Ms. Foundation for Women
/OVERVIEW: The Ms. Foundation for women makes grants for general operating support to organization’s supporting the rights, health, safety and well-being of women and girls of color, LGBTQ women and other underrepresented groups.
IP TAKE: The Ms. Foundation for Women is a great ally to have in the feminist giving space. grants provide general operating support to a broad range of women’s organizations. While this funder is not accessible, it occasionally posts RFPs, which warrants checking their site often. However, it is approachable, inviting grantseekers to email the grants management team with brief introductions, so networking is also a viable path for organizations seeking support from Ms. Persistence can pay off here.
PROFILE: The Ms. Foundation for Women was established in 1973 by a group of well-known feminist thinkers including Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, Letty Cottin-Pogrebin and Marlo Thomas. Based in Brooklyn, New York, the foundation aims to “build women’s collective power in the U.S. by investing in, and strengthening, the capacity of women-led movements to advance meaningful social, cultural and economic change. This funder is known for supporting its grantees with “strategic assistance that builds leadership, strengthens organizations and seeds long-term solutions” and has recently maintained its focus on women and girls of color. The foundation’s current grantmaking initiatives are Birth Justice; Safety, Health, and Economic (S.H.E.); Ms. South; the Activist Collaboration and Care Fund; the Girls of Color Initiative; and the Building Connections Initiative. Grantmaking is mainly limited to the U.S.
Grants for Racial Justice, Indigenous Rights, LGBTQ and Women and Girls
The Ms. Foundation for Women conducts all of its grantmaking through a gender equity lens, which means it funds issues that center women and girls across all of its grantmaking initiatives; however, several programs address the intersection of gender, race, and sexual orientation. According to Teresa C. Younger, the president and CEO, the Ms. Foundation for Women works
“to make sure that women and girls — particularly gender nonconforming and other feminist funds — are adequately funded to move money to the grassroots, and to do that through trust-based philanthropy, which is general operating support that gets done year after year. We know that the change we need to see in the world actually needs to come from the grassroots and those who are closest to the problems.”
Launched in 2022, the Birth Justice initiative aims to support “Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities in addressing racial based health disparities in birth experiences and birth outcomes.” Specific goals of this funding program include strengthening the birth justice movement in the U.S., “increasing collaboration” between organizations in the field and increasing “the movement of more resources” to birth justice organizations. Past grantees include the Ttawaxt Birth Justice Center in Washington, New Jersey’s Birth from the Earth, and the Our Wellness Network of Ohio.
The Foundation’s Ms. South invests in the leadership of women and girls of color and supporting “the sustainability of the ecosystem of organizations.” This initiative operates exclusively in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Recent grant recipients include the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center of Texas and Louisiana’s Citizen SHE, among many others.
The Activist Collaboration and Care Fund, launched in 2020, aims to “to strengthen collaboration in and across social justice movements for women and girls of color, Trans women and girls of color, and Indigenous women and girls.” Grants stemming from this program provide general operating support for one year and support collaboration through “relationship building, shared analysis, strategy and planning, and healing justice support.”
The Girls of Color Initiative is a national grantmaking program that focuses on “cisgender, transgender, and queer girls of color living at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression.” The program’s goals are to “shift power,” “move resources” and “leverage Ms.’s institutional capital to influence the field in support of girls and the organizations that support them.”
The Building Connections Initiative “fosters increased coordination across social movements, sectors, and inter-generational to ensure the issues impacting women and girls of color are centered to maximize collective impact.” This initiative has recently supported Ohio’s Justice for Migrant Women, the American LGBTQ+ Museum of New York and Collective Power for Reproductive Justice.
Grants for Violence Prevention, Public Health, and Economic Development
The Ms. Foundation’s Safety, Health and Economic initiative invests in gender-based violence prevention, women’s health, and women’s economic development. This program works broadly in these areas and does not name specific goals or priorities, preferring a broad grantmaking approach.
Recent grantees include Adhikaar for Human Rights, an organization that engages New York’s Nepali community in human rights activism, and the Native American Community Board, which works to secure health and human rights for Indigenous groups in the U.S.
Important Grant Details:
The Ms. Foundation for Women made about $5 million in grants in a recent year. Most grants range from $2,000 to $35,000, with an average grant size of about $15,000. Most grants are awarded for general operating support. For additional information about this funder’s past grantmaking, see its partners page or its annual reports.
The Ms. Foundation for Women does not accept unsolicited applications for funding, but occasionally posts RFPs on its open grants page. Interested grantseekers who feel that their work aligns with the goals of the foundation may introduce themselves via email.
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