression, including white supremacy, patriarchy, colonization, and unbridled capitalism. In spite of the many threats they face, women and girls of color lead thriving, resistant, and vibrant social movements.
2. MSF launched the Activist Collaboration Fund (ACF) to resource and deepen collaboration across social justice movements for women and girls of color. In its first cycle, spanning January to April, the ACF granted $275,000 to 15 organizations led by and for women and girls of color, trans women and girls of color, and Indigenous women and girls engaged in collaborative work in the areas of climate, criminal, education and reproductive justice with more than half awarded to groups that are Indigenous, trans-led, or located in the South or Midwest regions. The ACF invests primarily in groups that are focused on relationship building, shared analysis, strategy and planning, power building, organizing, and healing justice support. The long-term goals of ACF are to amplify the collective voice and power of WGOC to influence public policy, discourse, and understanding from a feminist perspective; increase funding going specifically to WGOC, and in particular groups with an authentic trans- inclusive understanding of race and gender; support policy platforms and advocacy campaigns that combat violence and discrimination, and increase safety for WGOC.
3. In late 2020, MSF launched Ms. South, a new grantmaking program that is based on the groundbreaking research report Pocket Change, which identified a chronic underfunding of women of color-led organizations in the South. Ms. South had nearly 375 applications for support and funded 21 southern organizations led by women and girls of color, also expanding support for transgender women and girls of color, indigenous women and girls, and girls of color. Prioritized because of the region’s demographic and political significance, most Southern states evidence an overlay of barriers, including policies and laws that deny women and girls access to reproductive health care; a regressive agenda that blocks proactive measures for women of color to earn a living wage as evidenced by the proliferation of the Right to Work legislation, and a culture of state sanctioned violence that prioritizes the criminal justice system and threatens the safety of women and girls of color and, in particular, that of trans and queer women and girls of color.
4. Girls Fund Initiative, starting its third year, has three primary goals that are aligned with the Foundation’s goals of building power, transforming culture and Influencing philanthropy: 1) Shift power to girls to create change; 2) Move resources to support girls and the organizations that support them; and 3) Leverage our institutional capital to influence the field in support of girls and the organizations that support them. Based on a soon-to-be released national landscape study of the resources that are available to organizations serving and led by girls of color, the MSF released 44 grants totaling $615,000 to organizations across the country and in the U.S. territories.
5. Capacity Building: MSF investing in three types of strengthening: grantee partner organizations, grantee partner leaders, and the ecosystem of transformative movements in which they are working. More than 30 grantee partners will receive leadership training at the Rockwood Institute; financial management and strategic communications training are also available to the organizations they lead.