RSVP for October 23 From Insight to Impact: From Learning to Action

What does it take to turn learning into meaningful change? Understanding the challenges facing grassroots organizations is only the first step. The next is rethinking how we give, where we invest, and whose leadership we trust to create lasting change.

Throughout our five-part our community learning and action webinar series, “From Insight to Impact” we’ve unpacked data from our research report, Carrying the Weight, Leading the Change, which highlights the systemic funding inequities facing grassroots organizations led by women and gender-expansive people of color across Greater Boston and the need for philanthropic practices that better support community-led change.

In our final session, “From Learning to Action,” we’ll bring together insights from our previous conversations and explore practical ways to move from learning to action.

Friday, October 23rd

12:00 - 12:45 pm

Virtual on Zoom

Free!

Details

In Session 5, “From Learning to Action,” we will explore how individuals and institutions can rethink their philanthropic practices to create more meaningful, lasting change. We'll discuss what it means to invest beyond individual programs by supporting community leadership, collaboration, relationships, and the shared infrastructure that sustains movements.

Through interactive polls, real-world examples, and guided reflection, participants will consider practical ways to give differently, from making flexible, long-term funding commitments to trusting community-defined priorities and applying a gender lens to philanthropic decisions.

Whether you're an individual donor, a giving circle member, a board member, or an institutional funder, this final conversation will offer actionable ideas for rethinking what we fund, how we give, and how we can better support the communities and movements leading change.

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In Memory of Gloria Steinem

We’ve lost an incredible force in the movement for women’s equality today with Gloria Steinem’s passing at age 92. Gloria was the picture of fierce advocacy, forging a path alongside other powerful women to push our society toward a new era, long overdue. 

From reproductive freedom, to equal legal protections and casting off gender stereotypes, in her writing and activism, Gloria boldly fought for the many lives she knew women could lead. She visioned far beyond the prevailing picture of 1960s domesticity and submission that the law and our culture attempted to hold us to. The system as designed did not fit, so she imagined something that sang more loudly of freedom.

We at the Boston Women’s Fund feel a particular kinship with Gloria, as she co-founded the nation’s oldest women’s fund, the Ms. Foundation, in New York, in 1973. Eleven years later, BWF’s founding in 1984 drew much inspiration from the liberation work of our peers, including Gloria and the Ms. Foundation. 

In the early 1990s, the Ms. Foundation held a fundraising event in solidarity with the Boston Women’s Fund. And in 1998, we honored Gloria with an award at our “Take a Stand” event, alongside Angela Davis and Wilma Mankiller.

Gloria shared that she learned about feminism “disproportionately from Black women.” She named Black women leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer as prominent influences in her work and cited Fannie’s lived experience in her push against racist reproductive practices. She was a supporter and delegate for Shirley Chisholm’s run to become the first Black woman president. She was inspired by writers Alice Walker and Maya Angelou.

We are living in an era where some of the gains of the movement Gloria helped drive have been shaken. In the wake of Roe v. Wade’s overturning, reproductive justice is still an urgent, ongoing battle, and despite the Equal Rights Amendment, a wage gap persists.

However, Gloria has also left us with something that will endure throughout the ages: a storied reminder that radical hope can forge a more liberated future. Gloria’s collaborative spirit of organizing across identity lines, and her insistence on a vision of a more equitable future that the mainstream had yet to see, are elements of her legacy that will stay with us in our journey toward liberation. Boston Women’s Fund boldly continues to fight for the world that Gloria believed could come to pass, one centered on justice, care, opportunity, and freedom. 

RSVP for October 2 From Insight to Impact Webinar — "Reframing Expertise & Impact"

Who gets to define what impact looks like? Too often, traditional funding processes prioritize reports, metrics, and rigid requirements over the knowledge and lived experiences of the communities they are meant to support.

Our research report, Carrying the Weight, Leading the Change, highlights how funding practices can create additional burdens for grassroots organizations led by women and gender-expansive people of color across Greater Boston.

RSVP today to learn more about this in Session 4 of “From Insight to Impact,” our community learning and action webinar series unpacking data from our report, explaining that impact and expertise are not neutral. They are defined by those with power.

Friday, October 2

12:00–12:45 PM

Virtual on Zoom

Free!

RSVP Today!

Details

In Session 4, “Reframing Expertise & Impact,” we will explore who gets to define impact and how traditional reporting requirements and bureaucratic funding processes can create barriers for grassroots organizations. We will discuss what it looks like to move toward more trust-based practices that recognize stories, lived experience, and community knowledge as meaningful forms of data and expertise.

Grassroots leader Tre’Andre Valentine, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), will join the conversation to share insights from MTPC’s Working for Lived Equity Community Needs Assessment and what it means to center transgender people as experts in their own lives and communities. Tre'Andre will also speak to their experiences navigating funder expectations and what trust-based partnerships can look like in practice.

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