Women Engaged (WE) founders experienced, at the outset, the challenges to fundraising for their strategic vision, not unlike many Black women led social justice nonprofits, especially those based in the US South. Too often, these organizations face significant institutional barriers to adequate funding that matches their efforts and respects their tremendous contribution toward equity and justice. According to the Ms. Foundation 2020 report entitled “Pocket Change: How Women and Girls of Color Do More with Less,” highlights the resounding understanding among Black women leaders that the path to sustainable long term support is unfairly arduous.

“Organizations focused on Black women and girls experience higher levels of all barriers to foundation funding, including identifying funding and opportunities relevant to their communities and the work they do, encountering unresponsive funders and excessive administrative work for grant success.” This finding parallels their summary of southern based social justice organizations too as noted in the report, “Southern organizations experience all funding barriers more acutely than other groups. Although a higher proportion of Southern organizations receive foundation funding, the median grant size is very small—only $12,350.”

It took time and diligence to build authentic relationships with our funding partners. In the interim, our leadership made significant personal sacrifices and out-of-pocket financial investments to power WE and generate results that rivaled those of much larger organizations. However, support for our integrated voter engagement campaign efforts increased significantly during the historic gubernatorial race of 2018 that cemented nationally the importance of Black women’s leadership in “Get Out the Vote '' efforts and their political savvy to make a transformative shift toward political progress in Georgia. By 2020, the converging influences of the racial uprisings, the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant economic impacts, as well as the vitriol and general lack of civility in our country’s political environment, compelled many funders to take more deliberate and intentional action to support Black women-founded, -owned and -led organizations in Georgia and to fund work that strengthens U.S. democracy. Women Engaged is now being introduced to a broader audience of donors as one of the critical organizations central to the seismic political changes in Georgia and WE saw a sizable increase in giving. Today we are immensely proud to report that WE has grown from receiving an initial $35,000 voter engagement project grant in 2014 from Groundswell Fund to a thriving 501c3 organization in 2021 with an annual budget of over $1.8 million with a 2022 goal of $3.5 million. Moreover with 8 full-time staff members and 15 part-time canvass campaign employees, Women Engaged is in the position to scale our canvass operation, leadership development offerings, public policy advocacy, and voter activation and engagement reach to 3 new states working with 15 new organizational partners over the next 3 to 5 years.

Indeed, our story at Women Engaged over the last seven years is one of triumph, courage, and resilience through the obstacles to funding by speaking truth to power, building authentic partnerships, and believing in our vision.

We thank all of our current donors and funders for your continued support! WE gives a special note of gratitude to Vanessa Daniels, Letetia Jackson, Page Gleason, Tanya Clay House, Tamieka Atkins, Pia Infante, Lela Ali, and Alejandra Ruiz for being true collaborators with the leadership of Women Engaged.