Social Change Grantmaking provides critical financial support to organizations working to create social change through women and girls.
It is our belief that real, long-lasting change can’t happen until there is greater focus on altering the environment in which we live. Social change means acknowledging there’s nothing inherently wrong with people, it’s the environments in which they live that need to be transformed. Our efforts are designed to remove barriers and systems that perpetuate inequality and oppression. This approach moves the conversation further “upstream” and targets issues beyond immediate social service needs. Yes, it’s more difficult. And yes, the return on investment may take longer to realize. But in the end, the rewards too, will be longer lasting.
A gift to the Women’s Fund supports our Social Change Grantmaking and goes a long way. “What I appreciate the most about the Women’s Fund is that my gift has a multiplier effect. Support women and everyone around them benefits. It’s a perfect way to give back!” says Beth Weckmueller, Executive Director of Enrollment Services and Registrar at UW-Milwaukee and a donor since 1991.
Consider Neu-Life Community Resource Center where a group of girls contacted their alderman about safely crossing the street in their neighborhood of Amani, a neighborhood with one of the highest crime rates in the city of Milwaukee. They worked with the alderman until a new cross walk was finally installed! The girls have a track record for getting things done—they got the city to paint bike lanes in their neighborhood and worked on a landscape improvement project for a local elementary school. When you invest in the Women’s Fund, you combine your resources with other like-minded women and men to invest in programs like Neu-Life Community Resource Center that support women and girls as effective change agents.
The strategic funding areas for Social Change Grantmaking are leadership, economic justice, and social justice.
Current Grant Partners
9to5 Milwaukee
$13,500 | Unrestricted Support
Supports low-wage working women advocating for economic justice.
Benedict Center
$10,000 | The Sisters’ Diversion Project
Expands current municipal diversion practice with the long-term goal to win broader policy change in expanding use of deferred prosecution with a strong move toward diversion.
CORE/El Centro
$13,500 | Proyecto Salud
Engages women as community health leaders to increase access to culturally competent reproductive health care to low income Latinas.
The Healing Center
$10,000 | Milwaukee Advocacy Response Network Project
A community-based advocacy response effort to improve access to 24 hour day/7 days week services for underserved victims of sexual assault and to increase access to culturally competent advocacy and services.
Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition
13,750 | Unrestricted Support
The only Muslim women’s organization in Wisconsin, MMWC empowers Muslim women through building leadership and advocacy skills and by addressing external challenges such as Islamophobia.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin
$10,000 | Patient Engagement Project
To educate and empower women who have been most affected by recent legislative and budgetary changes - young women, low-income women and women of color - to make their voices heard and become active participants in the public discourse about a woman’s right to reproductive justice.
Reproductive Justice Collective
$13,500 | Unrestricted Support
Organizes women and girls to change structural power and inequities by engaging women who experience the greatest reproductive health disparities, including women of color, low-income, young, rural, immigrant, incarcerated, and lesbian/bisexual women.
Voces de la Frontera
$10,000 | Unrestricted Support
Creating a culturally sensitive, safe-space for women to explore gender-specific topics related to immigration and workplace rights and creating a grassroots leadership program for women.
Wisconsin League of Young Voters
$10,000 | SWAG (Sisters with Amazing Gifts) Civic Engagement Program
Working with young women leaders in high school to organize around the Photo ID law.
Social Change Grants Advisory Committee
Beth Weckmueller, Chair
Jackie Boynton
Ava Hernandez
Michelle Hinton
Martha Love
Tonya Mantilla
Heidi Retzlaff
Margaret Rozga
Donna Skenadore