A group of a dozen women met on Tuesday morning as part of the advisory committee to the Community Foundation for San Benito County’s Women’s Fund with a goal of empowering women and girls in the community.
Stephanie Hicks approached several key people early on to participate on the advisory committee and as donors for lead gifts, including Sallie Calhoun.
“The more I think about changing the world, working in agriculture, it seems to me the fastest way to do that is to empower women and girls,” Calhoun said, before the recent meeting. “So Stephanie hit me at a good moment.”
Calhoun, along with Rebecca Wolf, put up money for a lead gift that could be used as an incentive to gather more donations from the community. They offered up $25,000 as a matching gift for every dollar raised in the community through the end of the year.
“If I just put money in, it doesn’t do much to build community,” Calhoun said. “We can get people excited about the joint effort and use the match – it’s about helping women and one way to do that is to create more community among women. It seems to have worked.”
Calhoun said one of her caveats for her donation was that the money be used for immediate needs in the community rather than as an endowment.
“Hopefully success breeds an endowment,” Calhoun said. “But the problems need addressing so let’s just get started on addressing them.”
Wolf said the advisory committee has set up subcommittees, including one that will gather data in the community about the needs of women and girls so the committee can make educated decisions about how to spend the money.
“I just feel it may be a good thing to work with young girls to teach them how to be empowered and that there are choices,” Wolf said. “I just felt it may be a really good avenue for us to help some of these young girls. That’s where my focus was.”
At the meeting, checks were presented from the Women’s Club of Hollister and Zeta Epsilon, the local chapter of women educators who are part of the Delta Kappa Gamma organization.
Zeta Epilson members presented a check for $10,000, with the Women’s Club also making a $6,000 founding donation at the meeting.
Linda Smith, a member of Zeta Epsilon, which includes members from San Benito County and Watsonville, said her organization is focused on providing opportunities for young women and girls to pursue education. Members of the group include active and retired educators.
“Last year when we were looking to get funding to send some eighth grade girls to a Girls, Inc. summer camp to get them ready for high school, we had done some fundraising,” Smith said. “We were looking to other organizations to see if they might be interested in this endeavor as well.”
The Community Foundation for San Benito County donated to the effort. When the idea for the Women’s Fund came up later in the year staff members from the Foundation approached Smith about a partnership.
Jeanne Liem said members of the Women’s Club learned of the fund when they read about it in the newspaper.
“We had some funds in our bank account and we wanted to earmark it since it was going to be matched,” Liem said, noting that the goal of their club is to support women in the community.
A key for them with their donation was to have three seats on the advisory committee go to members of the Women’s Club so they could see that the fund is used to support causes they support.
“Women’s funds are an extremely effective way to advance the status of women and girls in the community,” said Stephanie Hicks, the director of development and outreach for the local nonprofit “It helps women to form a philanthropic movement and it’s very powerful. It can be very effective and powerful.”
Other founding members include Anne Morris, Nenette Corotto, Beverly Meamber, Mary McCullough, Susan Schwabacher Modic and San Benito Bene.
An advisory committee has been formed that will meet to decide what the priorities are for the Women’s Fund in its first year.
“The group of women on the advisory committee is really varied in their knowledge and the gifts they bring to the table,” said Smith, who is on the committee. “The advisory committee met just once so far, but it’s really inspirational how everybody is looking at what are the needs of women and children in San Benito County. We are really looking at finding out a lot of data and doing some research to see what the needs really are before we make decisions on how to use the money.”
To find out more about the Women’s Fund or to become a Women’s Fund Founder, call Stephanie Hicks at 630-1924 or email [email protected].
