 as we celebrate the first anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Yes. And part of that celebration is this panel discussion on the subject of funding a revolution. I can't imagine a better title. Some of you may know that public art museums trace their history to the aftermath of the French Revolution when royal palaces, including the Louvre, were open to visitors so that newly equal citizens of France could enjoy the beauty and luxury once reserved for the most privileged members of that society. The best art museums, and I believe this institution is certainly one of them, have never lost touch with this revolutionary impulse. We have continuously sought ways to engage with the broadest possible diversity of visitors, with the broadest possible diversity of visitors with our collections that we hold and trust for the public and to serve as a place for education, for enlightenment, and we certainly hope for mutual understanding. A year ago, the Brooklyn Museum opened the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the first such facility in an American museum, which I hope many of you, and I think many of you have today, had the opportunity to see earlier. Our trustee, Dr. Elizabeth A. Sackler, came to us with a revolutionary concept for this center. Through her foundation and through her incredible dynamism, she has also given us support for its creation and the gift of its signature work of art, the dinner party by the Great Judy Chicago. I think it's extraordinarily fitting that Elizabeth has chosen to celebrate the first anniversary of the center with this conversation about the ways that philanthropy, and specifically women's philanthropy, can help transform the world. Her energy, her sense of adventure, her revolutionary spirit, and her vision for the center have launched this museum on a journey that has already transformed our institution and the broader conversation about feminist art. This journey is just a beginning, and that many, many more revolutionary adventures certainly lie ahead of us and for all of us. Thank you for coming today, and I want to introduce Elizabeth A. Sackler. Thank you, boy, that was terrific. That was great. Thank you, Arnold. Thank you so much, and thank you all for coming. It is an extremely wonderful month, this being the first anniversary of the opening of the center, and this is just fabulous. It's fabulous having all of you here. It's fabulous having this panel. This is a happy, happy occasion, and it's hard to believe actually that the doors of the center opened a year ago. This year seems to have sort of evaporated, and at the same time, enormous amounts of things have happened, not only in the world, it's some unfortunate things, as we well know, but certainly here in the center, which we're hoping are countering some of what we are witnessing outside of our doors. It was six years ago that I planted the seed of this idea to Arnold, and the ground was hode, which is to say the center itself was cleared out, it's been fertilized, and we continue really to weed and expand this fantastic garden. Today is actually the Elizabeth A. Sackler wildcard day, and it became difficult because there was so much information for wonderful Sally Williams, who's in the PR department, to insert that this was a wildcard on top of the fact that we're talking about funding a revolution, on top of the fact that we have this extraordinary group of women coming and women moving millions who have come in, members who have come in from across the country. So, you know, the wildcard wasn't branded with this being the first and hasn't been talked about, so I'm gonna take a minute and tell you that part of what I get to do in having opened this wonderful center is to have three wildcards a year, subject of my choosing, and this is the first subject of my choosing. Thank you, it's pretty exciting. And the second wildcard is going to be Christine Quinn, who is the New York City Council Speaker and possibly our next mayor of New York City. She hasn't announced her running, but we're getting closer to that, and she's gonna be speaking about Women's Health Initiative in the city, which is very important, not only to all of us, but to certainly women in need in the city. And the third one this year is going to be with Gloria Steinem, who is coming in and putting together a panel to discuss the problem and the horror of global sex trafficking. And I have a little note here, which I put in brackets thinking, well, maybe I shouldn't say it, it wouldn't be appropriate and it's a little off color, but I'm in a good mood and I'm not Jay Leno and I'll never have the opportunities. So I was saying, I wrote here Gloria Steinem panel on global sex trafficking. Brackets, sounds like an off color stand-up routine after this week, but it's not. Anyway, today's panel, Funding a Revolution. I thought it would be fitting, as Arnold really already noted, to do this on our first anniversary. The center, as Arnold, you've already said everything I was gonna say, has revolutionized this institution, which is precisely why I wanted to do it. And not only to revolutionize this institution, but be a model and an opportunity for other institutions to see the power of this change, the power of women, the power of women artists, and to really begin to engage and to make equal space for women artists on their walls, which of course is right now, not the case. And it was interesting also with the little blurb that came out on today, it was described a little differently than sort of my brainchild of this panel. And it was described as philanthropic activists, feminist activists, and I said to Rob, some of these three women wouldn't describe themselves as feminist activists, so we can't use that. And the exploration of social action and philanthropy. And philanthropy has now been joined, for the most part, to this title of funding a revolution. And that for me is a very interesting thing. It's a piece that has, it's a title that I find being put on self. And I grew up, as some of you know, the daughter of a very great art collector, Arthur M. Sackler, and watched his work in the world with art museums and his collections grow. And I also grew up hearing him talk about philanthropy and how he detested the word, just detested it. And he alternately said that on one hand, he would not consider himself a philanthropist because he was totally selfish because he was doing everything he wanted to do when he was having a ball, to also saying that actually making education, scientific research, and art contemporary and over the millennia available to people is a privilege. And so I grew up with that combination personally. The New York Times Magazine section last weekend, many of you have probably seen and had, was devoted really basically to philanthropic giving. And I'm not really terribly surprised that all of a sudden we're looking at the amount of active philanthropy that there is in the world. And there was one article in there that was talking about the pleasure portion of the brain being ignited at the moment of giving. And that there was something about the act of giving that becomes selfish, if you will, pleasure to the giver. And I noticed that personally, I've been involved with American Indian repatriation for almost 20 years and have often said that people should think about repatriating American Indian material that needs to go back for ceremonies because the pleasure they will get from the return of the material is far bigger than any financial rewards they may yield in the future. So it was interesting to see that now Neurological Sciences said that that little piece of my brain that I was feeling is in all of us. And that's really a wonderful thing. Abby Disney, Abigail Disney, who is the former president of the New York Women's Foundation has been talking recently about the democratization of philanthropy. And I like that. I like radical democratization of anything. I think it's highly desirable. She talks about all women from socioeconomic backgrounds, different socioeconomic backgrounds, giving and the pleasure that they have found in giving. And that women who are not of a economic level to give easily have actually taken pleasure even in sacrificing in order to give. And I read this and I thought, gosh, there's for me a sort of shadow side to this because it is to me that women are always sacrificing and I feel like we have sacrificed enough. So I think it's time for the war machine of this country to sacrifice. And to take our tax dollars and put it into art, to museums, to education, to welfare. I think about the number of drones that have my name on it and I get very angry. It sort of gets me quite passionate and I think a lot of people who are here might feel similarly. Brings me back to funding a revolution and that it's a revolution. And I couldn't say the revolution because as we all know, there are many kinds of revolutions. There are cultural revolutions, there are economic revolutions, social revolutions, revolution consciousness. And I think from our panelists today, we're going to hear perhaps of many different kinds, realignment of values, making change, ending poverty and so on. My place, holder on the revolutionary scale, being a New York Jewish girl with Brooklyn roots originally, is nothing less than the overthrow of this patriarchy. And so, there's a lot of estrogen in this room, Arnold. A lot of it. I want to take my name off the drones. I want to dismantle the war machine. I want to end unequal pay and I want to end unequal wall space and anything that I can do towards that, I will do. And I think it would be politically correct for me to say that, well, in a perfect world, we really want to have equality with men. You know, men should be equal to women. We're not talking about overthrowing a patriarchy for a matriarchy. How do we move though from submission to equality? And I think it will be a lot easier for us to move straight into a matriarchy than to move into equality. And so I think it's just fine that we should move from a matriarchy into a patriarchy. And those of you who are of my age and probably many of you are, what? Patriarchy, matria, oh, thank you. People united will never be defeated. I say women united will never be defeated. So I thank you for joining me for this desirably provocative panel, Funding a Revolution. And I think that our panelists, my panelists, the panelists are probably going to be a little more centrist than I am, but I think nonetheless equally provocative. Carol Jenkins is going to be our moderator, and I would like to speak to her wonderful work in the world. She's president of the Women's Media Center and a founding member of its board of directors and a board member of the African Medical Research Foundation. She is an Emmy award-winning former news anchor and correspondent who covered presidential politics as well as international issues. Ms. Jenkins leads the Women's Media Center's online publication and its advocacy initiatives. She's a national spokeswoman for women and the media arguing the case for inclusion of women throughout the media in ownership positions at the highest levels of management and creativity as well as the telling of women's stories in television and film, radio, print, and online. As president of the Women's Media Center, Ms. Jenkins has testified before Congress and the FCC and written about what she calls the invisible majority, the 51% of the population women who occupy only 3% of clout positions in media. As a media and political analyst, she has appeared as a guest and in debates at top national outlets. Her commentary about the Women's Media Center appeared in the nation.com, The Huffington Post, Television Week, and other print and online. She's a frequently sought after speaker and moderator. She conducts media training seminars if anybody is interested and private sessions for women across the country. Let's take advantage and please help me welcome her and our wonderful group of panelists today. Thank you. I appreciate this. Hello, everybody. You know what I think? I have been trying to convince Elizabeth Sackler to run for office for months now. And I've got to be her press secretary. There would be nothing more fun, I think, than to have a true revolutionary running for government here. We're thrilled to be here because it's the one year anniversary of this remarkable feminist center of art. And I want to thank Dr. Sackler and congratulate her on the year anniversary. The Sackler Center for Feminist Art is a gift that we can enjoy over and over again. We're thrilled by it. If you haven't been through yet, please do as I told her that some of our folks are stalkers of the center. Actually have to be thrown out because they come here so frequently. As you know, Elizabeth is a public historian, a social activist, a teacher, president of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, founder, as she mentioned, of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation and of course, a great, unhesitant philanthropist, feminist and revolutionary. Now, she wrote in her introduction to her book, Judy Chicago, about the dinner party, there is no other work of art that opens the door to an endless exploration of the contribution of women of the distant and not so distant past, inviting an abundance of education and inspiration. So it is fitting and proper indeed that we are here having our conversation and all of us because it is a conversation that will include you all as the new guest to the dinner party. We are graced by three rock stars of the new women's revolutionary philanthropic movement. Barbara Dupkin, to my right here, has a lead role. You have your fan club there. This is exactly what I mean. Please, the only thing we ask is no underwear on the stage during this, you know. Chocolate is fine, chocolate. Chocolate is fine. She has a lead role in deciding how the formidable Dupkin Family Foundation apportions the funds at grants each year. I think there was that famous quote, you know, about you and Eric, you know, you have this great collaboration going on. You know, he brings the money in and you give it out, right, you know? So she has full say. She functions not just as a donor, but as an activist and advocate. She teaches women about money and power. She believes charitable giving is an opportunity for changemaking and her philanthropic decisions have literally transformed the landscape of feminist philanthropy and put Jewish feminism on the map in some very concrete and dramatic ways. She is the founding chair of the Jewish Women's Archive. She's been the pioneer in work that advances women and girls and levels the playing field in both the Jewish and the general communities. She's also the founder of Mayen, the Jewish Women's Project, a program of the JCC of Manhattan. She serves on the boards of the White House Project. We know it well. My daughter works there now, you know. Thank you. Lilith Magazine, the Women Donors Network, the Women's Funding Network, and CULIP, the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. In addition, she is a significant supporter and advisor to a variety of non-profit organizations, both Jewish and secular in the United States and in Israel, Barbara Duncan. Don't be so excited, you haven't heard me yet. I'm gonna be good at this. Wasn't I cute? Thank you. Eight minutes is, I was thinking when we were sitting down, a long time to hold your breath underwater, but for me to tell you my life story in eight minutes, I'm not quite sure, but we're gonna try to do this. I think that my earliest childhood memory is accompanying my maternal grandmother, also known as Bubby, around her neighborhood, emptying Jewish national fun boxes that her neighbors had. And she was very important because she had the key. And we would go around and I would see more pennies, nickels, and diamonds than I thought I would ever see. And I don't know if that's what captivated me so much or the power of what she had to say to me. From her, I learned that if someone had to ask for help, she needed it more than I did. And the volunteering time was something that was important, but never in lieu of money. We didn't come from money, so that was a really interesting lesson. But the best lessons emerged when she got this kind of conspiratorial whisper. And then, for instance, I learned that, I shouldn't even say, that women are far superior to men in many ways, but that it'd be best if I kept that to myself. She was probably the most influential person around what I have turned out to be. Oh, I grew up in the 50s. I forgot that, that was slide. I really, I practice the slides, but I'm just not really good with that part. I grew up in the 50s when gender roles and expectations were pretty clear. Like my brother, I have a brother who's a little older, could drive on the new Beltway in Baltimore, but I couldn't. When I was in college, I was doing an honors thesis on women's role in sociology, and the Honors Committee told me they had no role. So I was a very good girl. I finished college, my youth wasn't worth telling you about. I finished college just as my parents had hoped. I had a Phi Beta Kappa Key in one hand and an engagement ring on the other, and I was on my way to social work school because I needed to have a profession to fall back on, and teaching or social work would fill the bill. When my husband and I got married, we had actually planned to do it the next year, but he was drafted. This was Vietnam time. So we got married before we started graduate school, so much for a room of one's own. By the time we finished school, marriage wasn't enough for deferment, so we had our first daughter, I'm great, she has never heard me say that because I don't know how I would take it, my mother said that about me. So, you know, so much for money of my own if the balance was Vietnam. And so my life as a suburban housewife began. I should say a suburban feminist housewife because by then I had a name for my indignation and a cohort to rally with. This was around the time that the National Organization for Women was formed. By day I could be found lobbying, protesting, organizing for advancement of women. In the evening I was safely ensconced at home cooking dinner for the family. I mean, you get the picture. Another daughter, a couple of dogs in a station wagon. When our daughter, our older daughter, the one I shouldn't tell that she kept her father out of Vietnam, when she asked if Good Friday was a Jewish holiday, we actually joined a synagogue. But my involvement at that time were mostly secular, especially in the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment. My kids actually felt very cheated because we were supposed to go to Disney World in Florida, but they didn't matter if the Equal Rights Amendment saw I canceled the trip and they've never been. And when I was involved in all of these endeavors, I joined lots of stuff and I contributed. My husband thought that every organization I belong to cost $100. I would put the dues up there and then I'd figure out how much more I had to add in the extra column to come to $100. So there were a lot of $100 gifts from me. Was that good? I think I'm on cue. My foray into traditional Jewish communal work is a long story. It's funny, but you're not gonna hear it today. And the same is true of the story about my exit. But suffice it to say, by the time I left, my giving had increased substantially, as had my consciousness about sexism in the Jewish community. And I wanted to do something about it. I was already a troublemaker. I had lots of passion and I had nothing to lose. So with a friend, we established Mayan, the Jewish Women's Project that Carol mentioned, that works as a catalyst for change for women and girls in the Jewish community. And much in the last 15 years since Mayan was established has changed. Soon after the inception of Mayan, the Jewish Women's Archive was founded, and indeed I was the founding chair. I have seen or been involved in the birthing of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, advancing Jewish women professionals, the Hadassah Foundation, to name a few of the newer feminist institutions that are working towards changing the Jewish community. My focus, however, was never meant to be so ethnocentric. I really became aware of the burgeoning women's funds, but I had little time to get involved. But I trusted the women out there that were doing the work with the due diligence they did. And I knew that social change, not charity, was their mission. So I began supporting things like the New York Women's Foundation, the MIS Foundation, the Global Fund for Women. And it wasn't long before I was hooked and I became a member of the board of the Women's Funding Network. Why women's, why fund women? This could be, you know, I could take the time of everybody else for this. Women as I think probably all of you know have been the backbone of our communities. We are the organizers, we're the solution builders. And what has changed is that finally we're using money as a strategy for taking our values and putting them on our community's agendas. We are, as Elizabeth said, democratizing philanthropy. Does that make me, where's Elizabeth? Does that make me a rebel? That is the same words. And we are with no question on the forefront of the social change movement. We understand that grant making must address the root causes of social and economic equalities rather than applying band-aid solutions. And we aim to prevent the problems in the first place. The World Bank actually said the same thing I'm gonna say as did the UN. If a woman is economically secure, her family is economically secure. If her family is, her village is economically secure. If her village is, the community is. And if the community is economically secure, the world can be too. So funding women is what I do and what I like to do. Next, you'll hear from Jennifer. Barbie, you did really well for the 50s cohort. I thank you for representing us well. Jennifer Buffett shares her full-time work as co-chair and president of the Novo Foundation, Novo Latin, which means to change, alter, invent. In New York City with her husband, singer, composer, producer, Peter Buffett. And staff, I don't know, Peter is here today, right? All right, Peter, thank you for joining us. Jennifer has worked in philanthropy since 1997 when her in-laws, you know who they might be. Susan T. and Warren Buffett gave the couple $100,000, a fund to spend annually to begin learning about charitable giving and nonprofits. She and her husband made all of their own onsite visits and decisions generally giving anonymously in Wisconsin where they then lived. Jennifer helped launch the Wisconsin Infinite Early Childhood Mental Health Association to advance advocacy and policy work around healthy social-emotional development for young children and edu-care. An early childhood inner-city facility modeled after a center created by the ounce of prevention on the south side of Chicago. Well, today the Novo Foundation's future annual giving projections make the Foundation one of the top 75 in the United States and one of the top 10 foundations in New York. So it's a good thing they learned their lessons well. Novo's mission, investment in women and girls delivers high returns for economic growth and broad social benefits to families and communities. But accompanying our focus on women and girls is the commitment to supporting men and boys as they evolve their roles toward the furtherance of a balanced society. Jennifer Buffett. Hi, everybody. I'm so honored to be in this company. I can't even tell you. So honored to be here. Someone asked me recently when I became a feminist. I was born in the 60s, a twin to a brother, to a very patriarchal father. So I realize I've been working for gender equality my entire life, actually. In the womb, starting in the womb. He got out first, though, and he reminds me of that almost every time I see him. So let's just say, long story short, I had all these slides in different pages with different stuff and then I sent it over to Helen and it all came back together. So again, it's like a lifetime in a slide, but that's okay. So let's just say at 18 years old, the boy twin received choice and money for his college education and the support he needed and the girl did not. Dad said, you're your mother's or your husband's responsibility. I was 18. I'll take care of the boys. This affects a girl deeply and it sent me a message. Was I a second-class citizen? Anyway, I worked as hard as I could to support and build my own life and I always worked to build and save. I studied theater and arts, but then I had to give it up to grow up pretty fast in order to support myself right out of high school. I earned my own way through college. I worked in publishing and public relations. I traveled and worked as a researcher and a writer and many, many jobs in between. Then I got married to that man over there and helped my husband with his music recording and touring ventures. I renovated and took care of the home and ran all of our charitable foundation activities anonymously. So I sort of said to him like, you do your thing and I'll take care of all the rest. So we did that for a while and then I got a little tired. I think he did too, actually. But early training, being the good, supportive, second girl sister to my twin brother did lead me somewhat unconsciously into the support role of a man's life and career. I realized that I quieted and discounted what I knew. Really, really equals and was I perpetuating something? But with age came self-evolution and the stepping more fully into myself. So with fatigue and experience came self-examining, self-knowing, some wisdom, I hope, confidence and self-assurance about ways of working and being that maybe were unseen or unsupported but that I knew in my core worked. It was time also for me to stand out in life to stand up for what I felt, knew and saw in the world and to shed what I'd been taught. And then in 2006 came a big opportunity to start fresh. We've worked the past couple of years soul-searching, studying, traveling, meeting and thinking deeply about the world and the imbalance of the masculine and feminine and what that has meant on the planet for society. So together my husband, Peter and I, rebirth the Novo Foundation, which Carol tells you is Latin for to alter, change and invent. And if you notice too, the V is capitalized and we didn't realize this until after we came up with the name that that's actually the feminine symbol or symbol for the feminine. And Novo Foundation, in case you don't know and I have a feeling most of you do, was born when Warren Buffett gave the Gates Foundation quite a lot of money and most of his fortune and then the three children, larger foundations as well. So we are a newly formed organization that will not operate as a traditional siloed areas proposals funding foundation, but which seeks to invest in supporting a greater vision and some larger partnerships and field building. Novo looks at how to cultivate a shift in paradigm from domination to collaboration where greater balance can be achieved. But that is not Peter, I want you to understand. It's not. Sorry, Peter. Or maybe it is. I don't like, I like, he's an artist. I like artists, he's like, scary. Anyway, so Novo Foundation is seeking to foster a paradigm shift from a stereotypically masculine dominated society to one that balances masculine and feminine values resulting we hope in a world based on principles of mutual respect, partnership and greater civic participation. How will we do this? In order to facilitate this transformation, there must be concentrated efforts on the empowerment of women and girls. By the way, I'll share with you an appalling statistic. 99.4% of international aid does not go to an adolescent girl living in poverty. Her share of every dollar spent, half a penny. There must also be meaningful encouragement to men and boys through social emotional learning as they support and are part of this evolution, giving them choices of self-expression rather than dominator or dominated and to co-create with girls and women. Rianne Eisler, and I recommend her book The Real Wealth of Nations, if you haven't read it, pick it up in an excerpt from partnership Beyond Patriarchy and Matriarchy says, the struggle for our future is not between religion and secularism, capitalism and communism, East and West or other conventional polarities. It's between those who hold the old view of power, the power to give orders, to control, to disempower others, and those who wanna use their positions of power to empower the rest of us. So some tenants I wanted to share with you that we live by in our work that sort of echo women's funds and ways of funding are. Traditionally funders find solutions in isolation and then they bring them to communities. We call that philanthropic colonialism or like a software model. And we don't think that's so good. So a new vision would be where, what we're looking at doing is eliciting solutions within communities. Traditionally funders have looked for insights to give the grantees expert advice. We're looking in support of feminine principles to listen to the grantees, really listen. We just got back from Bangladesh and India and I kind of don't even know where I am right now. But we really need and we recognize this to sit with people, no matter where you are. If you're in Milwaukee, New York, Bangladesh, you need to sit with people and you need to listen to them. And you need to shut up and listen and ask them a lot of questions and look at the context in which they're living, talk to their families, it's just so important. I can't emphasize that enough. Traditionally funders have focused on their own impact, what they can achieve. A good example of this actually is Grameen Bank. You always talk about women and they are great at repaying their loans, 99% if you microlend to a woman, they're gonna pay it back 99% of the time. But someone pointed out to us recently that, and it's true if you think about it, women will go without food to pay that loan back. Is that really the right measure? That's from the microfinance bank lens, not necessarily, is she coming back for a bigger loan? How is she investing that money, et cetera, et cetera? So we need to change that lens. So we wanna focus on what we can achieve in partnership and welcoming others to the table. Traditionally funders are often in isolation sitting at the peak of top-down funding dynamics. And we wanna break down the barriers, working with both funders and grantees. And this is an ever-changing process of trust. It's hard to partner, let's be honest about that, and to collaborate, it's hard. It's the harder way to do it, but there's no foundation really that exists that's gonna be able to completely solve social problems. We have to learn and try to work together. So it's a value in a way we're gonna try to work at the foundation to really partner and collaborate and learn and get our hands dirty and try to share success stories and failures, what worked, what didn't, so that others will maybe be a little less afraid. Turf is a big thing and ego's a big thing, if you didn't know that. So we think our new way of thinking will result in new and greater civic participation in the world. And wouldn't that be a nice thing because we are 51% of the planet. And I don't think we're adequately being represented. And I will echo my partners up here in saying that sort of being quiet and nice and all that doesn't get you very far. So I was very, very jazzed. It sort of made my day to be called a rockstar rebel. Is that what you say? Thank you, Kelly. And now we'll hear from Helen Hunt. Thank you so much. See the thing with Jennifer and Peter though is that they could actually put this to words and music and take it on the road. Helen Le Kelly Hunt is the founder and president of the Sister Fund, a private women's fund dedicated to the social, political, economic, and spiritual empowerment of women and girls. Helen has helped to found a number of other women's funding institutions, including the Dallas Women's Foundation, the New York Women's Foundation and the National Network of Women's Funds. Now the Women's Funding Network and you'll hear more about that. She has long recognized the need to strengthen women's rights and leadership. And she sees the unearthing of women's contributions throughout the ages within both the social and religious spheres as being a crucial aspect to achieving justice in our society. In 2004 Helen completed a doctoral degree at Union Theological Seminary in New York City where she further explored how theology or a spiritual perspective has strengthened the work of women's activism. And this work became the basis of her book, only one of eight I should say that she's published, Faith and Feminism, A Holy Alliance. She served on the boards of directors of the Miss Foundation for Women, Women and Foundations, the New York City Women's Agenda. And among Helen's major civic activities have been active memberships on the childcare commission for the mayor of the city of New York. She and her sister, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, are the creators of the groundbreaking philanthropic effort, women moving millions in the fabulous. Chris Grumb is in the audience and you'll hear from her later. But I always say to Chris whenever I see her, yeah, can you move some of those millions this way? And she always says, no, she has better use for it. But Helen LeKelley Hunt, rock star number three, please. Helpful. I actually haven't written eight books, Carol, thank you. I think my- Well, some with Harlan, right? My partner, Harvel, is an author and I've edited. I put in a couple words there and did write one, but it's great to start our remarks with stories. I was really glad the way Sally Lindsey who did this PowerPoint for us invited us to tell our stories first because what we do comes out of who we are. And yet knowing I was gonna share the time with Barbara and Jennifer, I thought, well now I'd like to get all my story on one slide. And so that's sort of an interesting thing. If you had to put your story on one slide, you know, what picture, what would you do? So this is what I came up with to tell you who I am. So see, I don't have to say anything. So I was raised a Southern Bill in Dallas, Texas and my father was H.L. Hunt who discovered the East Texas oil field. And the other thing, Sally, if we had figured out how to do it, I would have put the logo of the Dallas TV series. How many, someone really remember, how many others of you have seen the Dallas TV series? Yeah, a lot of you. Well, that's my story, you know, that's in fact one year. And this is the God's truth. The producers call my mother and we did live in a house like that. And they said, they asked if they could film the next season in our home. And my mother stormed into my bedroom and told me what happened. She said, imagine, how would they, why would they call us? I said, mother. So, yeah, we had our JRs in our family. And, you know, if you all remember, JR got in the car, for those of you who haven't seen it, you know, and they would buzz in their jags down every morning downtown and go to the top of the highest skyscraper and that's top floor and they'd wheel and deal with cigars, their feet up on their desks and, you know, wheeling and dealing money. And the women would get up about two and a half hours later, yawn, stretch, go in their steam bath, go and get into the limousine, be driven to Neiman Marcus, but they would spend the day shopping. So, this whole thing of money was always a conundrum for me because people would come to my house and go, oh, Helen, this house, it's so big. You know, you've got, it's just so big and there's so many gorgeous, you're so lucky. Gosh, you must be rich. You are so lucky. And I'd go, yeah, you know, I must be really lucky. But, but I didn't, but there was something that, you know, what we didn't realize at the time in the South, in the 70s, there were really two sides of money. If money in a man's hand was power, but money in a woman's hands, it became sort of like golden handcuffs because you got all involved in, you know, when you were an adult, you were taking care of each other, you know, your second home and your third home or the yacht, and then was the mink in the cedar closet and did you, and then the, you know, the carpooling and you were so involved in the corporate dinners and there was so much you were doing that was assisting your partner that then, you know, there just wasn't time to find your own voice and your own sense of power. And so, a friend of mine once said, you know, it's like golden handcuffs, having money in the South. And I thought that was really poignant. And she told me, I met her, this woman in my late 20s and it made me think, I sort of scratched my head. When a man fell in love with me, when I was in college and he proposed and I agreed to marry him. And when we were engaged, my father called my fiancee into a study and they talked for two hours. And when Randy came out, I said, well, what did, what did dad say to you? And he said, well, he told me about your financial situation and he explained the trust. I said, really? And he said, he told me the value of the company and da, da, da, I said, really? He said, he's never told me. And my mother had never talked to me about my financial picture. And then they offered my fiance a job in the company once we married. And I thought, well, they've never offered me a job in the company. So I, you know, it's a very, it was very disempowering in the 70s growing up in families of money. And so sadly, my marriage didn't last. And we, I had divorced after seven years and was living with two little kids in the house. And one day my sister, Swanee, called me and I answered the phone. I said, hi. She said, Helen, have you read Forbes Magazine this month? And I said, no, but I haven't. She said, well, go get it. Come back to the phone. So I put the phone down and went and got Forbes. She said, now turn to page 36. So I turned it. She said, now look in the center of the page. I said, oh, Swanee, our names are here. She said, yeah, now look at how much we're worth. I was speechless. I said, Swanee, where is this money? And she said, I don't know, but let's go. You know, so I said, don't worry, Swanee. I've read Nancy Drew. We are going to find this money. And over time we did, we hired a lawyer. My brother said, I'm not going to talk to any lawyer. And we said, well, he's a consultant. Okay, I'll talk to him. So anyway, it took us a while to get over all these inhibitions about finding our money and owning our money. And it was mainly women's funds. I learned one day about the San Francisco Women's Fund. Here were women, cross race, cross class, cross socioeconomic, all women sitting on a board funding women and girls, pooling their resources, amplifying each other's impact to make a difference in the world. I was so astounded. And I learned that the San Francisco Women's Fund was part of a whole national network of women's funds. And I just thought, oh, women are breaking free of their golden handcuffs. I realized that I had been taught a nursery rhyme growing up and that it really handicapped me. The nursery rhyme, the king is in the counting house counting out his money. The queen is in the parlor eating bread and honey. And I was just unconsciously scripted to be in the parlor. And I was so frustrated. And then when I learned about these women's funds, I thought those women are in the counting house. That is cool. I'm gonna cross the threshold and learn how to do that. Whoops. So, someone else will fix this. I will tell you all about, okay, so these women's funds have proliferated not only around the country, but around the world. The Canadian women's, they're 90 in the US from Maine to California. But there's one in Canada. There's one in Mexico. Did you know there's a women's fund in Central America? There's one in South Africa. There's one in Bulgaria. There's one in the Ukraine. There's one in Nepal. There are two in India. There are two in Australia. Everyone loves the name of the one in Amsterdam. It's called Mama Cash. There is the Fund for Women Artist. We're so lucky to have Martha Richards here. All sorts of women, there are now about 120, 125 women's funds that have proliferated around the world. No top-down plan. It's just sort of bubbled up and it's just like a zeitgeist. Women are excited about funding women. I took some time off to study 19th century, the origin of American feminism. And I found a quote of Matilda Jocelyn Gage writing Elizabeth Caddy Stanton. And she just, she said, my dearest Elizabeth, I am so frustrated. Why is it every day I read in the newspaper of another woman making requests to yet another museum but women fail to understand the cause that underlies all others in importance, women's rights? And at that time, 99.9% of the art in museum was men art. It wasn't museums for feminist art. That would have been okay with Gage. But in this case, the ballet, the hospitals that other people are funding, the ballet and husband's alma mater, why aren't women funding suffrage? I went back and studied with some 19th century scholars and we learned that women were in fact very slow to fund suffrage. They marched, they petitioned, they wrote eloquent treatises. They protested, they were dragged to prison, they did hunker strikes, they were force fed. They cared passionately, but the high net worth women and women in general were slow to fund suffrage. I found the quote, the women of wealth are constantly giving large sums of money to endow professorships and colleges for boys exclusively. And religious institutions, churches, for they aren't allowed to talk and yet give no thought to their own sex with few to offer a helping hand while the whole world combines to aid the boy and glorify the man. The exciting thing, women has started funding women at a level our foremothers would never have dreamed possible. Together women's funds with assets and grants have raised $850 million the last 20 years and we're about to crash through the billion dollar mark. This initiative that Chris Grum is incubating at the women's funding network has raised that last almost 100 million, so we're just about 50 million away to crash through the billion dollar mark and if anyone would like to volunteer too well. But look at those little ladies, wouldn't they be proud? Would not they be proud? Hey, the chicks showed up, finally, you did it. And that's how we're gonna change. That's how we're gonna transform the world. So I wondered, I wondered if we could actually say if women didn't fund suffrage to a robust extent and I saw women funding robustly women's issues in the 70s and 80s and 90s through these women's funds that Chris heads up, I got curious. Can we say this is the first time in history of the world women are funding women's voice, women's status in society? I was curious, I call Kathleen McCarthy with the Center of Philanthropy and Civil Society and I said, Kathleen, you've been to the women's funds events in New York, right? She said, yes, Australia, New York Women's Foundation, Ms. Third Wave, I love them. I said, well, let me tell you about this research, 19th century research. I told her and I said, can we say this is the first time in the history of the world women have ever funded women? What about like 4th century Egypt or 12th century China? Did Chinese women ever get together to fund their status in society? Or what about the French Revolution? Did a group of French ladies come together and go, Fifi, Sophie, with the Bastille, let's make sure we have a voice at the table in the new revolution. Did women ever, she said, I'll call you back. She hung up. So two weeks later she called back and she said, Helen, women have funded throughout millennium. They have funded monasteries. They have funded libraries. They have funded their husband's alma maters. They funded religious institutions. I can't find where they funded women's voice until recently, these last few decades and she's written an article about that. I asked her to write and if anyone would like that. So we are making history. We're funding a revolution. It was Liz that thought of that title. And Liz, I loved it when you said that women united will never be defeated. That's what the revolution is. If we unite as women, we can transform the values in the world today and we can rewrite that nursery rhyme. The king is in the counting house, counting out his money. The queen is in there also because she won't take no bologna. It's her woman's fund money. Thank you. Incredible because what's clear is that these three women started out in different places and wound up in one central point and that was wanting and needing and insisting on funding women and girls. So to start with the end first, the question I'm going to ask is so at the end of this revolution, what does the world look like? Anybody want to start? Barbara, what's your vision of what the world looks like when we've accomplished, I'm including myself, we're all here, not just you. We, working together, have accomplished this revolution. We've toppled the things as they are. You've probably asked the most cynical person on the panel. Oh no. Where would we be? Judy Chicago has a song about just this kind of stuff. Not just about women, but if we had women sitting at the tables, we would have peace and it would be Eden once again. I'm not looking for Eden once again, but it would be a place where our children see all the possibilities that are out there and they are able to take advantage of them where poverty has, I don't think we'll ever get rid of poverty, but certainly we will not have a society where there are so many poor and where there's a respect for life and for peace. Well, that's not too cynical, that's great. Well, I didn't say I thought it was gonna happen. Fair enough, for Jennifer. Had to be great for that to happen in my lifetime. I don't know, we better get going on it because we're in trouble if we continue on the other direction. I think it's a long list. I think it would be a world where you, based on abundance, continuous amazing abundance versus fear and scarcity and lack and the tough guy going over and taking what he wants over there from somebody else and getting rid of their language and heritage and culture and memory and freedoms and everything while they're at it as well. That we would, whether you're male or female, your self-interest would be everyone else's because you'd realize that's the truth of the matter and that you would take what you need and that you would see yourself in a cycle and a circle of life. If I take this, I need to put it back or put something back or nurture something. I think we need that paradigm shift I was talking about is about a whole worldview shift. And I think it's, I really think it's in our DNA. I think it's who we are if we remember that we're actually not like didn't land here as little space aliens from somewhere else and we're just here to use it up. Like parasites, we're actually part of nature, we're part of the planet. So I think we would be a much more peaceful people and really busy figuring out what we could do together rather than tearing each other down or taking from each other or destroying each other and this beautiful place we call home. Great, right, Helen. I think countries do need defense, but I would, my vision is if we had a department of empathy that was funded greater, equal if not greater than our department of defense and that we learned about empathy. Energy follows attention. I think psychologists and neuroscientists say that what you focus on, you create, you know, you reinforce your neural pathways and these neural pathways are all, if it's all about defense and war, we're really, we're feeding our own consciousness about fear of others and our division and I think we should be thinking about what it means to be empathic. I just think women's funds think that every child deserves a right to basic education. Everyone deserves a basic, clean place to live and a fair start in life. Well, thank you, Helen. So, and Jennifer and Barbara, so now we know where we want to be and now the question that we put to your brilliant, brilliant minds is how we get there. Now, the three of you spend almost all of your time figuring out where to put the money, where it would do the most good, the biggest impact. Can you talk to us a little bit about where you see that clear path now of, and I know you're just back from traveling the world. I mean, some of you and you contribute around the world as well, you all do. I mean, so that balance between what gets spent here, what gets spent in Africa and other parts of the world, doing what. Jennifer, do you want to talk at all about what's, as you talk about worldview, when you're looking at where the money is going, how are you making those decisions? Well, leverage is the first thing that comes to my mind. You have to leverage, we can spend money on great programs and say, wow, look at what a great job we did and X many girls or people went to school or we fed this many people or whatever. So we're really looking for leverage and we're looking for big ideas and to, and I really feel like, and it's been set up here already, I think if you have a big idea, money follows. And I think it's so, so, so, so important. And I think we were, we've just been in India and Bangladesh sitting with adolescent girls in rural villages and it's like stepping back into a thousand years ago and some of the places we were. And it was so affirming on so many levels that makes so much sense because if you educate girls, I mean they get married later, HIV, rates go down, their health increases, they have fewer children, girls and women reinvest 90% of what they make back into their families. So there's a big ripple effect in their families. Could be all boys, girls mixed, whatever they bring more into their community. But to have a visceral experience as well of these girls who are the future, who are getting nothing, no support, and they don't even see themselves. I remember literally myself, and I think it's always so important to have, look back on your own experiences and not say, well that wasn't fair and that sucked and it's just say where did that, where did that foster empathy inside of me and sensitivity? And I can remember being, growing up and feeling absolutely invisible, just like you could see through me. And was just sort of there to support my brother and I saw this in the girls and the villages, it's heartbreaking, and they are the ones that have that spark and that sense of possibility and that are taking care of so many things. They're the infrastructure. They're taking care of water, fetching wood and energy, their parents, their grandparents, they're making a little bit of money to send their brothers to school. I mean they get up in the morning, some of them met with us and they said, you know we had to stay up till 10.30 last night but it was so worth it because we wanted to see you, you were coming to our village and they'd been up since six. And I mean, I feel that if we invest in the girls, domestically and developed countries and in the third world especially, we're gonna solve a lot of things. So it's there with the girls around the world, Helen? I would just second Jennifer and just, I think you said it very well, just emphasizing economic empowerment. For women and girls and basic education. Well, of course I agree, that's the bond we all have. But I think that at least what's happening in the women's funds is that we're no longer looking at women and girls as victims. They are the solutions. And that really is a very different kind of paradigm. You look at the Millennium Project and what the goals were, which I mean, we all knew were too big. But I think if there were more women sitting at tables that more things would be happening that are worthwhile. Now the question of money is central to our discussion because people have varying amounts to give. And I always think about an aunt of mine who people used to make fun of her because she was one of 15 children. Then there's my mother in this group. And she very early started setting aside savings bonds for her first all of her sisters and then all of their children and then all of our children. And people would make fun of her and they'd say, you know, what's the savings bond? It's not much money, just spend it, whatever. Well, it turned out, I mean, this is a very consistent on not huge amounts of money. You know, that I use my savings bonds for the down payment on my house. You know, and then my, you know, the next generation used it to go to school. So this concept of the fact that you need huge amounts of money to make a difference is something that needs to be broken up. And how do you deal with that in the funds that you're working with and people that you know who wanna join you in giving but who don't have as much to give? Anyone? When we talked about the democratization of philanthropy, I think of something like the New York Women's Foundation. The gifts to that foundation are from small to large and if women collaborate, you know, we can make a difference. I think that collaboration, as Jennifer said, is not always the easiest thing to do. But you can make a difference with just a little bit. You really can. And as long as you have partners helping you do it. And I know that that's the NOVO strategic plan, you know, is to leverage, as you say, but to find partners and therefore making this a bigger gift and a larger impact. Also, but sometimes just creating safe spaces or places for people to come together is so valuable and that doesn't take a lot of money. So we're looking at, you know, you always think, well, it's tuition, scholarships, all these expensive things to buy a girl or a woman a business or something. But, you know, sometimes like a place to come together and meet and for women to talk about their issues and help each other. It's that wonderful loaves and fishes story, you know, that we all learned when we were six or some of us did. You know, there is such, it's the abundance model, again, I was talking about. And I think sometimes when you just get people together to not feel like they're the only one and to talk about their issues, the solutions come. And so as a funder, I think whether you're a collaborative of women who wanna do something, you've got a little bit of money or you're funding a group to come together here or in India, like we just saw just that safe space and place to come together to talk about a consciousness shift about what's possible for yourself and then how someone else has what they've done and what you're thinking about doing or something of that support, I think money can't buy that. I think that's so valuable and huge and something not to be discounted. There are many who have said that this philanthropic, this giving, personal giving is fabulous, but what's happened to the governments of various countries, you know, including ours. Including ours, precisely, or perhaps especially ours in terms of the issues of welfare and what happened there and the private foundations and funds stepped in to pick up where the government left off. Do you have thoughts about that? Are there lessons that governments can learn about why women are putting their money together and using it? Is there anger that the governments are not doing enough? Do you think about that at all? Helen? Well, it's a great question and we have to do what we're responsible, you know, what we can do and what we can do about the government is vote, petition and march. So that they, I feel like it's one organization that uses a phrase that I love, which is the budget is a moral document. And if you look at our national budget, it is appallingly skewed in terms of its values. And there is no excuse for the largest industrialized nation in the world to have the amount of poverty here in our own country, much less the countries around that don't, it's just, it is unacceptable so far past unacceptable. And so we do have the power to vote, march, petition. And I have this vision that we'll get a lot better at that, the apathy in our country is so sad. But then we also have the responsibility to do what we can do with our own resources. Cause that too is a moral document, I guess. And when you fund collaboratively, Jennifer's phrase leveraging, you know, it's power. Women, as Barbara just said, women funding together and men who understand the importance of collaborative funding and lifting up the voices that have been suppressed or marginalized, it's power to fund in sisterhood and in partnership. Can I just, you know, it's, first of all, it doesn't matter how much money you have, it's not enough. It really isn't. And for, you know, private philanthropists to think that they can do everything we just talked about is ridiculous. And I think that it is incumbent upon us to make sure the government does what, at least in my mind, the government should be doing. And, you know, we all get tired. And sometimes I say, oh, it's time for my daughters to march, not me. But it is really, when you see what's happened in this country in the last several years, all in the back of family values, you have to say there's clearly something wrong. There are policies that are wrong. What are they and what can I do? And you don't have to have money to do that. But where is the, do you find a sense in the conversations that you're having as you gather women together that there is this effort not only to give the money and to do the work, but also to make governments more responsive? Has there been enough of that yet that you've seen? No. I was looking at me like, Carol, we do want to make sure that you have your question. So if you want to come up to the, to there's a microphone right here, or Jess, from your seat, please. I can speak to that a little bit. The Buffett Foundation, that's their core mandate. That's what they do. And thank God for them, Packard, and others, it's a very lonely game. And my husband's on the board of that. So we stay abreast of what they're doing. And it's such a core thing. I want to applaud you for what the areas you're working on, because they're two of the toughest. And I didn't want to necessarily touch those for a lot of years. I was always a supporter of Planned Parenthood, and I knew the Buffett Foundation was taking care of that, so I didn't have to. But it's so important. It's a poverty issue. It's a woman's right. We all know in this room what this is. And violence against women as well. I didn't want, I thought this is too hard. We're just going to be funding safe spaces. But I have become, and I think Novo Foundation has to really outspoken on this issue, because we have to draw a line. And we have to say this is absolutely unacceptable. Someone has to stand up. And it's in every country, it's in our media. It's in our, it's in the US. People have asked us, does this happen, a woman in Sierra Leone asked me this about a year ago? Does this happen in America? She really didn't think it did. I said, yes, it does. And we just don't talk about it. She said, well, we don't talk about it here either. And what's normal? We have to start talking about this. This is outrageous. And it destroys women. It destroys families. So I really applaud you, what you're doing. We need just to get ahead of the issue and not be trying to piecemeal women and girls and families back together again. But this is something our government has to touch, this one. And we have to get vocal about it. And I hope this, we see a major sea change with this issue in my lifetime. We need to see it now. But it is at a minimum. You talk about empowerment of women, but while seeing them economically, it is not okay to physically, mentally, emotionally abuse a girl or a woman, it is not okay. And I would just add, we have seen that it doesn't matter how many shelters we build, they can always be full. And there's something wrong with that. We have to address the reasons there is so much violence so that the women won't need shelters. And that's something that we do very little of. Can I talk about this a little bit? We're thinking about this a lot too. And what is it with men that they feel so oppressed or dominated that they have to then find someone weaker than them to act that out? So we're investing a lot in social emotional learning for children because kids at a very young age don't learn. One of the things they're not learning because they're learning how to take tests and do math is how to manage their emotions that they even have emotions to manage. How do you deal with anger? How do you, that energy goes somewhere. And if it's not managed, it absolutely can be taught to boys, to girls, to empower parents and give them tools to brothers and sisters, whatever. We have just sort of pushed that over here in our society. And if you fall out of line, you're gonna get punished or go to jail. We're the most punitive country. What is the statistic? I was away, but I heard 1% of our population in the US. One out of 100. One out of 100 is incarcerated. What are we doing? Five year olds, you hear about being expelled. We just have to, we have to deal with the fact that we're social emotional creatures and nurture our children so that they aren't drawn to batter. Yeah, I'll just tag on about the subtle programming. Yeah, I mentioned a nursery rhyme and y'all are just talking about just the subtle ways that it's okay, not correct. I just wanna mention there are three women here from major marketing, advertising, branding firms, Omnicom, Interbrand here in New York. And they are forming a rapid fire think tank for women around coming together and sort of forming a revolution within the advertising industry. Which I mean, I really can't speak to their line because I don't know if that will, but like women are the consumers in the society, like 80%, like we go out and buy and then we, and the men, the amount of sex and violence type of advertising, that women then go, you know, because they need the merchandise, but these women are leading women to stand up and go, if you're gonna sell your product, appeal to an intelligent woman, an ethical woman, a woman who knows how to self protect, have boundaries. So I'm excited about that project. Great, yes. Barbara says, yeah. Yeah. Okay, no question here. She's gonna go to the microphone. Hi, I'm gonna hide back here. Can they see you? Okay, my name is Martha Diaz. I'm the president of the Hip Hop Association. And Hip Hop is the most popular culture in the world, perpetrating violence and misogyny and sexism. And I was wondering if you funded any Hip Hop projects and if not, I wanted to inform you about an emerging movement of women in Hip Hop who are coming together to fight against this. I know of, we got issues, thank you. By the way, this is the year of the Hip Hop woman. We declared it, we proclaimed it, yes. And it started in March, the beginning of March. And we've decided that enough is enough. And we are coming together under the Womanhood Learning Project because being from the Hip Hop generation, there is a gap and we're not connected to the other movements we, most of us, have been growing up without parents or a single parent. And we've been under a lot of oppression in the community, violence, crime, drugs. And so we've kind of been growing up on our own and trying to figure this world out. We know that we are economically viable in this community because we're making money for the advertisers, for the music industry and fashion. And we have our millionaires, but most of them are men. Most of them are controlling the movement. And so we are finally coming out and we have decided to do a resource guidebook that would inform young girls and women about other women around the world who are building schools, who are doctors and lawyers within Hip Hop. And so we have this going on. And so I wanted to inform you. Yeah, if you could tell us, because I'm sure that there are people in the audience who would want to sign on. It was so funny because in our earlier conversation, she's been to the Women's Media Center and she says, yes, we have this catalog of the top 100 women in Hip Hop. And I said, there are 100 women in Hip Hop. So it's very groundbreaking work. What's the website address? Well, we're the hiphopassociation.org and the project is a womanhood learning project. And we have... Great, well, thanks, because I think we're gonna try to get everybody's question in, but thanks for the website again, okay? Yes, but I just wanted to find out if you funded any women or Hip Hop projects. You have a Hip Hop project, Helen? No, but a woman named Mallika Dutt has done great... Mallika, yeah. Mallika, I mean, we're open to ideas like that and thank you for sharing. That's terrific, terrific. I know that Jen... No Hip Hop, yeah, yeah. Not directly. Not directly. But I will say that these are brilliant women because they are fantastic supporters, as is Drs. Ackler of the Women's Media Center and we've been active in this area as well, taking the music industry to task over the violent issues, violence issues. Yes. I think we may need you at the mic, thanks. And I just wanted to make a comment. I think that we have to make sure that we talk about the women's movement and not the women's, just the women's movement, but in terms of the oppression of women, rather, in terms of institutional racism as well, because when we talk about incarceration, a lot of the women who are incarcerated are women of color. And if you think about the Rockefeller drug laws that give you your first defense, whether you're carrying two ounces of anything, they're really targeting socioeconomic communities and communities of color. And I work with women who are in prison or have been recently released from prison, and this is not happening in the white community, and it's not happening among white women. They're not getting pulled over in their cars if they have a small amount of drugs. And women who are addicted don't need more prisons, they need treatment, and they don't need their families separated. So I just think we have to really look at all the inter-relational factors here when we talk about all forms of oppression. I think all of us agree with you and that a lot of the women's funds are working on those issues. What about the racial divide in, I mean, I don't know whether, as Elizabeth was talking about, the feminist label, if you will, you all don't shy away from that, I assume. No, of course not. But the general conversation in the country now because of the race, especially on the democratic side, it's a lot of about race. And in terms of your giving, do you find that that is an issue? Are women of color a part of the giving? Do they participate? If you could speak a little bit about that in terms of who's being helped. Any, who's being included? I just, I'll talk a little bit. The way we see ourselves is maybe not the best people to fund. I mean, people in the communities need to fund people that are doing great work, they know that. So we're looking at some higher strategies to fund intermediaries who would then know their communities and fund that way. So we're, in theory, big believers of that and have done that and are doing that. Women's funds have had the ethic that the board should be made up of the population served. And so women's funds have women writing the larger checks sitting. I know when I was on the board at the New York Women's Foundation, there were two women on welfare on the board and like they would always outboat me. And it was so cool. I thought this is so cool. And there's always a sense of it should be racially, socially diverse. So women of color don't just receive the funding. I wasn't quite sure about the question, but they're really the leaders. They're the women of color on the steering committee that formed the New York Women's Foundation and have been in leadership. And it was thrilling in working with Chris and Barbara and Jennifer, some about women who are now giving millions of dollars to women's funds, millions, and we're practicing the word mama, mama, millions. And it was really neat, we counted recently and there were Asian women and African American women who were the million dollar givers. So it's women are, we're sisters in that movement. We are sisters. Great, thank you. There's a question. Hi, my name is Amy Schiller and I work in philanthropy. And I also give, according to my capacity, but the ethical struggle that I grapple with often is that the wonderful work that's being done and the money that is being invested in social change. And I really, I have to say I'm thrilled to hear all three of you speak to the fact that philanthropy has to address systemic change and not band-aid solutions. I wanna applaud all of you for that. But there is, but when we're asking that question we also have to acknowledge that there's harm done in the way that the money that we give is made. That industry and even if we look at subprime lending, even investments can do harm to people. You know, the structures through which the money is made that we can then use for our own positive aims. That causes harm. So how ethically do we address? Hi. How ethically do we address knowing that the good we do with our social investments can really outweigh the harm that's done in having the capital to do that initially? Oh, what a question. You know, I'm of the group that believes that you, a lot of money in this country was only made on the backs of other people. And that's a struggle. I know that a lot of women of wealth have because especially inherited wealth, where that money came from, I would say those people are turning over in their graves when their offspring are progressive. But I find that a very difficult issue. I think it's a great issue. And we found ourselves at a boardroom table. I won't name names. And oh my God, is New York conservative about that? The general consensus around the table was like, we have our money in hedge funds. We are aimed here to make as much money as we can so we can give as much away. And we don't wanna think about it. And I thought that was unbelievable. But I come from a different, it's what I said before. I believe in an abundance model and not a scarcity model. So we're working on that. It's taking time because it's a new area to figure out where we can invest and rather than having our money sit in stocks or in a money market account where we can actually move that money for socially responsible investments in logging. It'll probably be in women's enterprises. And there's a huge need. There's so much microfinance, but there's not that mid-level real funding to take women's companies to a higher level, et cetera. So I think we're gonna look at that. We'll look at a lot of things. So it's a new area. But I think you have to. And I think it's one of those like Pandavas boxes. Once you know, you know. And then can you sleep at night? I don't know. And Gates Foundation, they diverse divested out of Petro-China, amen. Once they knew, they knew. And they said, it's not worth it. And so I think that's just naturally what happens and it's occurring to people. It's a great point. It's everyone. Everyone has to make the decision for themselves so that they can sleep at night. But I personally feel like there's no clean money anywhere. And I have the vision of if we can overcome our ambivalence about money in general and power in general as women and collect it, amass it, wield it, learn to use money to transform the way money's made and invested. I love the expression on Helen's face as you're saying that, amass it. Yes, next. Thank you very much for that. Who's up next? Rita. Rita, hi. A quick question. You all know Rita Jensen from Women's E news. Hi. Are there any plans? I'll just back up. Most of the women's fund locally. And even the national women's fund, we have funds grassroots groups. And when we look over the history of the last eight years, it's been a disaster for women. So my question right on national and international policy. So my question is, there are plans for a national women's fund to support national efforts and also to serve as an advocate and leverage in all the wonderful lessons the women's funds have learned. Thank you for that question. I can't answer that. But I'm gonna find an answer one day. So thank you. Either you want a hazard. Yeah, that's true. Thank you. Yeah, my sister. And then maybe I'd love Chris. Chris, you wanna come up here? So yeah, my sister, Swani works. Thank you, Nadine. Women in Public Policy at the Kennedy School about women stepping up into the policy making positions and that's transforming the world. And that's a part of the Women's Funding Network. Is Chris grown? Yeah, actually there are a number of state funds. Women's funds are state fund, city funds and also Ms. that do in fact fund policy. I think the critical issue is that more money has to go into funds in order to do that larger funding because when you're talking about funding national policy you're not talking $25,000. You're talking 100, 150,000 over time and funding policy is not a one time shot. You have to do it over time. So I think that there are a number of women's funds that are in fact have funded policy but one of the reasons women's funds are trying to grow bigger is so they can do that more often on a national level, a statewide level and a citywide level. Chris, don't go too far, Chris. Yes, go right ahead, your question. Hi, I'm Martha Richards and I'm the founder of the Fund for Women Artists, which Helen graciously mentioned. And like my sister from the Hip Hop Association we too have declared a holiday this year. March 29th will be support women artists nowadays or swan day for short and I'm happy to announce it's being celebrated by over 130 organizations around the world. So we put it out on the internet and we became an international organization sort of overnight but anyway. My question is because we're celebrating the Elizabeth Sackler Center today and we're talking about funding a revolution and I was curious to hear what each of you had to say about the relationship of arts to the revolution because I feel like it's something that comes up but when it comes to actually funding women artists it's very, very hard to get the money they're often seen by progressive groups as being almost too artsy and by arts groups they're seen as oh they're too political so it's very, very hard actually for progressive women artists to get their funding. And when we're talking about the empathy revolution or whatever I think for me the arts are the best way of building that kind of empathy but I'd like to just hear each of you say a couple of words about that and that'd be great, thank you. I think what Elizabeth was speaking was the first time I've ever heard the term unequal pay and unequal wall space in the same sentence you know. So you definitely have a kindred sister there for that. So well what about that? I mean because there's always this debate a media fits into that category too with the arts where if you're trying to feed people and save their lives how do you divert because that's what it seems like diverting money as opposed to essential too. What's the divide? I was just gonna say that media and art define our culture and give us a vision a new vision when we need one change our consciousness, uplift our consciousness it's super important. I feel for you though because it's a tricky thing somebody you have to find a patron who believes in it and loves it and wants to get it out and believes it's important because you'll never, you can't really if we live in such a time where everything has to be quantified to death and measured and how can you measure looking at you know reading a great book or seeing great art or something that really inspires you or changes your vision of yourself or the world and then it changes your whole life you know there isn't some like central database you type in and tell people about and then they calculate that. So it's so important I don't know the answer to it but I just think it's really important as is media. And I'll just add that when you see all these education projects people don't necessarily think of how the arts educate and not everybody learns in the same way and the arts are so important to that and if you also look at what's happening in film today the documentary films especially I don't know how many of you have are familiar with Freeheld that won the Academy Award for the short this year but that was about women and funded by women and all of this stuff losing it is really losing a piece of ourselves. I mean I don't know what else to say you know that more just. I just thank you for the question I think it was rhetorical. I don't know how to answer it except to say that not only should you and Liz keep asking that question but we should stand as allies and because it seems to me that our culture knows a lot about left brain solutions and we work so hard to keep replicating and then women men have been empowered and women to get once they become empowered sort of use the currency that men have used and so often they sort of replicate like a 10 year plan and the strategic plan and petitions and analysis of things and so we've learned to do that to stand on our feet left in our left brain way but the right brain is that we have two hemispheres for a reason we're supposed to develop them both and you know who can compute what Thelma and Louise did to all of us you know so you know and so just keep asking that question encourage us to ask that question and to fund so thank you for the question and Elizabeth you had yeah I just wanted to remind everybody the power of the dinner party and what happened when the dinner party was opened up you know came up first in an exhibition and the power of the center and I think there is a way of quantifying it the number of women who say over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again that the dinner party changed their life with that change comes a passion and an activism so I think there is a way to quantify the really great pieces that move and there is a lot that does so I just wanted to say that thank you for that, thank you and certainly what we say in terms of media is that women hold 3% of the clout positions in media and that's in every realm which means that 97% of everything we know about who we are and what our country is about and what our world is about is dictated by the male perspective so I just throw that in and that's why we need to change that yes oh should we do this over here first and then I'll come to you I'm sorry I'm at a disadvantage angle here yes go right ahead okay I will prioritize I could go on a rant for a little while but I won't I think the essence of what I wanted to say is that actually there is actually research about art and so forth doing things to you that create the ability to think outside the box and to innovate there's actually even research even though I know in my body that singing makes you healthier it cleans out your lymph nodes let alone makes you able to learn math better it is something that changes us by doing it and in a larger context I feel like one of the things our time has done is robbed us of the time to reflect in order to remain in touch with ourselves and touch with our own experience our physiological experience and our heart experience of things and something happened in the last couple of weeks where I heard something of a candidate and I'm not going to start talking about candidates thank you very much yeah but the person was asked their opinion about something and they said I don't know what my policy on that is I'll look it up and let you know and that someone can even say that and not understand what they're saying that they're saying I don't know what I believe I have to go look anyway the whole idea is actually coming back to ourselves and the arts have so much to do with that I am an academic as well as a singer and I always thought oh well we'll do the important stuff and then we'll go sing and I'm over that and I hope we all get over that great thank you very much my name is Mary Ford thank you Mary yes if you write thank you very much thank you well maybe now that all the IVs and a lot of the prep schools to have such huge endowments so they don't have to charge tuition anymore maybe a little of that money can be spread around yes hi my name is Deborah Schultz first I want to thank Elizabeth for bringing the dinner party back to Brooklyn where I first saw it when I was 18 years old and I do think it had an impact on my becoming a feminist historian but women's studies as Barbara Winslow just mentioned also had a tremendous impact on me and I've just finished 10 years working at the Soros Foundation women's program and one of the things that I was very struck by was George Soros' interest in combating the Bush administration which as you know he did personally but he also challenged the foundation to fund a progressive infrastructure including think tanks media work as you mentioned and I'd like to ask if you thought about funding feminist think tanks because we may need you know time to relax and reflect but we also need time to strategize and really think very very powerfully so I wanted to put that out it's very depressing when you keep talking about about all the things we need to fund there are actually some feminist think tanks around they are very important I absolutely agree with you no I mean so does it fit though in the irrelevant category I mean in terms of making this decision of feeding people keeping them alive as opposed to you know a group of people sitting around thinking big thoughts I mean how oh my god yes absolutely we've been talking a lot about and we're our foundation is really in development so it's not like if you hand me something I'll be able to give it to somebody at our foundation because we've got these departments we're developing our strategies and we are funding things but we are one of the things that we're talking about a lot right now is who is out there that needs to be funded everybody's chasing a million two million dollars and gee I'd love to work with so-and-so because they're part of this as well but I don't have any time because I have to go raise money so until organizations can be whole and take a breath it's very hard then to sort of get together and that cost money and that's time to figure out the bigger thing so we're we're seeing ourselves very much as a player in how can we get the players that need to be there as far as advancing the cause and the status of women whole and in a better place and bring more money into them just like this women's fund strategy there's got to be more money first and you take a breath then you can come together for the bigger idea so it's very important and I would just add if anybody does not think that this is a really important look at what the right wing in this country has been able to do by focusing its money on change uh... it's it's really incredible over of what is a very short period of time in our history yes hi i'm monique metha with the third wave foundation uh... i want to thank you all for an amazing panel uh... and for the great work that you do not only in the type of work that you're funding but being leaders in advocating in uh... engaging other philanthropists as well uh... and given the history that you all described about your own personal experiences as well as the history that helen described of women funding women's rights issues uh... i'd love to hear how you uh... think about engaging a new generation of leaders whether it's your own children whether it's other young philanthropists uh... young philanthropists so that we don't kind of repeat history in the future and that we ensure that the advocacy that you're doing today carries on for uh... the next generation so if you have stories of kind of your own children or other young leaders that you've seen in engaging in this work as well thank you monique the women's movement won't be successful if we aren't cross-generational and it's a great question we uh... women get exhausted doing what they're doing for their own equality and their sisters but then their daughters we often we have neglected strategies to mentor to forge alliances so uh... thank you monique for being vocal always and keeping vocal uh... because we're so powerful when we unite cross-generationally uh... i love your name third wave because we can create a third wave uh... but my strategy was to uh... get uh... eds i mean eds of the fund of the organizations that women's funds funded and talked to i have six kids and i go you got to work this summer which organization do you want to work for and uh... and and i would have my kids intern at uh... organizations and a favorite for them was the women advocate ministry all most of my kids went to rikers uh... to work out there with the uh... staff there or uh... went to albinate a lobby against the rockfeller drug laws and i mean you can take and you know my kids love this kind of work and have respect for at uh... activists because because they've gotten to meet the real heroes in our culture which of the grassroots activists and many i want you to know that my daughter was one of the first third waivers she aged out tell her but you know she she's her complaint is that everybody says where the young feminist they're not stepping up to the plate and she says here we are we can't get in a word in edgewise you know so we have to make a little space at the bike all it's elizabeth okay well i want to thank so much helen lekelly hunts jennifer bupit baublejopton thank you all this is actually thank you so much this was actually a perfect segue because on june first we are having a fabulous panel here called gen x gen y the next generation and uh... i've had a number of meetings that have grown exponentially and instead of having a panel of intergenerational conversation we're having a panel of gen x gen y's so we can listen and hear what the next generations are going to be doing for activism so i'm very happy to announce that so do come june first please join us downstairs we're going to have a celebratory uh... reception honoring this first anniversary in the ruben pavilion and i would like very much and so heartedly wholeheartedly to thank my comrade in arms helen jennifer barbara and carol thank you very much for a wonderful panel thank you all for coming very much great day thank you