Culture shifting and feminist leadership
As I spoke to fundraisers and donors across the country, I heard incredible passion for expanding the impact of women’s giving. There is deep work happening, reflection within individual people active in this space and reflection among groups of women, and sometimes men, who are working to support donor engagement of women. On the surface, we are talking about fundraising tactics, but very often our questions (about how to do what we do better) take us to another level of reflecting on culture, values and how we work with each other.
Ultimately, reflecting on the purpose of women’s philanthropy – and the actions taken by organizations and individual fundraisers to support it, even my work in various roles as strategic advisor, consultant and researcher – leads us to consider what is really needed to change society.
How can each of our actions – as donors, fundraisers, leaders, activists, collaborators, researchers, consultants and advisors – embody the change we wish to see in the world?
Women donors and fundraisers alike want to see more feminist leadership styles embedded in our groups and organizations – transparent, collaborative, humble, strengths-based, honest, practical, and courageous in the face of the challenges our society faces. Both women and men can take action and lead in these ways, but it is also important for women to take up more leadership roles in the nonprofit sector. Even today in Canada, there is a significant pay gap between male and female nonprofit executives and boards of directors of the larger organizations are often led by men (Charity Village, 2019).
Rather than keep women’s philanthropy in a box or as a program on the side of a desk, there is a small but growing effort to mainstream the use of a gender equity and analysis lens throughout the work of an organization. Mainstreaming is deep and broad work that involves asking questions, listening and adjusting – not just once, but with a mindset of continuous improvement. Mainstreaming a gender lens touches many areas of an organization, including governance, strategic planning, strategic priorities, issue definition and framing, team management, human resources, program implementation, internal communications, external communications, and organizational systems. As women’s leadership and application of gender
analysis expands, organizations are transformed. The hope and promise of mainstreaming a gender lens is that the organization will contribute even more effectively to realizing the change it seeks to achieve in society.
Intersectionality, equity and inclusion
Many of the discussions of women and philanthropy in Canada to date have not touched on other dimensions of equity and inclusion. Some key informants are applying an intersectional lens to their work – considering how factors such as race, class, Indigeneity, immigration status, sexual orientation, and gender identity intertwine in the lives of staff, donors, partners, and beneficiaries. They are also exploring how to make their organizations more inclusive, not just based on gender equity, but recognizing the many ways that power, privilege and marginalization get played out.
Donor engagement and education: towards solidarity and systems change
The donor engagement process holds opportunity for deepening the knowledge of donors about the issues that the organization addresses. Women donors may be an important source of financial support for organizational priorities that are difficult to get funded otherwise, such as policy and systems change work. Some key informants had great success orienting the women’s initiatives towards such strategic priorities. Women donors expressed that they liked to get the inside scoop, to understand an organization’s strategy and to be invited to support a higher order of change. Sharing the organization’s evolution and real needs is a way to get women donors excited about making donations that are designated to overall operations or can be used flexibly to advance the organization’s goals.
Another area of transformational learning that is possible through women donor initiatives is advancing a social justice analysis: understanding the root causes of the challenges faced by the organization’s clients. Sometimes fundraising practice creates divisions between giver and recipient, stories that reinforces class or race hierarchies, for example. This study shows that donor engagement of women offers an opportunity to create donor education and fund development strategies that build a sense of solidarity and respect for clients or beneficiaries.
Fund development streams
A key finding of this study is that women donor engagement initiatives need to be developed with a good grounding in the needs and interests of both the host organization, and the women who support it. There is no one size fits all for a women’s engagement program, and not all tactics will work in every case. This also reflects a finding of Kathleen Loehr, an expert in growing women’s philanthropy, that each organization needs to go through its own process of learning, exploring, goal setting, testing and adapting to develop both a culture and the tactics that will expand donor engagement of women.
That means that an organization may establish multiple fund development streams that focus on or involve women in a meaningful way. In addition to the ongoing group philanthropy program models that have been the focus of this study, I was interested to hear of a few other promising streams: one-time fundraisers and estate planning, which can have specific meanings and functions in women’s philanthropy.
The benefit is that, in casting a wider net beyond the usual prospects, new sources of support for the organization and the issue can be discovered.
Meaningful one-offs
While most organizations are seeking sustainable revenue streams, there can also be emergent needs or opportunities that can benefit from an infusion of resources. I discovered several examples where women who may not normally have donated to an organization were mobilized by a call to action. Especially in these times, when the environment, knowledge and needs of society are changing quickly, I believe there is a real role for meaningful one-off fundraising, and women donors are keen to support opportunities to rapidly move the needle or fill gaps.
Bequests
As women gain more financial power and decision making, and live longer, some organizations are considering how they can shift their approach to legacy gifts. Often there are stories and motivations in the lives of older women that have been ignored, by society and also by fundraisers. Asking questions and listening to these stories is important, as is creating opportunities for elder women to give back, a theme that many key informants hear from the women involved in their donor groups.
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Juniper Glass is the Principal, Lumiere Consulting, and an independent researcher.
Editor's note - this excellent research was published in February 2020 just as COVID was on the rise. Despite being nearly a year old, the findings are still relevant and important today.
