Women's Foundation of Minnesota

Grantmaking: In FY23 (Apr. 1, 2022 - Mar. 31, 2023), the Foundation awarded $2.4 million in grants to support safety, leadership, holistic well-being, and economic justice for women, girls, and gender-expansive people in Minnesota. Because inequity looks different in every community, we use our Intersectional Equity Framework to look at how gender, race, place (geography), and additional identities (ethnicity, sovereignty, socioeconomic class, age, disability, LGBTQ+, immigration status) intersect to build transformational change with communities who face the greatest barriers and disparities. All Women's Foundation grants support general operating expenses, which provide greater flexibility, crucial for organizations to build stability around community-sustaining programs. The Foundation's $3.3 million in community investments across Minnesota in FY23 included:* 254 grants to 152 nonprofit organizations and 17 individuals* 111,805 people served The Women's Foundation of Minnesota makes grants through the following funds: Community Response Fund, Fund for Safety, girlsBEST (girls Building Economic Success Together), We Thrive, and the Young Women's Initiative of Minnesota (YWI MN). A commitment to communities in Greater Minnesota and a value of inclusivity are reflected in the demographics of all the funds. 1. Community Response FundThrough the Community Response Fund, the Women's Foundation invests in programs that ensure safe and healthy lives through grants to organizations and programs that respond quickly to emerging community needs that impact women, girls, and gender-expansive communities. This year, Community Response funding supports reproductive justice, healing justice, and emergent community needs, with a priority on holistic well-being and reproductive justice in response to the continuous violation of reproductive rights and the increased demand faced by Minnesota health care providers as a result of the Dobbs decision at the federal level. In the last year, WFM awarded $250,000 to 25 organizations across the state to support reproductive justice, healing justice, and emergent community needs.2. Fund for SafetySafety is the underpinning for equity and justice; it improves health outcomes for women, girls, and gender-expansive people; impacts their leadership; and increases their economic opportunity. WFM invests in the organizations, leaders, and the movement so that women, girls, and gender-expansive people in Minnesota are free from every form of violence and can experience their homes, schools, and communities as safe places. The Fund for Safety resources organizations and programs are working to keep our communities safer by addressing gender-based violence, trafficking, harassment, and other forms of systemic violence. During our last fiscal year, WFM awarded 19 grants totaling $375,000 through its Fund for Safety. Of the Safety partners, 47 percent are receiving Women's Foundation funding for the first time, 42 percent are in rural and Greater Minnesota, and 58 percent are led by Black, Indigenous, and women of color. Funded programs will directly serve an estimated 72,739 women, men, girls, boys, and gender-expansive people across the state. WFM's funding arrives at a critical time for partners, yet the needs of partners are growing. In virtual site visits, grantee-partners shared that they are seeing a decrease in funding availability, alongside greater costs and need for services caused by the heightened isolation of the pandemic.3. girlsBEST (girls Building Economic Success Together)Shaped by research and listening in 14 communities around the state, girlsBEST was created to invest in girls as the best way to build opportunities and boost their future economic success. Launched in 2002, girlsBEST awards multi-year grants to programs that build the opportunity and future economic success of Minnesota's girls, ages 12-18. Priority is given to programs that include outreach to underserved, underrepresented populations of girls around the state, including low-income girls, Black, Indigenous, and girls of color, and girls from Greater Minnesota. Grantees are funded in one of four program tracks: Academic; Entrepreneurial; Employment Development & High-Paying/High-Skill Careers; and Public Education & Advocacy. Grantee-partners increase girls' awareness of systemic gender and racial inequities that affect economic potential, grow their sense of agency to influence change through leadership, and build their capacity for individual and collective activism and advocacy. As WFM's longest-running program girlsBEST has funded six multi-year cohorts of grantee-partners across the state. Through these cohorts, WFM has provided planning and implementation grants totaling more than $5.1 million to 137 girl-led and girl-driven programs statewide and impacted more than 45,202 young women across Minnesota. In FY22, WFM awarded 20 multi-year grants and three planning grants totaling $293,869 to nonprofit organizations. The sixth cohort of girlsBEST grantee-partners are receiving the third year of funding a multi-year grant through girlsBEST. Multi-year grants are renewed for up to three years, based on an annual grant review and progress towards goals. Seed grants, awarded to support planning, are limited to one year. The grant period for this funding is July 5, 2022, to July 4, 2023.Last year, girlsBEST impacted the economic well-being of 2,089 girls and gender-expansive youth through grants to our partner organizations. Key outcomes from our program evaluation of the second year of Cohort VI (2020-2021) grantee-partners illustrates the model's effectiveness:* High School Graduation: Across girlsBEST programs, 89% of seniors are graduating. This is higher than the 2020 Minnesota graduation rate of 84%.* Post-Secondary Enrollment: Among graduates 87% of girlsBEST participants are on track to pursue post-secondary education, higher than the 71% Minnesota rate, based on 2018 high school graduates who enrolled in higher education within 16 months. * Unintended Pregnancy: girlsBEST participants have a teen pregnancy rate of 3 per 1,000, compared to 9 per 1,000 in the state overall in 2017 (the most recent data available), increasing their ability to attain post-secondary education and access career opportunities.4. We ThriveIn its first round of grants through We Thrive, a new program in our economic justice impact area, WFM awarded two grants totaling $300,000. We Thrive invests in strategies to close the gap in generational wealth-building for BIPOC, low-wealth, and rural women and gender-expansive people across Minnesota by building capacity for organizations leading in the fields of entrepreneurship and education. In the first phase, through investment in educational institutions, the Women's Foundation is supporting women entering high-wage, high-demand fields and roles by obtaining certificates, associate's, and bachelor's degrees in programs such as welding, information technology, auto mechanics, engineering, robotics, architecture, and other STEM-related fields. In the second phase, We Thrive will support Black, Indigenous, and other women of color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs and businesses through partnerships and investments, so they have increased access to capital, technical assistance, mentorship, and skill-building resources to grow their ideas.5. Young Women's Initiative of Minnesota (YWI MN) Launched in 2016, YWI MN is a multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment and a public-private partnership with the Governor's Office of the State of Minnesota to achieve equity in opportunities with and for young women of color, American Indian young women, young women from Greater Minnesota, LGBTQ+ youth, and young women with disabilities. YWI MN is on a mission to create a Minnesota where every young woman thrives with economic opportunity, safety, and leadership. As an eight-year, $11 million statewide initiative, YWI MN is focused building equity in opportunities with young women and gender-expansive people, ages 12-24, from eight communities facing the greatest systemic disparities in our state: Black, Indigenous, young women of color, young women from Greater Minnesota, LGBTQ+ youth, and young women with disabilities.

Building Philanthropy for Gender & Racial JusticeA critical part of the Foundation's work is helping people understand the power they have to change the world through personal philanthropy. Our donor-partners and donor advisors are encouraged to embrace their philanthropic leadership by participating in donor workshops, sharing community and grantee connections, and engaging in giving opportunities, such as donor advised funds and legacy and planned giving. Additional donor engagement opportunities building philanthropy for gender and racial justice include:* In FY23, WFM held its Equity Summit, bringing together corporate, philanthropic, and individual donor-partners with policymakers, young women leaders, and statewide grantee-partners from all our funds for a day of inspiration, learning, and cross-sector networking, celebrating the power that lives within our state's communities. With the theme of Building Power for a New Day, we convened partners across four areas of impact Leadership & Community Power, Safety, Holistic Well-Being & Reproductive Justice, and Economic Justice to activate our collective energy for building power and leadership with Minnesota's women and girls. Our partnership and collaboration center the solutions of people most impacted by disparities and is essential to driving systems change for gender and racial justice. At the 2022 WFMN Equity Summit, we welcome Dr. Rachel Hardeman, founding director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity, as our keynote speaker. Dr. Hardeman addressed the intersections of reproductive justice and police violence and describe new ways of building equity and inclusion into professional practices. Dr. Hardeman leverages the frameworks of critical race theory and reproductive justice to inform her equity-centered work, which aims to build the empirical evidence of racism's impact on health particularly for Black birthing people and their babies. The Summit also included highlights from our 2022 Status of Women & Girls in Minnesota research and new strategic plan as we celebrated the 20th anniversary of our groundbreaking girlsBEST program.* The last year was WFM's first of a new seven-year strategic plan, which deepens the Foundation's mission to end systemic inequities and drive innovation for gender and racial justice. *Participatory Grantmaking: WFM democratizes philanthropy and infuses equity and justice into the design of its processes through participatory grantmaking that engages individuals most impacted by gender and racial injustice in funding decisions that affect their communities. In the last fiscal year, we began using participatory grantmaking committee to determine all competitive grantmaking distributions. Two grantmaking committees bring together the Women's Foundation's community of stakeholders across race and ethnicity, geography, and socioeconomic status to support and invest in a shared vision of gender and racial justice in Minnesota. Members are appointed for a two-year term and each group convenes for training and orientation, followed by virtual site visits and grantmaking days. * Donor-Centered Grantmaking: Ripley Memorial Foundation, a donor advised fund of the Women's Foundation of Minnesota, awarded $116,500 in grants to 12 organizations focused on teen pregnancy prevention in Ramsey and Hennepin counties. In this second year of funding through Ripley's first round of multi-year investments, organizations will build on current work to promote access to women's health education and services using cultural and community strengths so that young women and gender-expansive youth know about their bodies and can make healthy, informed choices as they grow. In their first year of Ripley funding, organizations shared that general operating support created opportunities for success during challenges faced such as staffing transitions, the pandemic, and the need to increase education on reproductive justice due to the reversal of Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision.Ripley Memorial Advisors has increased its responsive support for the health and well-being of adolescents and aligned its strategies with the Young Women's Initiative of Minnesota (YWI MN) to engage with Recommendation #15 of the YWI MN's Blueprint for Action: to promote access to women's health education and services built on cultural and community strengths so that young women know about their bodies and can make appropriate and healthy choices as they grow and age. * Engaged a paid Wenda Weekes Moore Intern and Dr. Reatha Clark King Fellow as we invest in building a pipeline of leadership opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and women of color a value to philanthropy, nonprofits, and communities. Through the program to date, WFM has engaged 47 Black, Indigenous, and women of color in all aspects of its operations, including evaluation, fundraising, grantmaking, and administration. The program also provides rigorous training and professional development opportunities.* As of 3/31/23, the Foundation has 69 active donor advised funds. The combined assets of our donor advised funds totals: $8,754,352.* In FY23, WFM provided expanded virtual and in-person opportunities for donors, stakeholders, and institutional partners to engage with research, listening, and policy actions, including the importance of holistic well-being and reproductive justice in the wake of the Dobbs' decision. We marked International Women's Day with a FeMNist week of events, including a Young Women's Day at the Capitol and a conversation with leaders in healing justice. We elevated the importance of civic engagement and voter education as a pathway to systems change, and during November, led a digital awareness campaign to share the stories of the critical work our partners are leading to protect and keep reproductive healthcare safe and accessible in Minnesota.

Research, Education, and Public PolicyStatus of Women and Girls in MinnesotaIn 2009, the Foundation launched the Status of Women & Girls in Minnesota (Status) research project in partnership with the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School's Center on Gender, Women, and Public Policy. Data specific to Minnesota women and girls has been gathered, analyzed, and published in economics, safety, health, and leadership. The Status research and community input expands the available data on women and girls, provides ongoing trend analysis, informs the Foundation's annual grantmaking and policy agenda, identifies new areas where research is needed, and raises public awareness about the needs of women and girls in Minnesota. Every two years, the Foundation releases the Status of Women and Girls in Minnesota, the most comprehensive data in the state on women, girls, and gender-expansive people as well as recommendations for policy solutions that could advance systemic change. Data collection has begun for the next report, released in early 2024.WFM leverages listening, research, and convening to inform the field, cross-sector engagement, policy advocacy, and investments. In addition to producing quantitative reports, we invest in listening to grantee-partners, advocates, and community leaders to better understand how disparities and solutions are experienced in distinct communities around the state, and to inform our own work and role in philanthropy. Through virtual listening sessions in the last fiscal year, WFM we met with Safety, girlsBEST, and YWI MN partners, disability and rural advocates, elders, male advocates, and alumni of WFM programs to continue building and sharing power and expanding our transparency about our processes. A summary of this listening series was captured in a graphic harvest that informs not only grantmaking processes, but also our emerging emphasis on using narrative change to drive systems change. Based on this convening series, we identified key narrative priorities in our impact areas of safety, reproductive justice and healing, and democratizing philanthropy that align with the social landscape and the concerns of our core stakeholders.Public PolicyAs a systems-change community foundation, WFM invests in policies and narratives that transform our state with gender and racial justice. In alignment with our strategic plan, WFM has increased investments in advocacy and policy as a lever for changing inequitable systems. We are committed to policies that remove barriers and increase access for women, girls, and gender-expansive people across Minnesota, by addressing racism, gender-based violence, and gaps in leadership and representation. Building on the Foundation's historical legislative work, WFM's legislative agenda advanced public policy in partnership with young women, gender-expansive people, and grantee-partner organizations. In the last fiscal year, WFM added a new role to reflect our increased emphasis on driving effective advocacy and policy change. Led by the vice president for strategic initiatives, we advanced a robust policy agenda at the Capitol, working with a hired lobbyist to carry a legislative agenda, mobilize the public, and increase the visibility and priorities of women, girls, gender-expansive people. WFM leaders, board, and Cabinet members testified on behalf of the WFM policy agenda for issues central to economic justice, safety, and reproductive justice, including Paid Family & Medical Leave, reproductive rights, and increased funding for Safe Harbor, the Office of Missing & Murdered Black Women & Girls, and the Office of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Relatives. The Governor-appointed Young Women's Cabinet created a comprehensive policy agenda and elected policy leaders to advance bills affecting their lives. To prepare for their advocacy, young women received rigorous policy training using a curriculum that centers people of color to engage in policy for systems change. Cabinet members were active in testifying, writing letters of support, and increasing awareness of their policy agenda issues.State & National PartnershipsWFM engages in collaborative funding and partnerships within Minnesota's foundation community dedicated to social change grantmaking. We are a member of several funder collaboratives, including the National Philanthropic Collaborative of Young Women's Initiatives, Women's Funding Network, Minnesota Council of Foundations, Reproductive Health Alliance, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and Mission Investors Exchange.