Five women gather around a dinner table, trading stories of family and friends, of love and laughter, of sorrows and celebrations. To an outsider looking in, the group has seemingly known each other for years. But what truly brought this team together is a mutual passion — bettering the lives of women and girls in our community.

The Fourth Street Fun-ders are just a handful of the 700 members of The Women’s Fund of Winston-Salem, an advised fund of The Winston-Salem Foundation. A leader in local women’s philanthropy, the group distributes annual grants to programs and initiatives that benefit women of all ages.

Launched in November 2006, the fund chose its first set of grants in 2007. In fall 2008, The Women’s Fund awarded more than $182,000 to area agencies to address the core of problems facing local females and promote prevention. “You can’t create change just by putting a band aid on the wound,” explains Tari Hanneman, The Women’s Fund coordinator. “By attacking the root causes of social problems, we can be proactive.”

Seeing a Need

One such 2008 grantee was the E-Girls — Empowering Girls in Real Life Situations — program, which was awarded $30,000 for mentoring and educating girls ages 11 to 19 who have been emotionally or physically abused.

Cheryl Ingram, the group’s founder and executive director, sums up its goal simply: “We want to reach out to the hearts of children and make them stop hurting.” The grant has allowed high-school students to visit colleges, and middle-school girls to take field trips. E-Girls even has a community-service component, and its members shop for Christmas presents for the elderly. “Without The Women’s Fund, we would not have been able to introduce these [students] to a new atmosphere,” Ingram says. “This money helps us give them hope. We’ve watched the light come back on in their eyes.”

Other grant recipients include Crisis Control Ministry’s Breaking the Cycle program, Carver School Road Branch Library’s Girls with a Purpose, Children’s Law Center of North Carolina guardian ad litem training, and the Bethesda Center for the Homeless.

It’s a passionate concern for issues like these that has led hundreds to join the fund. An individual membership is extended to women who contribute $1,200 annually. Likewise, groups of up to 12 women and girls are also invited to collectively contribute $1,200. Each individual member and group is then offered one vote toward determining how the grants will be distributed that year. Voting occurs in late summer, and the recipients are announced at an annual luncheon in October.

Answering a Call

But it’s the months leading up to that ceremony when much of the group’s magic truly occurs. “I can’t describe our membership in terms of our ages, our races, or our marital statuses,” explains Michelle Cook, vice chancellor for university advancement at Winston-Salem State University, and chair of The Women’s Fund. “What I can describe is what I saw early on — our passion.”

Groups like the Fourth Street Fun-ders may meet regularly to socialize. But when it comes to casting their vote, it’s a job the team takes quite seriously. “We each examine the missions of the agencies, and then rank our selections,” says group member Jane Martin, president of Makin’ it Work - Pronto!. From there, they discuss each applicant’s projected outcome.

“The interesting part is that we’re all coming at this discussion from different perspectives,” says Shari Covitz, vice president of institutional advancement and executive director of the Forsyth Tech Foundation. “That said, it has been fascinating to stumble into the fact that we have so much in common,” adds member Sharon Dobbins of Dobbins & Company.

Equally inspirational is the three-generational group made up of Helen Beloof, Susan McBurney, and Rachel Taylor. “The spark plug in our group is my daughter, Susan. She’s the one who brought us all together like this,” says Beloof, a retired teacher who moved to Winston-Salem from Berkeley, California. “We have the most fun going over grants. Our discussion is quite engaging.”

McBurney, director of public relations and marketing for Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, says she was moved by the possibility of sharing The Women’s Fund experience with her family. “This idea resonated with me from the beginning. Women of all ages need to know that they really have the ability to make change,” she says.

Taylor, McBurney’s 22-year-old daughter, is a case manager for Big Brothers Big Sisters. She notes that as her group was prioritizing its vote, she saw that their differences weren’t as much generational as they were geographic. “My grandma spent nearly 20 years in Berkeley, and she was more drawn to homeless issues. Similarly, I found myself using my background as an economics major to evaluate grant requests.”

Other groups are made up of co-workers, church acquaintances, or strangers. There is even a group where a majority of the members share the same first name — Margaret.

“We’re accomplishing something wonderful in Winston-Salem, but we’re gaining personal happiness, too,” notes Fourth Street Fun-der Patti Mandel. “It’s a lot like a rock and ripples analogy,” Kay Johnson says. “The rock is our money, but we can watch the ripples in the relationships we form, the people we help, and the changes we make.”

Making a Change

In addition to supporting organizations that benefit women, another important mission of The Women’s Fund is to build a community of female philanthropists who choose to donate their time, treasures, and talents. The group’s research has found that many women have still never written their own checks or had much of a financial voice.

“What motivates people to join The Women’s Fund is as diverse as its membership,” Hanneman explains. “Ultimately, I think women understand the power of collective giving. We all can make individual contributions to causes important to us, but the power of pooling our funds is tremendous. That is what can truly make a difference.”

Participant scholarships are available to applicants who have a commitment to The Women’s Fund cause but may not have the resources to finance a membership.

“Once we had the fund in place, we wanted to open our membership so that every woman could be at the table — so that every woman could have a voice. We are working to create the future female philanthropist,” Cook concludes.

“We’re connecting women in ways they would never be connected before — through giving.”

Individuals and groups who join The Women’s Fund before June 30 will be eligible to vote on grants awarded this fall. For more information, call Tari Hanneman at 336-714-3468, or go to womensfundws.org.

The Women’s Fund of Winston-Salem’s 2008 Grant Awards were presented to:

Bethesda Center For The Homeless

Carver School Road Branch Library

Center Of Excellence For Research, Teaching, & Learning At The Wake Forest University School
Of Medicine

Children’s Law Center Of Central North Carolina

Crisis Control Ministry

Empowering Girls In Real Life Situations

Experiment In Self Reliance

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools

Winston-Salem Youth Arts Institute