Why a Women's Fund?

Impact
No other organization in the state of Vermont makes grants exclusively to support the needs of women and girls! Our grants are helping women and girls to move out of poverty, establish safe relationships, choose healthy behaviors, build communication skills, master non-traditional occupations, and strengthen their physical, emotional, intellectual and financial well-being. We step in where larger foundations do not by funding smaller, grassroots, gender-specific programs. Our grants:

Address the needs of all women and/or girls
Encourage women's independence
Create an environment that fosters the advancement and full participation of all women and girls in society

 

Targeting Women & Girls

Despite the assertion that “we’ve come a long way,” our society's most chronic problems - from poverty to health care to violence - disproportionately affect women and children. In Vermont, twenty-five percent of all families living below the poverty line are headed by single mothers. Of those families, nearly 42% have children under 5 years of age. Despite the great need, women and girls receive a tiny portion of the charitable funding pie. Nationally less than seven percent of philanthropic dollars target women and girls. Yet, research consistently shows that to truly eliminate barriers for women and girls, funding must be gender-specific.

The Vermont Women's Fund is the only statewide organization in Vermont making grants targeted solely to women and girls. In twelve years the Fund has awarded 229 grants, totaling over $1 million to 127 organizations throughout the state. While we celebrate this success, we are aware of the pressing need to do more: we have received close to $4 million in grant requests in our eleven years as a grantmaker. These grant applications provide a sobering, close-up view of the real lives led by many of the women and girls in our communities.

Building Women's Philanthropy
Women now control more than sixty percent of the nation's wealth. Never before have women had such financial power and thus the opportunity to shape society's future. Women's philanthropy is often the key to important social change. Yet, many women lack the confidence, comfort, or experience to make philanthropic decisions. An essential part of our mission is to encourage and support women so that they may become philanthropists who give to their full potential so that other women can discover theirs.