Seven Bay Area Nonprofits that Empower Girls Selected for 2nd Annual WCC Shared Gifting Circle
Aug 22 2018
We are pleased to announce that RSF Social Finance will host our second annual Women’s Capital Collaborative Shared Gifting Circle on October 16th. RSF’s Women’s Capital Collaborative takes an integrated capital approach in supporting women-led social enterprises, which are systemically underfunded and overlooked by conventional funders. We are committed to hosting one Shared Gifting Circle each year as a part of the Collaborative’s grantmaking strategy.
Past Circle participants, WCC funding recipients, RSF staffers, and community partners nominated 39 organizations for this gathering. From that impressive group emerged seven incredible organizations, all located in the Bay Area, whose work focuses on empowering girls–be it through personal safety, education, or artistic enrichment. Women representing each of these organization will come together to determine how to allocate $126,000 in gift money to support each other’s work. We hope that by taking a focused and hyperlocal approach, participants will gain a sense of support and connection to a community of allies and collaborators, both within the Circle and beyond.
The seven organizations participating in this year’s Circle are:
Bay Area Girls Rock Camp (BAGRC) empowers young people through music, promoting an environment that fosters self-confidence, creativity, and teamwork. BAGRC is committed to gender justice and creating an inclusive environment that supports a wide range of marginalized gender identities and expressions.
Because Justice Matters supports women who are victims of sexual exploitation and domestic violence as well as those experiencing isolation due to economic and cultural challenges. Located in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, BJM meets women’s physical and emotional needs by building genuine relationships with these women through coffee/mother’s brunches, nail days, youth dance classes, parenting classes, ESL classes, and more.
Camp Reel Stories believes that when women and girls are better represented behind the scenes in the media, they will be better reflected on the screen. Camp Reel Stories empowers young women with the skills to create their own media, to view current media critically and thoughtfully, and to aspire to leadership in their field.
MISSSEY supports and advocates for youth who are victims of child sex trafficking. They are a survivor-centered, trauma-informed organization confronting the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Oakland, in Alameda County, and throughout California.
Oasis for Girls partners with young women of color aged 14-18 from under-resourced communities in San Francisco to cultivate the skills, knowledge, and confidence to discover their dreams and build strong futures. Oasis’ three programs—RISE Life Skills, CREATE Arts Education, and ENVISION Career Exploration—each focus on key tenets of holistic girls’ development.
The Radical Monarchs create opportunities for young girls of color to form a fierce sisterhood, celebrate their identities, and contribute radically to their communities. For each unit completed in their curriculum, the participants earn a Radical Badge. Each Radical Badge Unit involves learning about topics focused on social justice and self-empowerment through experiential field trips and workshops.
Techbridge Girls inspires girls in underserved communities to discover a passion for science, technology and engineering by providing access to hands-on learning and real-world exposure needed to pursue their dreams and careers. Techbridge Girls works with families, role models, school districts, and other partners to help guide the path to success for the girls they support.
Shared Gifting is a participatory grantmaking experience that RSF has experimented with and championed for over eight 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 thrilled to host another WCC Shared Gifting Circle at our offices in San Francisco, and look forward to the meaningful collaboration and sharing that’s to come.
Kayla Leduc is program associate on RSF’s philanthropic services and client engagement teams.
