|  | Dear John, Welcome to the first edition of our Strengthening Feminist Movements newsletter! Every day, we’re working to fund, resource, and invigorate the movements for gender and racial equity through grantmaking, capacity building, and philanthropic advocacy. On a quarterly basis, we’ll be sharing programmatic and movement updates about the latest Foundation news, including open grant cycles, convenings, opportunities for strategic assistance, and more, as well as sharing victories and insights from our partners. |
| | Grantmaking & Capacity Building Updates |
| | Over the last decade, the Midwest region has become a defining battleground for national issues, with a profound impact on the lives of women and gender-expansive people of color in our country – from teachers’ strikes to voting rights to abortion access. Despite the region’s significance to the U.S., it remains underinvested and divested in. In 2020, Ms. Foundation’s report Pocket Change: How Women and Girls of Color Do More With Less, found that only $2.99 is invested in women and girls of color per capita in the Midwest, second least only to the Southern region at $2.36. |
|
|
| In response, we’re excited to announce the launch our newest regional grantmaking portfolio, Ms. Midwest, which in its pilot year has committed $660,000 to seven organizations across Midwest states. Read more about it in our blog and press release ! Birth Justice Initiative In its latest round of funding, our Birth Justice Initiative (BJI) finalized funding to 24 new grantee partners and focused on providing two-year grants to birth justice organizations led by and for women and nonbinary people of color across the United States. Funded partners are all working for change at a local or state-level, implementing birth justice strategies that are rooted in movement building and organizing, and connected to the broader reproductive justice movement. We received 111 proposals and disbursed $1.2 million. |
| Timed with World Infertility Awareness Month, we recently released a new paper: The Color of Infertility: Race, Infertility, and Reproductive Justice in the U.S. The issue of infertility is critical to the reproductive justice and birth justice movement and demands increased funding, attention, awareness, and advocacy now more than ever, given the interconnected links between current attacks on reproductive freedom, gender, bodily autonomy, and democracy that are being orchestrated and coordinated by similar political actors. Written by feminist scholar, writer and educator Dr. Jade Sasser, Ms. Foundation Chief Program Officer Ellen Liu, and Birth Justice Program Officer Sona Smith, this landscape analysis provides an overview of the structural and systemic barriers facing women and nonbinary people of color by highlighting the racial, ethnic, gender, ability, and class-based disparities that fertility challenges bring. If you haven’t yet, head to our website to read the paper, and please share it with your networks! |
|
|
|
|
| Activist Collaboration & Care Fund
In FY24, the Activist Collaboration & Care Fund (ACCF) invested $1.2M in the field. The ACCF received 354 requests for proposals, almost double the projected proposals from 2022, signaling the overwhelming need from the field. Nearly half of the requests we received were for healing, rest, and restoration work, which highlights the need for movement leaders and organizations to create space for healing and rest amid compounding crises, scarce resources, and increasing demand for their services. Areas of funding highlighted for this round of ACCF included: Collaboration, healing, rest and restoration, rapid response, and digital infrastructure and digital safety. |
| | | Unity Summit Spark Talk Senior Program Officer Samantha Franklin collaborated with Director of Innovative Grantmaking and Research Shawnda Chapman and capacity building partner Cristina Aguilar of Aguilar Strategies on a Spark Talk about Care Based Philanthropy for the Change Philanthropy Unity Summit. The session format was a dynamic conversation between the three presenters exploring the possibilities of care-based approaches to philanthropy that are trauma informed and rooted in healing justice. A recording of the talk, entitled “Beyond Trust: Developing a Philanthropic Ethic and Practice Rooted in Care” is available here. |
|
|
| Funders for Reproductive Equity Board Meeting Chief Program Officer Ellen Liu attended the Funders for Reproductive Equity’s (FRE) Board Meeting in Berkeley, CA. FRE is the premier funder affinity network addressing issues of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice in the United States and globally. FRE board members represent the following philanthropic partners: Packard Foundation, Susan T Buffett Foundation, Groundswell Fund, Libra Foundation, Wellspring Fund, Third Wave Fund, Grove Foundation, Mississippi Women’s Foundation, Women’s Fund of California, Ford Foundation, Hershey Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. |
|
|
| |  | InTune Mother Society was featured on Koko5 (local ABC affiliate) in a video detailing their mission and work to help people become perinatal health coaches, as well as the need for these services in Oklahoma. CEO RaShaunda Lugrand was interviewed for the video. |
|
|
 | URGE released their 2024 Young People’s Reproductive Justice Policy Agenda. In light of the exclusion of young people from political decisions and conversations about issues that affect their bodies, lives, and families, this policy agenda centers the voices and leadership of young people while providing the resources they need to advance change. |
|
|
 | Freedom Center for Social Justice Founder and Executive Director Bishop Tonyia Rawls was featured in QCitymetro.com's The Great 28, a curated annual list celebrating Black leaders in Charlotte, NC who are making the city a better place to live, work, and play. |
|
|
| | Ms. Foundation For Women
1 Willoughby Square, Suite 2000 | Brooklyn, New York 11201
Question? Email us at [email protected] or call (212) 709-4444 |
| | |
|
| |
|
|
