BWF Beginnings: Hayat Imam on Creating the 2000 Club

Forty years ago, the Boston Women’s Fund was born out of a desire to do philanthropy differently. That ethos inspired a radically unique way of granting money, questioning the status quo, and even redefining who a donor could be. Even then, our early leaders knew that philanthropy wasn’t just for the wealthy and white to take part in. We are all philanthropists. And in 1991, our then Executive Director, Hayat Imam, developed a new fundraising model based on that very idea. This project would set the fund up for success for decades to come. It was called the 2000 Club.

We sat down with Hayat to learn more about this groundbreaking practice.

Boston Women’s Fund: When did you first become involved with BWF?

Hayat Imam: I was on the board in the late 80s. [Stephanie Borns, the ED at the time asked me to join.] And I said to Stephanie, I'm happy to be on your board. But just don't ask me to fundraise…And since then, I've become a professional fundraiser! [laughs] But you know, that was a pivotal moment. Because, as soon as those words popped out of my mouth, the second set of words that entered my head was, “why not?”

I understand that you were BWF’s Executive Director from 1991-1993. And it was in 1991 that you created the 2000 Club. Can you tell me more about that?

I had left the Boston area and was working in Indonesia, when I received a call from BWF inviting me to come and be the ED of the Boston Women’s Fund. So, I came back and joined the Fund. The Fund was very tight for money at the time, but that was mainly because we had not done the necessary fundraising work. But I knew we had a lot of people who supported us, so I just went to every donor, and everyone was really open to us. In that process, I had a chance to build relationships with a lot of wonderful people. It was around that time that a lot of talk was going on about endowments.

Hayat Imam with two young people at a Boston Women's Fund event.

What would an endowment have meant for BWF at that time?

It was worth doing an endowment back then. Interest rates were higher, so we could see that if we had substantial money in the bank, the interest from the principal would be a meaningful sum for the Fund. It seemed like a really worthwhile thing to do. But, only if we could raise at least a million dollars for the endowment. But we didn’t have the kind of donors who could give us anything close to that. So how do we get a million dollars?

So what was the next move?

I don't know how this calculation happened, but I was playing with numbers, and I said: “I can’t believe this, but 2,000 people giving $100 a year for five years adds up to a million dollars!” And lots and lots of people can do $100! The idea was to get a lot of people to give a little bit of money on a regular basis. That would be much easier to achieve than a few people giving a lot of money — and clearly we didn't have the second option.

So, long before AOC and Bernie Sanders figured out that $25 from a lot of people can be a lot of money, we said “hey, this could work!”

How did you decide on the name 2000 Club?

We named it the 2000 club for two reasons. In 1991, the year 2000 was just around the corner, and we thought by the year 2000, we'll have achieved the endowment! Secondly, we were aiming to have 2000 members. So that was the reason it was called the 2000 Club.

For one member it would normally be a $100 donation each year for five years. But we said, many people could be in a membership! Two people could pair up and pay $50 each, and that would count as one membership. Or four friends could give $25 each, so just about everyone could participate! So that was the vision that would allow all of us, grantees, donors, and grassroots folks to be part of building an endowment for the Boston Women's Fund.

Had you seen any other foundation do something like that?

I had not. I think it's a unique thing actually. I don't think anyone had done that then. Now this notion is out there: that a lot of people giving a small amount of money is a lot of money. I sometimes smile and think: “we did that first!”

It’s a brilliant idea, and it really changes the idea of who gets to be a donor, who gets to be involved in philanthropy.

Exactly! It's an artificial divide. We're all donors in our own way. We give time; we give money if we can; we do the work. There was this very artificial division between donors and grantees that I found very uncomfortable. It created a hierarchy. And I wondered if we could think differently about this. Couldn’t we all be donors of the Boston Women's Fund, including our grantees?

So I know the goal was met in 1999. Where did the club go from there?

The next idea was that if we could say that we, as a grassroots community, were raising a million dollars for the women of Boston, we could perhaps go to someone with means and say “Can you join us in matching this first million?” And a Donor did join us, and that match did come in!

BWF was created partly in response to how difficult it was for women and gender-expansive people from persistently excluded communities to get philanthropic funding for the grassroots efforts they were a part of. But BWF, as a team of many women of color, must have experienced the same challenges in fundraising that its grantee partners were facing.

What was that like? How did we overcome that?

We had more individual donors than foundation donors first of all, and we had just one, maybe two, family foundations giving us money at that time. So, I think we had a particular kind of woman who was attracted to us, and many of our donors were women. We had women who were feminists, who were interested in the philosophy and politics that Boston Women's Fund displayed. One of our key supporters was someone who lived in Chicago, and there's a very strong, big, Chicago Women's Fund. But she told us that she preferred to fund us in Boston, rather than Chicago, because of our politics and our strong social justice stance. So we attracted people like that.

And then we did something else. I didn’t start this, but I helped do a couple: We hosted events called, the Women Money and Social Responsibility Conferences.

These were workshops for people of wealth who were concerned about investing their money in good things. The workshop was very technical. It was really about how to invest properly. But, as a result, they got to know us, and many of them became individual donors of ours as well.

We had women investment counselors, who specialized in socially responsible investments, lead the workshops. So, they got some airtime, and at the same time, everybody benefited. There were women out there who were like us, feminists, they just happened to be wealthy. We were able to tap into a lot of that.

Well thank you again, Hayat, for offering your time to chat today! This has been really rich for me. I really appreciate it!

You are most welcome. It was a pleasure for me, too!

After Hayat Imam left the Boston Women’s Fund, she worked with the feminist community in the Philippines on a National Family Violence Prevention Campaign; and as a Consultant to the UNDP. She was on the Board of Grassroots International for seven years, and its Chair for 5 years. Presently she is on the Board of Mass Peace Action.

Meet Our Grantee Partner — Essex County Community Organization

ECCO staff and board on the organization's annual community boat cruise celebration.

Essex County Community Organization (ECCO) is a multifaith network of 59 congregations and the North Shore Labor Council that works to create a world where everyone belongs, where we all can thrive, and where we all have a say in the decisions that shape our lives. ECCO works to address the root causes of injustice through policy change and uniting people across lines of difference to build power.

Rabbi Margie Klein Ronkin, Executive Director at ECCO, spoke with us about how ECCO immigrant women leaders successfully campaigned to increase funding for affordable housing in Salem and what’s next for ECCO in 2024.

What led you to create this organization or take this leadership role? Can you tell us about your connection to this work and the specific need you saw for women, girls, and gender-expansive individuals?

Growing up in a community of Jewish civil rights activists, I was raised believing that the story of the Exodus, of people moving from oppression to freedom, was not just history or legend, but an invitation to work for liberation in every generation. My own family made an exodus of sorts when they fled to America, barely escaping an antisemitic mob that came to murder them in their home. Though I grew up in relative privilege, I inherited the lesson that my own family’s experience of oppression, and the Jewish people’s more broadly, compels us to work in solidarity with oppressed people to confront injustice and pursue liberation in our own day.

As a college student at Yale, I volunteered at a soup kitchen, but felt our efforts were a bandaid solution to deeper problems. Searching for a more transformative model, I learned about a homeless women’s advocacy Mothers’ For Justice (MTJ), a homeless women’s advocacy group. Under MTJ’s leadership, I got to be part of a citywide campaign to pass the New Haven Child Poverty Referendum, which would give homeless women and children greater access to housing, food, and support services. We won the referendum with over 90% of the vote.

MTJ’s work inspired me to become a professional grassroots organizer, committed to working in solidarity with people directly affected by injustice.

Though I loved organizing, eventually I felt called to go to rabbinical school, after witnessing the Religious Right sway a national election by organizing in favor of gay marriage bans. I felt called to help build an alternative to the Religious Right in which people of faith and values might work together for justice and freedom.

Years later, finding ECCO felt like an answered prayer. As a multifaith, multiracial movement for justice, ECCO is giving me and so many others the chance to work for systemic change by building the kind of people power that is only possible when we organize across lines of difference and root ourselves in our deepest values.

Part of your mission is that you’re working to create a world where everybody belongs and everyone thrives. How is ECCO working to foster opportunity within the communities you serve?

When ECCO immigrant women leaders in Salem learned that the city had only allocated $2 million in ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funding to affordable housing, they campaigned to increase that amount. Citing that city’s neglect of the Latine community in collecting feedback and setting its priorities, our leaders organized diverse ECCO communities across the city to fight to increase affordable housing funding. As a result of their efforts, the Salem City Council increased its ARPA allocation for affordable housing from $2 million to $9 million.

This effort has opened up several pathways to opportunity. First, the increase in affordable housing funding will create more affordable housing, which will yield concrete opportunities for low-income families to find homes where they can afford to live. Because women and girls make up about two-thirds of those receiving federal housing assistance, they will disproportionately reap the benefits of a growth in affordable housing stock.

An ECCO rally for affordable housing at the Lynn, MA City Hall building.

Second, our campaign gave immigrant women in ECCO the opportunity to learn the necessary organizing, advocacy, and leadership skills to drive a citywide campaign. The leaders, mostly low-income daycare providers and house cleaners with limited access to traditional education, came to see themselves and be seen by others as powerful agents of change.

Finally, the campaign created opportunities for ECCO’s diverse communities to form deep relationships. Though ECCO immigrant leaders drove the campaign, they knew they lacked the political power to win alone. Instead, they forged relationships with BIPOC and White leaders from across Salem. Such bonds are not only meaningful in their own right – they build power to win more victories in the future.

What’s one thing people might not know about your organization?

Even though ECCO works on painful issues of injustice, we also take time to cultivate joy. We find joy in getting to know and appreciate each other, in dreaming of the kind of world we want, and in celebrating our victories. Each summer, we organize a giant boat cruise dance party where people from a range of backgrounds dance with each other – our Latine leaders teaching us Salsa and Bachata, our African American leaders teaching line dances and leading a soul train, everyone cheering each other on. Making space for joy isn’t just a distraction from the injustice we are fighting. It’s a radical act of refusing to give up, and a source of strength to keep going when things get hard.

What’s next for you? What project or goal is ECCO working on right now?

This year, ECCO is launching an exciting new initiative called the North Shore Organizing Hub. As an innovative integration of training and campaign work, the Organizing Hub brings together people from diverse backgrounds to learn key organizing skills and to put them to practice on critical campaigns. Through the Organizing Hub, we will support leaders to organize in three main campaign areas:

• Affordable housing Building on victories over the past year in Lynn, Salem, Beverly, Rockport, and Gloucester, we will work to increase affordable housing on the North Shore by campaigning for affordable housing zoning changes, rent stabilization, funding allocation, and accessibility.
  

• Police Reform Over the past two years, we won a campaign to get the city of Lynn to create CALM, an unarmed crisis response team that is separate from police. Now, we will work to ensure that CALM gets off the ground, is culturally competent, and is accountable to the public.
  

• Immigrant Rights After winning recent campaigns, our immigrant leaders will launch a new campaign for immigrant rights, created for and by our immigrant communities.
  

What does liberation look like to you?

One of my favorite poems that inspires my vision of liberation is “Red Sea,” by Latina Jewish poet Aurora Levins Morales. In it, she reimagines the Israelites leaving Egypt and crossing the Red Sea.

This time we're tied at the ankles.

We cannot cross until we carry each other,

all of us refugees, all of us prophets.

No more taking turns on history's wheel,

trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.

The sea will not open that way.

This time that country

is what we promise each other,

our rage pressed cheek to cheek

until tears flood the space between,

until there are no enemies left,

because this time no one will be left to drown

and all of us must be chosen.

This time it's all of us or none.

As in Levins Morales’ poem, my vision of liberation sees us as deeply interconnected and united in pursuing the better world we imagine. Unlike the Hebrew Bible’s version, where the Egyptians need to drown in order for the Israelites to get free, this vision of liberation is not a zero-sum game. Rather, real liberation transforms both oppressed and oppressor into seekers of justice, environmental sustainability, and mutual abundance, who know we are blessed with more than enough.

Meet our Grantee Partner — Women Encouraging Empowerment

Women Encouraging Empowerment community building event, 2023.

Women Encouraging Empowerment (WEE) strives to educate, advocate, protect, and advance the rights of low-income immigrant and refugee women and their families through organizing, leadership development, and service delivery.

WEE is a recipient of our 2023 Community Impact Grant. We had a chat with the WEE team about the immigrant women who founded the organization and how they’re breaking down barriers to success for all in their community.

What led you to create this organization or

take this leadership role? Can you tell us more about your connection to the work and the specific need you saw?

Women Encouraging Empowerment (WEE) was founded in 2010 by a group of immigrant women who recognized and responded to an unmet community need. Revere — a community with a large population of immigrants — lacked culturally and linguistically responsive support for immigrants, and most notably, there were no organizations led by immigrants to support other immigrants. Hundreds of immigrant families in Revere with a wealth of skills and a desire to contribute to their communities faced financial, linguistic, and cultural barriers to success.

Since its founding, WEE has filled this critical gap in support for immigrant families by offering financial literacy and job training courses, English learning opportunities, and other forms of advocacy grounded in the empowerment of local immigrant families.

How is WEE working to foster greater opportunity for women, girls, and gender-expansive folks in the communities you serve?

WEE has the privilege of offering local students, immigrants, and even its own employees with a range of opportunities to overcome common barriers to success. Because the language barrier presents a primary barrier to community involvement and financial stability for many newcomers, WEE hosts two levels of English classes all throughout the year. WEE’s physical space unlocks countless other opportunities for immigrant women and families every day; the space transforms from a classroom to a resource distribution center to a support group for local immigrant women depending on the self-identified and ever-changing needs of the community. Regardless of who walks through WEE’s doors or the reason for their visit, the organization aims to thoughtfully listen, instill confidence, and guide them to access the resources and support that they deserve.

What’s one thing people might not know about your organization?

Whether by word of mouth or by way of formal referral, WEE is often the first point of contact for immigrant women who are in search of resources and support. Over the last 13 years, WEE has established itself as a trusted community resource and source of reliable, multilingual information for local immigrant women.

WEE is available for all immigrant women and families, offering comprehensive support that goes far beyond offering English classes. At the same time, WEE advocates for system-level change to positively impact the lives of and opportunities for local immigrant families.

What’s next for you? What project or goal is WEE working on right now?

In addition to continuing its ongoing courses and advocacy, WEE is excited to formalize its Women’s Circles for local immigrant women. There are few opportunities for immigrant women to safely experience and express joy. They often work outside the home in front-line jobs, manage the household responsibilities, and care for children, leaving little time for self-care. WEE’s Women Circles offer a space for immigrant women to eat, dance, laugh, learn, bond, and momentarily relieve their burdens. Through these Women’s Circles, immigrant women learn about topics ranging from navigating the American education system to strategies for healthy living, all with an emphasis on encouraging participants to live the lives they deserve.

What does liberation look like to you?

WEE works to advance a vision of social justice, gender equality, and collective empowerment for immigrant women. Access to reliable and multilingual information is critical to liberation as it allows immigrant women to advocate for themselves, their families, and their community. WEE also uplifts self-care as liberation. For immigrant women who carry so many responsibilities and often experience isolation, prioritizing mental health, personal care, and self-compassion can be radical acts of self-love and resistance.