An Announcement:

For 29 years Washington Women’s Foundation (WaWF) has had a rhythm for its flagship grant program: 

A Letter of Intent (LOI) Phase, followed by a Learning/Proposal stage and a Site Visit/Conversation Stage, culminating in a vote by the membership for organizations that would receive our large Collective Grant Awards. Some aspects have been tweaked over the years. But overall, this has been how we have responded to the needs of our community for nearly three decades. 

Until now.  

This year the Washington Women’s Foundation will be ending their Collective Grant Process early. In 2025 the Foundation will be awarding 15 nonprofit organizations $20,000 grants each. The board also approved more dollars be released from the Board Discretionary Fund for Merit Awards of $1,500 each, to be given to 13 additional organizations in the Learning Phase of our cycle. 

You might be asking how and why we arrived at this decision. I invite you to read on! We hope that by honestly sharing how we reached this decision we might inspire other funders and foundations to consider how they might also make difficult choices in the face of a strange and turbulent year. For now, this is how Washington Women’s Foundation is beginning its work to Meet the Moment. 

How it Began 

In February our Collective Grants Committee (CGC) concluded the LOI Phase of our grant process, and the Grantee Engagement Team (GET) made their first outreach to past grantees. In conversations with our grantees and with other nonprofit partners our committee members grew alarmed by what they were hearing. They alerted the Foundation’s leadership that they were receiving deeply troubling reports from our nonprofit partners and grant applicants about the impact of the current political climate on their organizations. 

They described conversations where executive directors, overwhelmed by looming funding cuts, broke down in tears when asked how they were doing. They mentioned leaders who warned that their organizations were facing thousands, if not millions of dollars being scooped out of their budgets with no notice due to abruptly cancelled federal funding – funding that was to provide care for pregnant women, immigrants and refugees, rural children, veterans, and other vulnerable people in our society. Sadly, as we dug deeper, it was clear that these stories were not isolated to Washington State, nor were they particularly unusual or unique to our partners: 

[N]onprofits…have received death threats, their staff living in fear for their safety, their mission threatened by intimidation and hate…[N]onprofits…have received letters from the federal government demanding that they scrub their websites of words that are now considered taboo, words that speak to the very essence of their work, words like “refugee,” “diversity,” and “inclusion.” These are the real stories of this moment, the real sources of the profound unease…[Nonprofits] are being targeted, silenced, and undermined. We are stretched thin. We are exhausted. We are worried. https://tnnonprofits.org/i-am-not-okay/.  

As a trust-based funder WaWF is deeply committed to listening to our nonprofit partners, and their tales are sobering. In our debate around how we could address the moment, we identified three urgent concerns, among others, facing our partners and therefore our grant process itself. In the end, answering these challenges led to our decision to change our grant mid-cycle. 

The Challenges We Saw 

The Erasure of Values Terminology 

We are a funder whose grant criteria focuses on increasing Racial and Gender Identity Equity in Washington State. It is here, at the heart of our criteria, that the current Administration is taking its most draconian actions across all our funding priorities: Healthcare; Education; Climate & Agricultural Justice; Housing & Hunger; Art & Community Culture; Law, Justice & Incarceration. Every one of our grantees – even those who do not receive federal dollars – in every one of our priorities, is facing an altered funding atmosphere. 

We are gravely concerned about the demands from the federal government that organizations who accept federal dollars eliminate mentioning certain words or practicing certain ways of doing business that center diversity, equity, and inclusion. These demands are directly opposed to the work we as a Foundation fund and care about the most.  

This requirement to cut key terms began in the medical research realm, but are now seeping into demands across all grants, and encroaching on organizational structures and communications. We are hearing of nonprofits scrubbing their websites, emails, general correspondence, and marketing materials of words like “Diversity”, “Equity” and “Inclusion”. One arts organization in Minnesota describes the extent of the erasure being demanded to accept grant awards from the National Endowment of the Arts around gender identity: 

Last week, the NEA imposed new requirements for future grant applications…Those requirements provide that no funds can be used for programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or anything the Trump administration considers to be “gender ideology.” Further, these requirements would mandate…all NEA applicants to … comply with all Executive Orders of the Trump Administration, including the racist and transphobic orders issued last month that: 

• Deny the existence of transgender persons; 

• Disparage well-established understandings of gender identity; and 

• Declare that diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and practices are “illegal” and “immoral.” 

Moreover…arts organizations must agree to comply with all future Executive Orders from this administration.  https://www.newharmonyproject.org/news/2025/2/10/an-open-letter-to-the-nhp-community 

If they refuse to sign a compliance statement agreeing with these injunctions not just on the programs being funded but in all aspects of their work, arts nonprofits in Washington State (including some of WaWF’s grantees) who have accepted federal funds in the past face the elimination of a key funding source. 

Stretched Nonprofit Capacity 

The capacity of staff at nonprofits has been stretched thin as they negotiate this new landscape. Our grantees and applicants do not have the wherewithal to have in-depth conversations with grant makers. Their time is better spent addressing these new federal decrees and focusing their attention on survival. They will have enough to do filling holes left by timid funders who have stopped giving to “controversial” causes. 

Our committee members were vocal and adamant that taking up more of our nonprofit partners’ capacity at such a moment was out of the question. It was quite clear that what was needed most was our unconditional and immediate support. Committee members expressed strongly that our decades-old process – beloved though it is – was unacceptably onerous this year, particularly for those organizations facing federal strictures.  

Equity in the Grant Process 

Equity is a paramount commitment and value of WaWF. Our committee members pushed us to think about how equitable the competition for our top grant could be in this environment, particularly if some organizations were required to take time out of already-busy schedules to scrub websites of words like Equity, Diversity, Inclusion while other organizations were not required, or able, or willing to do so. We were particularly distressed by the pressure being brought to bear on organizations working with immigrants and/or the trans community, given the unrelenting attempts by the current administration to eliminate both populations from our nation. The question of equity remained: Should WaWF  demand the same level of attention from these organizations in this year as it did from other organizations, where the traumas being faced might not be as immediate or all-encompassing? 

Given this environment, our members felt particularly averse to asking nonprofits to discuss inclusion, diversity, and other banned terms on our recorded Conversation calls, recordings that are shared among several hundred women. They were adamant that to do so would be callous and insensitive to the real risks some of our partners are facing. A few committee members flatly refused to be a party to such a conversation, insisting that our standing as a Trust-Based Funder would be suspect if we were to ask questions that frankly, we already knew the answer to:  

What did our nonprofit Partners need?  

They needed support, and they needed money. Now.

Our Collective Decision

So, our member leaders proposed a bold act to meet the moment: End the Grant process now. Give the money now. Give as much as we can to as many organizations as we can, now. And then start looking for more ways to support them and other grantees in the future. 

The Board and Staff of the Foundation swiftly supported this recommendation, and turned to our wider collective of 300 women to ask them directly: Should we act differently this year? Should we end our cycle and give the money now? They roared back, “YES!”  

97% of Washington Women’s Foundation Members voted to move our dollars to more organizations, faster, for 2025. 

In their own words:  

“Let’s just get the money out there.”  

“I applaud WaWF for being creative and flexible and “spreading the love” to 15 worthy organizations in these extraordinary times. $20K is a substantial amount, and it is wonderful to think that 15 organizations can all benefit.” 

“Normally I think slow but steady is the way to go – but not at present. Thank you for considering these changes.”  

“Please thank the grant committee folks for bringing the situation to the board’s attention. I’m proud of WaWF for being flexible in responding to this crisis for nonprofits.” 

There were naturally those who were concerned that this move was too quick, our reaction too hasty. They advocated for a steady hand in these tumultuous times, and for fewer, but more substantial grants. I want those members to know they were heard. Indeed, several of your comments were ones I myself voiced when the idea was first suggested. Your perspectives are valid, and we hope to include your thoughtfulness in our plans as we contemplate our next move. Please continue to share your voice with us! 

For now, please know that thoughtful members like you have researched our grantees, and examined grantee finances, as usual. I assure you we took this step forward only with the overwhelming approval from our members, the unanimous approval of the board, and the fierce advocacy for this path on the part of our member grant committees.   

Washington Women’s Foundation is making this our first action in meeting the extraordinary moment in which we find ourselves. It will not be our last.  

We have moved as quickly as we could as a collective organization. We must now take stock of the wider landscape and explore how we can best meet both the short-term and long-term needs of our partners. This Foundation has been in support of the mighty work nonprofits do in our state for nearly thirty years. We are committed to being here for them for many more to come.  

We will continue to search for ways that we can best meet the moment. 

Onward! 

Maria Kolby-Wolfe