 Local Women Change Face of Philanthropy—By Kristin Butler Published: December, 2005  Laurene Powell Jobs, Kamala Harris, Diane Jordan Wexler and Kavita N. Ramdas celebrate the Global Fund for Women's grantmaking and the Investing in Women Campaign. The power to write a check is the power to change the world. That's what countless women are discovering as they move from economic independence to a position where they can use their financial strength to support the causes they believe in. This is not only changing the world; it is changing the face of philanthropy. "Women have so much power," said Maya Thornell-Sandifor, Senior Communications Officer at the Women's Foundation of California. "We want women to realize how much power they have and what they could accomplish if they wanted to wield it." Studies show that 51 percent of wealth is now held in women's names, either as inheritors or as earners. Seventy percent of inheritors are women, and if the trend continues, women are poised to inherit $44 trillion by the year 2044. In addition, women continue to climb the corporate ladder and increase their earning potential. They own the majority of individual businesses in California and currently make 85 percent of the spending decisions in the household, she said. "Women have $70 billion worth of purchasing power," Thornell-Sandifor said. "There is a lot we could do with it if we could gain a critical mass." Critical mass is what The Women's Foundation and other organizations are developing as they study the unique ways and reasons that women donate money, and devise new cultivation and granting strategies to respond to the feminization of philanthropy. "Women tend to give much more quietly than men; they don't need their name in lights as much," said Donna Hall, Executive Director of the Women Donors Network. "They also tend to get more involved emotionally and action-wise with the organization they give to." This stems partly from the historic role women have always played in society as active volunteers who donated their time to organizations and causes, she said. In addition, while men tend to give to institutions — such as the schools they attended, religious organizations, or fraternal clubs such as Rotary or Kiwanis — women tend to give to specific issues or causes that they feel passionately about. In this way, philanthropy is beginning to rival voting as the political tool of choice for women. "People feel the need for some vehicle besides voting, a more active vehicle for social change," Thornell-Sandifor said. As this shift happens, foundations are finding that more women philanthropists are choosing to support programs that strive for systemic change rather than ones that only provide direct service to a specific number of people, she said. | ||
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