On Monday, April 16, The New York Women’s Foundation® held its first “State of the Foundation” event at their office. Before an audience that included both founding pioneers and women attending their first NYWF® event, President and CEO Ana Oliveira spoke about the Foundation’s 20th anniversary, including the successes of the past, and the goals for the future.

“This is a moment of incredible pride for the Foundation,” Oliveira said. “It is an opportunity to take stock of what we have accomplished and to answer questions such as, what impact have we made? How is the world different than when we started?”
Oliveira explained that she sees the Foundation as a “leveraging instrument,” an institution where women can be a great force for change by combining their efforts, financially, emotionally, and intellectually. “We have an opportunity to be more by being together,” she said.

The New York Women’s Foundation® operates on two levels. It funds programs in the five boroughs of New York City that provide direct services in the areas of economic development, safety, health and sexual rights, community organizing and advocacy, and the development of young women and girls. It also funds programs that advocate policy changes.

The Foundation is built upon the understanding of the pivotal role that women play in society, and that uplifting women is the most strategic way to uplift entire families. To this end, it chooses women led programs that empower its participants to break the cycles of poverty and violence. The Foundation know how close to the ground “finding worthy programs and investing in them at their early stages in order to support their capacity to carry out their mission, without dictating to them the manner in which they do it. “We invest in indigenous, authentic responses,” Oliveira said, “and we honor and depend on the expertise of the grantees.”

Ana L. Oliveira, President and CEO of the Foundation, addressed the audience about the reason for philanthropic giving: a third of New Yorkers live in poverty and the pervasive inequities in the treatment of women and girls in our communities. Philanthropist and a NYWF® founding pioneer Helen LaKelly Hunt spoke about raising the bar on giving. Telling a compelling story about a group of impoverished Ugandan women who pooled two weeks salary to send to Katrina victims, Hunt put into perspective the difference between the “need” of the affluent to feel financially comfortable, and the needs of the poor to survive and support their families. The attendees joined her in raising the bar: this year we raised an unprecedented $250,819 at the Breakfast.

To date, the NYWF® has granted more over $15 million to more than 220 grantees. This year alone it will grant more than $2 million, with a goal of granting at the $5 million dollar level by 2012.