Local nonprofit looks to level playing field
It’s about women from all walks of life – teachers, lawyers, consultants, students, journalists and health care workers – coming together, volunteering their time and money to help level the economic, social and political playing fields for women and girls in Rhode Island.
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That is the stated mission of the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island, formed almost five years ago as the brainchild of Simone Joyaux, a management consultant to nonprofits who said she had learned about women’s funds while consulting for one in Arizona.
The fund started as a “field of interest” project within the Rhode Island Foundation, which provided a $2.5 million grant to get it started. A year ago, it became an independent nonprofit.
Each year, the fund gives about $75,000 in grants to “organizations that have a strategy to help women and girls have the same opportunities as men and boys.” Since its inception in 2001, the fund has issued 27 grants totaling about $300,000.
“A lot of people say the problem is fixed,” Joyaux said about inequality between men and women. But women still make less than men, she noted: about 75 cents to the dollar.
And Rhode Island has one of the lowest levels of elected women in politics in the nation, according to a study commissioned by the Women’s Fund in 2002. Rhode Island women also have the lowest labor force participation rate and the lowest proportion of women working in professional and managerial positions in the New England region.
“We’re all about advancing social justice for Rhode Island women,” Joyaux said.
The fund supports nonprofit organizations that are working to change specific aspects of inequality. For example, it gave a $10,000 grant last year to the Southside Community Land Trust for a program called “8WOMEN,” which gives high school-age girls from low-income families an opportunity to learn how to manage and market a product – in this case, a type of organic fertilizer.
“It is a startup business,” said Katherine Brown, executive director of the Land Trust. “We are working with young women to help them understand they can be entrepreneurs. … They’ve been learning they can do it. What they want to do, they can accomplish.”
Brown said the girls developed a business plan with help from business students at the University of Rhode Island. The experience led several girls to decide they want to go to college and study business as a result of working with the college students.
“[The girls will] grow up to be businesswomen,” said Sharon Chancellor, a founding member of the fund. “They’ll grow up to be entrepreneurs.”
Chancellor said she got involved with the Women’s Fund because “you can’t sit on the sidelines and complain about the way things are.” Her mother used to tell her, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”
Chancellor owns a management development consulting practice that helps managers and organizations develop more effective relationships with employees. But although she’s had many opportunities in her life, she said, there are always barriers for women.
“We give dollars,” Chancellor said. “But we also help focus attention on these types of issues. We collaborate with other organizations with like-minded missions. Some of those conversations lead the way to changing policies on state and governmental levels.”
The Women’s Fund gets money from multiple sources: the Rhode Island Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the Women’s Funding Network – a national organization that supports women’s funds – and individual men and women.
Donations range from a few to thousands of dollars each year, said Marcia Coné-Tighe, executive coordinator and the only paid staff at the fund.
“The most successful way to secure and cultivate a donor is to learn about them, see if their values align with our values, through face-to-face solicitation,” she said. To accomplish that, she added, the fund organizes “widening circle” events at donors’ homes.
A widening circle is an event where the fund’s committee members invite friends and family to learn more about the Women’s Fund in hopes that they will join the mailing list and get involved whether through volunteering or giving donations. The fund does not use formal fund-raising events as a means of generating donations.
To learn more about the Women’s Fund, go to www.wfri.org.
