Safety for Women and Girls of Color

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.