Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that it’s already February – where did that first month go?
When we reopened the office after the winter holiday, we started a new fiscal year with a new financial model. Specifically, we are now investing the full $2,500 annual contribution from each member into our collective work (click for more details). This change was made largely in part to significantly increase our grantmaking ability as a collective of informed women who together influence community transformation. This vision of grantmaking is one of our commitments as we evolve our philanthropic model to be more responsive, adaptable, and inclusive, as outlined in our new strategic framework.
This new financial model also allows us to offer members greater flexibility in the way contributions are made to the Foundation. In the past, we have asked our members to make their annual $2,500 investment to the Foundation in one lump sum (unless you also were using a matching gift). While this level of one-time annual giving is attainable for some women, it is not for everyone. By dividing the annual contribution over a set period of time, we hope to make the giving level attainable for more women.
Therefore, we are pleased to announce that we are introducing a process for making the majority of your annual contribution in monthly recurring payments over the course of a year. Here’s how it will work:
How It Works
Members now can elect to split the payment of their annual $2,500 contribution over a period of time. An upfront contribution of $1,000 must be contributed by June 15th of any year before starting monthly recurring payments. The monthly recurring schedule and payment amounts are outlined in the table below:
| Upfront Contribution Month | First Recurring Contribution Month* | Minimal Monthly Amount | Number of Recurring Payments |
| January | February | $150/month | 10** |
| February | March | $150/month | 10 |
| March | April | $167/month | 9 |
| April | May | $188/month | 8 |
| May | June | $215/month | 7 |
| June | July | $250/month | 6 |
* The day of the month can be specified by the member.
**The last contribution will be made in November of that year. The last contribution will be made in December of that year for all other monthly recurring contribution schedules.
Members can increase their monthly contributions to any desired amount to give additional monthly gifts to one or more of the Foundation’s funds (Pooled Fund, Annual Fund, Colleen S. Willoughby Endowment, and Partner Grant Fund).
Members can also increase their monthly contributions to complete their annual $2,500 contribution before the end of the calendar year. If you are interested in doing this, please discuss this with staff when setting up your recurring payments.
How to Sign Up
To ensure that we have your full $2,500 by the end of the year, we request that we receive your request in writing no later than June 15 if you are interested in setting up monthly recurring payments. This can be done by e-mail to staff, or submitting the Join or Renew form (whichever is most applicable) and selecting the option to make recurring payments.
Payment Types Accepted
At the moment, we only accept recurring payments made by credit card. These contributions will be processed using PayPal.
Making Recurring Gifts as a General Supporter
If you would like to support WA Women’s Foundation, but are not interested in becoming a member at this time, we welcome your recurring gift as well! When you fill out the Contribute form on the website, you can select the option to make a recurring gift. You can specify the amount and frequency of your gift (e.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly, twice a year, etc.), as well as how long you would like to make this gift, on the form in the Notes section, or at the time we contact you.
Questions?
The above details and further information about how to renew or stop recurring payments are outlined in the Procedure for Recurring Payments document, which you can read here. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail at aki@wawomensfdn.org or give me a call at (206) 407-2171.
We appreciate your feedback and patience as we try this out for the first time this year. Depending on how this goes, we look forward to exploring other ways powerful change agents can support our mission of transformative collective giving.