Executive Summary:  

In the first quarter of 2026, Washington Women’s Foundation launched its new business plan and began the important work of putting it into practice. We applied our updated grant criteria to 156 applications and piloted our first place‑based grant in Yakima. We also surfaced key learnings about what it truly means to center women and girls and to pursue systems‑level change. This quarter we continued to highlight opportunities for member engagement through new tools, in‑person grantmaking, learning opportunities, and skills‑based support for grantees. Together, these experiences affirmed our decision to treat 2026 as a “Year Zero”: A grounding year focused on learning, trust‑building, and moving thoughtfully as we prepare for the next decade of impact. 

CEO PROGRESS REPORT 

We Can Do Hard Things 

In January, Washington Women’s Foundation (WaWF) launched a bold new business plan shaped by months of member feedback and grounded in our mission to provide long‑term, unrestricted funding, organizational support, and powerful networks for women and girls. Guided by our values of community, courage, curiosity, and care, we committed together to break down systemic barriers, advance women’s leadership, and meet essential needs across Washington. 

That commitment carried us through a demanding first quarter as we built trust in one another and our new processes, strengthened relationships between members and grantees, debated tough questions with one another, and experienced moments of alignment and growth as a foundation. This is what collective courage looks like in practice. I am proud to share how your Foundation is turning vision into action in 2026. 

Grant Criteria Brought to Life: From Theory to Practice 

This quarter marked the first real stress test of putting our newly articulated funding criteria into practice—and the learning has been both humbling and affirming. We received 136 Direct Services Grant applications and 20 applications for our Place‑Based Grant for Yakima, all reviewed using our new gender lens rubric. Our early rounds of grant review clarified that serving women and girls was not the same as intentionally focusing on women and girls! 

We had forgotten how challenging our grantmaking had been in 2017 when we first introduced our racial and gender equity criteria. We found ourselves revisiting lessons learned about what it truly means to examine whether an organization is Intentional, Accountable, and Demonstrable—now with our narrowed focus on women, girls, and gender‑expansive people. Through this process, we identified a new framework developed by WaWF member Erin Brown and her firm, Erndala,  which she has generously allowed us to share. The framework defines four levels of gender engagement: 

• Gender Neutral: While women and girls (or other gender groups) may benefit, gender is not a defined focus in how the work is structured or measured. 

• Gender Aware: Women and girls (and other gender groups) are intentionally included, but programs are not yet designed to address root causes of inequity. 

• Gender Responsive: Programs and strategies are intentionally designed to address gender inequities.  

• Gender Transformative: The organization works to shift systems, structures, and norms that produce and sustain gender inequities. Efforts extend beyond individual programs to influence policies, practices, and power dynamics at a broader level. 

We’re increasingly seeing that the strongest alignment with our mission lives squarely in the Gender Transformative space, where systems, structures, and norms are transformed. We’re making plans to refine our rubric to include this framing and make our priority clearer for both applicants and member grant makers moving forward. 

We were also encouraged by the breadth and diversity of our applicant pool. Of the 170 organizations that have applied for various grants through our rolling process, nearly 70% are BIPOC‑led, most by BIWOC. This reflects the strength of our intersectional approach to grantmaking and affirms that centering women and girls furthest from justice heightens rather than limits our ability to address racial inequities. 

At the same time, this work surfaced operational questions, from how we balance flexibility and clarity in a rolling application process to how we define and track impact over time. These questions guided our decision to embrace more fully 2026 as Year Zero of our goal – a  grounding year where we give ourselves permission to slow down, build shared understanding, deepen trust, and develop the space needed to move forward with greater clarity and confidence. 

Member Engagement: Where the Magic Happens 

Members and how they engage have been at the heart of nearly every decision this quarter. 

We launched Mighty Networks, creating a new digital home for members to connect with one another by geography, interests, and shared experiences. Whether finding someone in your zip code to carpool to a Foundation event with, catching a Mariners game with some like-minded friends, or getting a peek behind the scenes at WaWF, Mighty is quickly becoming a hub for relationship‑building. If you’re a member and haven’t joined yet, contact membership@wawomensfdn.org to get your link to this private, member-only, communication portal. 

This quarter also included: 

• The launch of our Development, Membership, and Communications Committee, now actively partnering with Board and staff on our rebrand as well as our marketing, fundraising, and member engagement strategy. Fresh new branding is coming soon! 

• Deep member involvement in our streamlined grant review process, including new time‑saving tools like our rubric and an easier-to-use grant platform. 

• For our weekend-long Yakima grant makers, new grant processes are bringing a return to something old‑school and powerful: In‑person grantmaking. In-person grantmaking is how WaWF first got our start, and we’re delighted to bring it back in this weekend form. 

• Robust learning opportunities for grantmaking members and the broader community, including an exploration of Our Gender Lens; a robust conversation about Nonprofits, Philanthropy, and Social Change; and a Yakima Panel that had our members deeply considering how gender inequities manifest themselves in a rural context. All of these will be available in the Educational Video section of Mighty Networks (another reason to sign up!). 

• Our Grantee Engagement Team (GET) has arranged several short‑term, skills‑based volunteer opportunities tailored to grantee needs and member knowledge. Projects include a grantee website audit by members with digital media expertise, professional member support launching a grantee’s first gala, and grantee board governance training from WaWF members experienced in board leadership. If you’re interested in putting your skills to use, contact info@wawomensfdn.org and request to fill out the Member Skills survey. Our GET team would love to connect you with a grantee in need of your knowledge. 

Celebrations 

Our Community Celebration captured so much of what we’re striving for: Intergenerational connection, a forward‑looking vision grounded in our history, and a community energized by collective action for women and girls in Washington State. Hearing from founder Rhoda Altom, WaWF alum Pamela Eakes of Mothers Against Violence in America (our very first grantee!), and recent grantee Tamarah Taylor of Young Women Empowered made the continuity and dynamism of women‑led collective giving beautifully tangible. 

At the same time, the celebration surfaced an opportunity for growth in how we support and encourage member participation at in‑person events. While many members express a strong desire for connection and RSVP with enthusiasm, actual attendance often falls short of expectations. We’re still learning what gets in the way and how we might better design experiences that make it easier and more compelling for members to show up. We’re hopeful that deeper connections through Mighty Networks will help build momentum not just around events themselves, but around the relationships that can grow from gathering in person. 

What’s Going on with Yakima 

One of the most significant milestones this quarter was the launch of our Place‑Based Grant, with Yakima as our first‑year focus. We’re about to set out for Yakima, but here are some of our first learnings: 

Our very first lesson? Defining even the geographical space occupied by “Yakima” is more complex than it sounds. Is it the city? The county? The valley? The Yakama Reservation? Yakama tribal lands extend beyond all these other boundaries, so how did we ensure we were including the indigenous ways of seeing Yakama? After much learning (and listening), we defined the geographic boundaries of our grantmaking for this region as the borders of Yakima County and the border of the Yakama’s reservation lands. The process itself was a powerful reminder of how much those of us outside of Yakima still need to learn about the region. 

Building this grant required us to do several things at once: 

• Design an entirely new grant program and format 

• Develop a learning experience rooted in local context that was additive to the community 

• Coordinate member participation, travel, and logistics for in‑person grantmaking  

From the outset, members voiced a concern we took seriously: The fear of showing up as a “big city” foundation that wasn’t connected to local, rural realities. In response, we prioritized area partnerships—working closely with members of the Yakama Nation, the local community foundation, former grantees, and several WaWF members who live in the Yakima Valley. 

We hope we have built a grant experience shaped with a community rather than for a community. We hope our members involved in the Yakima grantmaking experiment experience the joys of traveling together, making participatory decisions in real time, and reconnecting with in‑person philanthropy in ways many have never experienced before. I’ll report back on whether our hopes are realized in my next CEO report! 

We learned a similar lesson in this Yakima Grant that we learned earlier with our Direct Services Grantmaking: We need to give ourselves grace and time to work through our new path. In the future, we’ll allot more time before our Place-Based Grant to build the partnerships needed and to manage the logistics required.  

We also reminded ourselves that to do things right in philanthropy, it is sometimes necessary to quell our sense of urgency and let time move a little slower. So much of our work in trust-based philanthropy is about relationships and, as we all have learned by now, when building relationships, you have to move at the speed of trust! 

Looking Ahead 

This quarter required us to sit in what some of us call “the messy middle” longer than most of us felt comfortable doing. It demanded that we hold a space for complexity. We learned new systems while strengthening relationships. We listened carefully while still moving forward with ambitious plans. And we stayed grounded in our values during a time of broad uncertainty. 

We are deeply grateful to our members for your trust and curiosity, and for your unwavering commitment to women and girls across Washington State. Look for my next update in late June. I hope by then I’ll have a lot more information to share with you about how Year Zero of our next decade is going! 

Thank you for doing this hard and hopeful work with us! 

Maria