By Sean McManus
Staff Writer
The Community Foundation has its first chairwoman and lots of ladies helping through a new organization.
Ann Baker, a community activist who has headed numerous causes here, is the 38th chair and the first woman to hold that position. She succeeds Bruce Bower, a retired banker.
In response to recent statistics about how foundation funding for women and girls hovers around 3–6 percent of total grantmaking, Courtney Wilson and Baker, both long-time trustees of the foundation, started the Women’s Giving Alliance, a component fund of the Community Foundation designed to change the face of philanthropy away from the male-dominated super-rich and towards the group that, according to their brochure, now controls the majority of the nation’s wealth — women.
Last summer, Wilson recruited Baker along with Dr. Doris Carson, Helen Lane and Delores Barr Weaver to form the core founders. That group grew to a steering committee of about 20 women who wanted to increase access to philanthropy to a more diverse cross-section of the community. The idea was that women have always been passionate volunteers, but now it was time to develop focused, purposeful, and strategic ways to directly benefit women’s causes and solve critical problems for women and girls — anything from teen pregnancy to the arts, from education to breast cancer to improving conditions in the workplace.
The way the Women’s Giving Alliance works is each member contributes $2,500 annually. Of that, $1,000 goes to nonprofit organizations of that individual’s choosing (up to three per year). $1,000 is pooled with other members contributions to form the “Grant Pool,” which is then later distributed to nonprofit organizations chosen by members of the Alliance after a study of community issues. $400 is deposited in to the Women’s Endowment Fund at the Community Foundation, and $100 goes for administrative costs.
“There is higher impact in collective giving,” said Wilson. “This way we can provide a platform for women to make a difference both for issues they are directly passionate about in tandem with issues that we know will have a major impact on the community.” The $400 endowment fund is a way for businesses as well as men to contribute to the Women’s Giving Alliance.
“And the Alliance strikes the perfect balance between charity and philanthropy,” explained Wilson. “The initial $1,000 for individual donations is meant to meet ongoing needs. The pooled money is for finding solutions, for implementing strategic values.”
One of the inspirations behind the WGA was a similar organization started in Seattle called the Washington Women’s Fund. That group grew to over 360 people in five years.
Wilson thinks Jacksonville shouldn’t have a problem getting those kinds of numbers. Already the organization is at 125 people since its formal inception in November. So that’s over $300,000 for women’s causes raised in less than four months.
Applications for grants from the WGA’s pooled resources will be mostly by invitation. The members will collectively decide on which problems they want to solve, and organizations that fit within that framework will be eligible for money. Wilson and the WGA want organizations to think of innovative new ideas about how to solve these problems or propose creative ways of expanding existing programs.
Right now Wilson is thinking probably three or four organizations will receive big checks, instead of spreading it out.
“That’s the whole idea behind collective giving — solving the same problem in different ways,” she said.