Feminist Peace Network

Funding social justice work is never easy.  You know this because you probably get umpteen requests in your inbox every day from all manner of worthy organizations–stop the war, clean up pollution, feed children.  It is endless and there is no way to give to everything, you have to make choices and they aren’t easy ones. But perhaps the hardest to fund is work that enables women’s lives and work.

The reasons aren’t hard to understand.  You would think that while maybe these issues wouldn’t be at the top of the radar screen for men (although they should), at least women would be all over this, after all it is our own lives we are talking about.  But while many women are very, very generous, the bottom line is that women not only tend to have less to give, they also tend to prioritize everything but their own lives,  Add to that that when women’s concerns come up within the social justice framework, it is all too common for them to be framed as something to be taken care of after we worry about the ‘big’ issues.

That is a paradigm that Women Moving Millions,  “a partnership of visionary donors and the Women’s Funding Network,” is working to change.

The Women Moving Millions campaign aims to inspire gifts of a million dollars and above in support of women’s funds across the globe.

The campaign is a partnership of visionary donors and Women’s Funding Network, a global movement of 150 women’s and girls’ funds that invest in women-led solutions to critical social issues like poverty and global security.

In May 2009, Women Moving Millions announced that more than $181 million has been raised through partnerships between 101 donors and 41 women’s funds! This groundbreaking achievement exceeds the original goal of raising $150 million!

This massive infusion of investment will be a force for lasting change in the life chances and opportunities of women and girls around the globe, with major reverberations for entire communities and countries. Together, women’s funds will create lasting advances in areas from community leadership and education to poverty eradication and healthcare access. Learn more about the impact of women’s funds.

The donors and founding partners are now gearing up to expand the power and reach of Women Moving Millions with new fundraising initiatives aimed at expanding the reach of the campaign. These include welcoming donor circles and men into the growing movement of trailblazers committed to women-led social change.

To learn more about this exciting and important campaign, click here.  Of course all of us aren’t millionaires.  In fact, most of us aren’t.  But at every economic level, when you consider giving, please consider focusing your giving on efforts that enable the work and voices of women and girls.  The payoff for all of us will be enormous.

And yes, the Feminist Peace Network gratefully accepts donations of any size.