Investing for the Future

Investing for the Future

The Women’s Fund is committed to meeting the current and future needs of women and girls in the Fox Valley. This requires substantial financial investment to provide the resources needed to address our primary issues.

The Women’s Fund is an endowed foundation. In 1994, 106 women and men gave $1,000 each to create a permanent fund specifically for women and girls in the Fox Valley. We continue to build upon those initial gifts from our founding donors and have pooled the subsequent contributions to increase our endowment fund. Today, these pooled gifts, both large and small, and from many donors, have grown to over $2.5 million.

Thirty Years of Impact

Our founding donors imagined a better future for the women and girls in our community. Because of their vision, the Women’s Fund has granted more than $2.2 million to 224 different programs at 83 local nonprofit organizations. But so much more remains to be done; 54% of requests to our annual grant programs to unfunded.

The Women’s Fund is the premier partner of female philanthropists in the Fox Valley. We can help you achieve your charitable goals to improve our whole community through strategic investments in women and girls.

Growing Our Endowment Fund

An endowment is a financial fund that is intended to permanently support the mission of an organization. Donations directed to the Women’s Fund endowment are invested to earn yearly interest, rather than spent immediately, and these earnings are used to support local women and girls through our competitive grantmaking program, and the directives of donor-advised fund holders.

Contact us if you are interested in contributing to the Women’s Fund endowment fund. You can even establish an endowment fund in your own name to support the mission of the Women’s Fund. Learn how you can start a fund.

The Women’s Fund endowment is invested at the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region. You can learn more about the investment program here.