Women’s Funding Network (WFN)

Background

Women’s Funding Network was founded in 1990 after a joint meeting of the National Black United Fund and National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. By the year 2000, the organization had $200 million dollars in assets and distributed grants totaling $300 million per year. The organization has arranged meetings with its leaders and former Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton. ⁴

Activity and Policy Stances

Women’s Funding Network lobbies at the state, federal, and international level for abortion access, relaxed immigration laws, and changes in policing strategies. ³ It also supports liberal nominees for judicial positions, releasing a statement supporting President Joe Biden’s nomination of then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. ⁵

In a June 24, 2022 statement, the group wrote that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, “was another gut punch to much of the country” and that the group was “devastated by the news.” ⁶

On July 7, 2022, the group published an article titled “The End of Roe is Terrifying for Queer Couples” that said that Dobbs would “legally invalidate” lives of women and queer couples, that “cruelty is the point,” and that “[w]hen the Supreme Court dismantled Roe, we knew queer couples…probably had much to fear—that no one’s rights were safe.” ⁷

Women’s Funding Network funds numerous organizations, including state and city chapters of the Foundation for Women. ² Other recipients include A Fund for Women, the Channel Foundation, Donor Direction Action, the Equality Fund, the Gender Justice Fund, and the Fund for Women and Girls. ⁸

Funding

Women’s Funding Network receives funding from a variety of left-of-center grant making foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. ^{1 1}

People

The president and CEO of the Women’s Funding Network, Elizabeth Barajas-Román, was previously the CEO of the Solidago Foundation, a left-of-center grant making organization that provides funding to activism and advocacy organizations that support environmentalist regulations, increased government spending, increased unionization, and left-of-center social policies on issues including race and immigration. ⁹