Women’s Funds Are Healthier Than Reported

To the Editor:

Your article about fund-raising models of women’s funds (“Equal Sights,” May 7) did a great job of explaining the innovative strategies used by Women’s Funding Network members to develop philanthropic giving by women and to increase resources for women and girls. However, the article reported an incomplete and misleading picture of the findings of the new research study commissioned by W.F.N., which was designed to learn more about why women give as well as why others do not give to women’s funds.

Your article described the giving choices and motivations of those who had not made a contribution to a women’s fund, but it failed to report on the reasons why many women are giving to women’s funds. According to the research, some of those reasons are:

* They clearly understand and believe both in the mission and in the tangible work of the women’s fund.

* They have empathy for the causes, projects, and programs a women’s fund supports.

* They trust the fund’s leadership and judgment about what projects to support and how to support them.

* They believe the fund is a good steward of their gift.

* They understand the strength of collective, targeted giving, i.e., their dollars are more powerful, their giving more leveraged (rather than diluted) when combined with others.

* They were asked to give.

Not such “dismal news” as your article suggests. Clearly, the findings confirm that many generous and committed donors are building Women’s Funding Network and its member women’s funds.

The article also paints an inaccurate picture of the support women’s funds receive from black women. The article states that “67 per cent of the black women surveyed — most of whom were on the mailing lists of women’s funds — said they had never been asked to give.” The article didn’t make clear that this applied only to non-donors, not to the many African-American women who are supporting women’s funds. The statement should read: “67 percent of black women who said they had not given to a women’s fund said they had never been asked to give.”

Donors to women’s funds are diverse in race, age, economic status, and sexual orientation and have a variety of giving traditions. A hallmark of Women’s Funding Network and our members has always been to construct a broad and diverse donor base and to develop new, inclusive models for philanthropy. One of the goals of the study was to find even more effective ways to build on this tradition.

The work of women’s funds is compelling, and donors who understand that work become long-lasting supporters. Our job in the future is to communicate the story more effectively so that more donors view women’s funds as their investment of choice. In this spirit, we appreciate The Chronicle’s report on our work; we just want to insure that the information is accurate and tells the whole story.

Carol Mollner
Executive Director
Women’s Funding Network
St. Paul

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To the Editor:

I was delighted to read the article about the innovative approaches women’s funds are employing to build lasting sources of institutional support for non-profit groups working to create positive systemic change for women and girls.

And I was pleased to be interviewed for this article, especially because the Maine Women’s Fund faces the challenge of building a presence and fund-raising base in a large rural state, which ranks 48th in per-capita giving in the nation. In spite of these obstacles, we have managed to award nearly $500,000 in grants since 1990 and have built an endowment of just under $1-million. In speaking with the reporter, I emphasized the importance of individual donors to our organization, who provide some 80 per cent of our funding.

These facts, however, were not reported in the one sentence in your article dedicated to our work. Instead, you erroneously reported that at the Maine Women’s Fund, “administrative costs eat up 30 per cent of the money raised.”

In fact, our 1996 audit shows that administrative costs represented 14 per cent of our expenses that year and 13 per cent of dollars raised. We do not yet have the results of our 1997 audit, but I suspect the percentages will be similar.

At the recent meeting of the Women’s Funding Network in Washington, D.C., board and staff members from women’s funds across the country and around the world accepted a vision to build our collective assets to $450-million in 10 years’ time. This goal is especially ambitious in climates of donor fatigue and feminist backlash.

Reaching ambitious fund-raising goals requires that our donors trust us to invest precious resources prudently. We are not helped in this mission when information is inaccurately conveyed and suggests that we do not manage our budgets well.

Karin Anderson
Executive Director
Maine Women’s Fund
Portland, Me.

Editors’ Note: In a telephone interview, Ms. Anderson told a Chronicle reporter that fund-raising and other administrative expenses add up to nearly 30 per cent of the money raised at the Maine Women’s Fund. The article should have made clear that the figure referred to both administrative and fund-raising costs.