BCWF Invites 501(c)(3) Agencies to Apply for Grants

The Bucks County Women's Fund announced new grantmaking priorities on its web site and now invites 501(c)(3) agencies that serve women and girls in Bucks County to apply for grant funding.

The foundation of women's funds is participative philanthropy, with grantmaking as its cornerstone. In women's funds like the BCWF, women and girls are the social change agents - giving and raising money and deciding how it is used to benefit the community. We are opening the doors of participative philanthropy in Bucks County, transforming local money and willpower into community capital with which women and girls create change.

Grantmaking is our primary vehicle for making social change and building a culture of philanthropy where all are engaged. We have codified this in our core values statement: "We are committed to realizing a democratic vision of philanthropy through which people of all ages and backgrounds learn about, experience, and become engaged in giving at every level."

Therefore, we will strive to engage broad involvement of women in the proposal review and grantmaking decision processes of the BCWF.

Based on the results of the listening year, the BCWF has restructured its grantmaking priorities and guidelines. We intend to focus funding on:

• high impact projects aimed at seeding and achieving long-term equity.
• projects that create tangible shifts and/or systemic solutions to current inequities.
• projects that engender collaboration wherever it makes sense.
• projects that leverage other action and other investment to improve the lives of women and girls in Bucks County.

"Band-aid" or emergency funding and direct service gap funding will be a lower priority, in favor of this more systemic-change-oriented approach. All proposals will be examined with a gender lens to understand specifically how each will impact the lives of women and girls.

The BCWF defines systemic change initiatives as those initiatives that change ideas, assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors that are harmful to women and girls or impede their ability to achieve to their potential. Specifically, initiatives should:

• be sustainable, so that the change continues to occur even after direct intervention ends.
• create observable changes in how people are thinking, talking, and behaving about an issue.
• engage people and communities in civicaction.
• develop or change public or corporate policies.
• engage and oppose all opposition to equity.

Based on the results of the listening year and with the approval of the BCWF board, grantmaking priorities will include:

1. Economic self-sufficiency initiatives for low income women, particularly single parent heads of households.
2. Self-esteem building initiatives for girls that have the potential to impact teen pregnancy, eating disorders, educational achievement, earning, relationship decisions, and abuse; and that promote skills in leadership, advocacy, and philanthropy.
3. Self-esteem building initiatives for women that have potential to engage more women and, through them, whole communities in the work of building equity and promoting systemic change.
4. Initiatives that improve access to existing information and services.
5. Early funding to enable organizations with cutting edge ideas related to the above priorities to innovate and implement solutions for systemic change.

Check out our new grant application and guidelines. The deadline for submitting applications is December 19, 2008. The review process will include site visits and multiple grant readers' evaluations.

Grant recipients will be invited to participate in The Power of the Purse, our annual grant making dinner and celebration of women's philanthropy, on March 26, 2009.

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