The Women’s Fund makes grants...to programs and organizations that address the unique needs of Rhode Island’s women and girls.

But grantmaking is just the beginning. The Women’s Fund also:

• Offers a choice of ways for women to help women, through philanthropy. Named funds. Funds that produce income for you, the donor. Even a special fund where young girls can learn and practice philanthropy.
• Advocates for change. The Fund focuses attention on issues that harm or limit the state’s women and girls. In pursuit of a truer understanding, the Women’s Fund underwrites studies such as “The Status of Women in Rhode Island” (an independent benchmarking study to be conducted by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Washington, DC).
• Gathers groups with similar goals to discuss problems and jointly plan solutions. The Women’s Fund acts as a “convener.” We invite interested parties to examine an issue together, and to pool their leadership and resources.
• Links Rhode Island to a global movement to improve the status of women and girls. There are more than 100 Women’s Funds in the US and internationally, from Mexico to Cameroon to Nepal.

The mission of the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island is to advance equity and social justice for women and girls. The Fund champions fairness, impartiality, opportunity, shared power and responsibility in all spheres of personal and community life including economic, cultural, educational, social, and political.

The Fund serves as a catalyst for persuasive, progressive and enduring social change for women and girls by:

• Making grants that address unique needs;
• Focusing attention on inequities in status and advocating systemic change;
• Engaging women and girls as active philanthropists and mobilizing them for action;
• Positioning funding for women and girls as an essential investment to build sustainable communities;
• Convening, collaborating and leveraging leadership and resources;
• Celebrating accomplishments;
• Creating a thoughtful, flexible and proactive agenda to guide this critical work, in keeping with stated values.