Nonprofits benefiting women and girls in the United States received $8.8 billion in charitable giving in 2020 — a 9.2% increase compared to 2019. While that sounds like a lot of money, it was less than the 11.3% growth in overall charitable giving during 2020, according to Giving USA data, and represented just 1.8% of all giving in the U.S that year.
That’s part of new data from Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The fifth annual Women & Girls Index (WGI) data shows that while giving to women and girls grew during the peak of the global COVID-19 infection, the pandemic disproportionately impacted women in numerous ways.
The WGI tracks data on charitable organizations dedicated to women and girls in the U.S., along with the amount of philanthropic support they receive from individuals, foundations and corporations. The new report adds information from 2020, expanding the data from 2012 to 2020.
“The year 2020 was marked by upheaval across all areas of life, and philanthropy — especially giving to women and girls — was no exception,” said Jeannie Sager, director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute. “The pandemic erased progress that had been made toward gender equity, and women and girls will need additional resources to continue to make gains. The WGI provides a powerful tool for identifying funding opportunities that address issues affecting women and girls.”
For example, contributions to family and gender-based violence prevention organizations tracked in the WGI increased 17.9% between 2019 and 2020, suggesting that donors might have been motivated to give to these organizations as domestic violence incidents increased following pandemic stay-at-home orders, according to the report’s authors.
Additionally, in 2020, societal conversations inspired by the racial and social justice movement also raised questions about the dearth of funding for women and girls of color and spurred donors to action. The WGI is one part of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s Equitable Giving Lab, an initiative of the school funded by Google.org to better understand charitable giving to diverse communities and under-resourced groups. Forthcoming research by the school for the Equitable Giving Lab will examine funding for BIPOC communities, as well as intersectional groups like LGBTQ+ women and girls, and women and girls of color.
Key findings from the 2023 WGI include:
- Reproductive health and family planning organizations received the greatest amount of philanthropic support for women’s and girls’ organizations during 2020, a consistent trend over time. However, other types of women’s and girls’ organizations experienced changes likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as an increase in contributions to women’s and girls’ human services organizations, and a decrease in contributions to women’s and girls’ sports and recreation.
- Some subsectors received an unexpected boost in charitable giving from 2019 to 2020, including women’s and girls’ arts and culture, and women’s and girls’ education. This growth can be explained in part by the influence of a few large donations on relatively small areas of philanthropy, according to the report’s authors.
- Support for women’s and girls’ organizations from government grants increased 10.1% from 2019 to 2020, but substantially lagged the 36.6% growth from this funding source that was received by other charitable organizations.
“Women and girls have been shown to be disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, which generated greater giving to these organizations, but also greater — and sustained — demand for services,” said Una Osili, Ph.D., associate dean for research and international programs at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “The WGI equips donors, fundraisers and others dedicated to women’s and girls’ causes to make an urgent case for increased and lasting philanthropic support for the myriad issues affecting women and girls.”
Among donors in affluent households who gave to women’s and girls’ causes, 8.2% indicated they were motivated to do so by hearing that women’s and girls’ causes receive less than 2% of all charitable giving, according to the 2023 Bank of America Study of Philanthropy: Charitable Giving by Affluent Households conducted by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
The Women’s Philanthropy Institute is observing Give to Women and Girls Day, an effort to increase funding for women’s and girls’ organizations, in partnership with GivingTuesday, Impact 100, Magee-Women’s Research Institute, Ms. Foundation for Women, National Women’s Hall of Fame, Philanos, Philanthropy Together, Pivotal Ventures, Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Together Women Rise, United Nations Foundation, Vital Voices, Women’s Funding Network and Women Moving Millions.
The full research brief and a downloadable dataset of women- and girls-serving organizations are available at EquitableGivingLab.org/WGI. A searchable index of the 51,756 charitable organizations included in the 2023 WGI can be accessed at WomenAndGirlsIndex.org. Additional information about how to participate in Give to Women and Girls Day can be found here.
