Inside the Foundation Blog
News, Updates, Stories, and Impact Across Washington
In April Washington Women’s Foundation (WaWF) hosted a 4-day trip in Yakima to select our first Place-Based Grantee and three Merit Award grantees as part of our inaugural Place-Based Grantmaking.
This role serves as WaWF’s primary liaison to nonprofit partners and prospective applicants, and ensures all member grantmaking and learning programs are equitable, transparent, community-informed, and aligned with WaWF’s mission to advance women and girls across Washington state.
As we continue moving through this “Year Zero” of our new plan, we are building on decades of collective giving while sharpening our focus on the future: women funding women and girls across Washington State.
This is Washington Women’s Foundation’s (WaWF’s) first year centering our grantmaking on women and girls who are furthest from justice, and we’re delighted to share our second grant under this new approach!
This is Washington Women’s Foundation’s (WaWF’s) first year centering our grantmaking on women and girls who are furthest from justice, and we’re thrilled to announce our very first grant under this new approach! Empowering Latina Leadership & Action (ELLA) ELLA is a Chicana/Latina-led social justice organization rooted in advocacy and leadership cultivation to increase Chicana/Latina representation as key decision-makers across all sectors. At the heart of […]
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 […]
You’re invited! Washington Women’s Foundation is entering an important period of growth and focus. If you are interested in playing a greater leadership role in the Foundation and helping guide our work in the years ahead, we invite you to consider serving on our Board of Directors. Each year, we open a call for members who are […]
By Maria Kolby-Wolfe It’s hard to believe we’re already nearing the end of February. The first few weeks of the year have moved quickly at WaWF as we introduced our new flexible membership options, our new grantmaking process, and as we get ready for another year of collective grantmaking, learning, and connection. Last week, I had the chance to jump into […]
A New Chapter for Washington Women’s Foundation For 30 years, Washington Women’s Foundation (WaWF) has believed and acted on a simple but powerful truth: When women come together, we change the world. And we have always been ambitious in living that truth. Historically, we moved to change everything, investing in grantmaking that was intentionally broad and widely focused on addressing racial and gender inequities across Washington state. Today, we are stepping boldly into our next era, […]