A Brief History of the Women's Donor Activist Movement
We are thrilled to announce the launch of a short, motivational film about how women today are making history through their giving. The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, Great Plains Productions and Chicken & Egg Pictures partnered to develop a fun, 4-minute film designed to inspire new donors to join a hands-on/hands-with funding movement dedicated to equity, justice and the strategic use of money for women and girls.
The video is a donor cultivation tool that can be uploaded onto your own organizational Web site and down-loaded and shared on hand-held mobile devices. We hope it will be the beginning of a new body of evidence that women of wealth can change history through bold and focused giving.
This video was inspired by historian Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner who brilliantly determined to preserve and document the writings of suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage. In the 19th century, Gage complained that women of means funded their husbands’ alma maters, churches and the ballet, but rarely stepped forward to fund their suffragette sisters. Imagine how different the world would be today if women had begun funding women sooner! This fast-moving video shows how today’s women’s funding movement, and new giving trends like Women Moving Millions, are literally changing the course of history.
Click here to watch the film, and when finished, tell your friends about it. Women are making history. It’s time to acknowledge and celebrate. Let’s all strengthen this movement of women funding women. Matilda would be so proud!
Helen LaKelly Hunt and Chris Grumm
About the film’s partners:
The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation incorporated as a NYS educational foundation in 2000, and the following year received non-profit status under the leadership of Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner. Within nine short months, the Gage Foundation raised the money to purchase the Gage Home in 2002. They are currently in the midst of a capital campaign to rehabilitate and restore the Gage Home as the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center of Education and Dialogue. The house will hold the grand opening of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center on October 8-10, 2010.
Chicken & Egg Pictures is a hybrid film fund and non-profit production company, founded in 2005 by Julie Parker Benello, Wendy Ettinger and Judith Helfand. It is dedicated to supporting women filmmakers who are as passionate about the craft of storytelling as they are about the social justice, environmental and human rights issues they’re embracing, translating and exploring on film.
Great Plains Productions is a communications company formed by Carey Graeber in 2001 that produces broadcast documentaries and communications for corporations, government entities and non-profit organizations.
The Sister Fund is a private foundation that supports and gives voice to women working for justice from a religious framework. It was delighted to fund and in other ways support the production of this film. The Sister Fund is a member of Women's Funding Network.
