First Women’s Capital Collaborative Shared Gifting Circle hosted by RSF in San Francisco
Sep 20 2017
We are excited to announce that RSF Social Finance will host its first Women’s Capital Collaborative Shared Gifting Circle on October 16th. The gathering will bring together 12 women-led social enterprises to RSF’s offices in San Francisco, where one representative from each non-profit organization will share a grant proposal. Then, as a group, they will determine how to divide a pre-determined amount of funding to support each other’s work.
The goal of the Collaborative is to back organizations that empower and improve the lives of women and girls. Channeling inspiration from a new report by the Center for High Impact Philanthropy, we selected social enterprises working in—what “The XX Factor” authors called—the “five dimensions of women’s lives”: health, education, economic empowerment, personal safety, and legal rights.
We received many quality nominations for this Circle from our staff and the broader RSF community. Nominees reside in many parts of North America, and demonstrated the enormous talent pool of women who lead the charge on life-changing endeavors, both domestically and internationally. Ultimately, we focused our final decision on social enterprises that made the advancement of women and girls a key priority in their day-to-day operations.
Below, we present the final list of Circle participants:
- Equal Access
- Freedom House
- GirlVentures
- Global Press Institute
- Help a Mother Out
- Pajaro Valley Shelter Services
- Project Callisto
- San Miguel–CASA
- Sustainable Health Enterprises
- Thousand Currents
- Women Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics and Agriculture
- Work Options for Women
Shared Gifting is a participatory grantmaking experience that RSF has experimented with and championed for seven-plus years. The process shifts decision-making and allocation authority for gift money from donors to Circle participants, otherwise known as grantees. By transferring control of grant funds, we nurture a space where trust, accountability, reciprocity, and relationship can occur beyond what we’ve seen with traditional philanthropic models. And since we design Circles with a key issue area in mind, participants have their proposals reviewed by peers in the field, opening up the prospect of powerful collaboration.
We are ecstatic to host all of the wonderful organizations that were selected, and look forward to sharing our experiences from the Circle in an upcoming blog post.
