News
Shifting Power Through Participatory Grantmaking
Image credit: Tim Mossholder We are hungry for change. Hungry for new approaches. And most importantly, we are hungry for shifts in power. Now more than ever is the time to interrogate our most commonly held practices, and one such practice is the approach we take to allocating funds for our grantmaking. Attorney Bryan Stevenson, author […]
WDN Board Treasurer Sharon Chen Is Stepping Into Power By Sharing It
Your background is in computer science engineering and you worked at Microsoft for 12 years. You’re also incredibly involved in philanthropy, political activism, and environmental justice. How has your career propelled your philanthropic and activist journey? As a young Asian female in tech in the 90’s who was one of three women in my class […]
Meet Nadia Ismail: She’s leveling the playing field inside and outside of business
You’ve worked professionally in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for over seven years. Can you share more about why you’ve chosen DEI as your professional focus? What DEI lessons do you think the world of philanthropy needs to learn? I began my work in learning and development and discovered that that work on its own […]
Stand United to Stop Hate Against the AAPI Community
Image credit: Jon Tyson We believe everyone should be able to live a secure, peaceful, and productive life. We must work to build a more balanced society and economy that removes obstacles for people struggling to make ends meet, and ensure that all people enjoy basic human rights and freedom from discrimination, violence, and oppression. […]
Meet Aparna Rae: She’s Doing Big Things in DEI
Aparna Rae, entrepreneur and founder of Moving Beyond, a consulting firm that works to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion across all aspects of impact investing, tells us how she came to do this work, why she joined the Women Donors Network, and gives us the scoop on Moving Beyond’s 2021 Workplace survey series. Tell us […]
Rising to the Moment: Our 2020 Annual Report
2020 was a year we were called upon to respond to a pandemic, an economic crisis, a nation-wide reckoning with racial justice, and continued assaults on our democracy—all happening in the context of the most important election of our lives. The pandemic may have changed the way we connect and work, but our strategy remained […]
Recapping WDN Connect 2020
This year for the first time, our annual conference WDN Connect went virtual! We had some amazing speakers whose powerful words energized us to continue to fight for change. Read on for some highlights from their talks. Keynote Address: Isabel Wilkerson Isabel Wilkerson*, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Caste: The Origins of Our […]
New Video: How Did We Take Action in 2020?
This year, we watched a storm hit our country, fueled by longstanding systemic problems, national emergencies, and failings in leadership. In response, we saw communities around the country rising up. In order to support the frontline movements and those most affected, WDN moved our highest amount of grants, ever. To see more, watch our new […]
Emergent Fund in the News
The Emergent Fund was featured in a new article by Giving Compass entitled, “Rapid, Flexible, And Impactful Philanthropy? Emergent Fund Shows Us How It’s Done.” Emergent Fund uses a five-point grantmaking approach that is rapid, flexible, participatory, values-driven, and flips the dynamic of power. Since its inception in 2016, Emergent Fund has demonstrated that getting dollars […]
Grantmaking Update: how is WDN taking action in defense of Black lives?
The Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd are the largest, most sustained protests in our nation’s history – and we are answering the call. Together, we mobilized $4.9 million to the field in critical c3 grants in the first half of 2020. We are moving resources quickly and deepening our commitment […]
