Upcoming Event

Women Standing Together Lunch - Portland

Begins Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 11:45 AM

Christy Hemenway of Gold Star Honeybees wants your ideas for staffing her growing business! Christy’s business and share your suggestions on how to plan her staff growth so…

Economic Security Initiative

The mission of the Maine Women’s Fund is to create lasting social change by investing in the power of women and the dreams of girls. Our past grantmaking experience has taught us many things. Most importantly, that a woman’s ability to take care of herself, her family and her ability to contribute to her community, depend on her ability to obtain financial security.

We have found economic security to be the cornerstone of all aspects of our mission; without it, Maine women cannot meet their basic needs and girls cannot reach their full potential. With financial security, women can break the cycle of violence and access better housing, healthcare, and employment. Economic stability enables a woman to improve the quality of life for her family, her community and our entire state. Every dollar that comes our way supports our mission.

We invest in non-profits committed to helping us achieve our goal of economic security for all Maine women and girls. In the 20 years since our inception, we have granted over $1.5 million. In our 2008-2009 grant cycle, we granted nearly $80,000. The non-profits we support help us by focusing their work on four strategic areas that together will advance economic security:

Entrepreneurship and Better Jobs & Wages
Education
Public Policy
Asset Building & Financial Literacy

Goals

The Economic Security Initiative is our sole grantmaking project for 2009-10. The initiative has three specific goals:

To build economically secure futures for low-income women across Maine by investing in our four strategic funding areas.
To ensure the sustainability of our grantees and their social change solutions by investing technical assistance in those individuals, nonprofits and institutions delivering social services.
To help all women feel economically secure through public education, cultural awareness, and policy changes.

To read more about our 2010 Funding Opportunities and Grant Application, click here or download our 2009-10 Grant Application.