This year represents a major shift in the way the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts carries out its mission. We are boldly moving away from providing programs ourselves to making grantee partnerships with community organizations who can deliver the same quality programming, or better, to our audiences. Why?
As a small nonprofit with limited resources and the outsized goal of achieving gender equity for women and girls in our region, we must focus our attention and resources on what we do best. Since our inception, 22 years ago, we have been able to propel prosperity for women and girls through our grantmaking. This is our unique contribution to the Western Massachusetts landscape. We harness the desires and passions of our donors to see women and girls achieve gender equity, couple it with our vantage point and our research on the challenges and opportunities for women and girls to make progress.
Our donors know that when we pool our resources to affect positive change for women and girls, our collective potential is a powerful force for progress.
Embedding our two signature programs, the Leadership Institute for Political and Public Impact (LIPPI) and our Young Women’s Initiative (YWI), with high performing community partners allows us to engage in research which focuses specifically on women and girls in our region. It further allows us to devote more time and attention to fundraising which will lead to additional and significantly larger grants spread throughout our region to create more access and opportunities for women and girls. This change allows us to focus our attention and resources on the nonprofits that directly serve women and girls in our community. We can go beyond just giving a limited set of grants to convening many of these nonprofits and providing them with the knowledge and tools they need to be sustainable and successful in their program delivery.
Finally, leveraging excellent local service providers to deliver our programs provides clarity about the role of the Women’s Fund for everyone in our region. Through the generosity of our passionate donors we are a grantmaking and capacity-building organization that brings responsive initiatives to the region, fosters the nonprofits devoted to serving women and girls, and provides women and girls with the impact training skills they need to be champions of their own lives and their communities. Our donors know that when we pool our resources to affect positive change for women and girls, our collective potential is a powerful force for progress.
