Sisters Empowering Sisters
Girl Grantmaking Curriculum

The Sisters Empowering Sisters (SES) curriculum assists young women in becoming leaders by placing them in decision-making positions within the foundation. SES participants make decisions that critically influence and support the lives of girls and young women by funding innovative programs for girls by girls.

SES meets bi-weekly; meetings include training on feminism, social change, foundations, grant-making, proposal review, performing site-visits, and public relations. The program begins with a teambuilding retreat and ends with a reflective evaluation retreat.

Young women do their own grant-making, awarding a total of $40,000 in the fall. In the spring, half of the group is integrated into the general GBF grant-making by serving on the grant-making committee with the adult board. The other half of the group is engaged in an interactive evaluation project to evaluate the impact of SES grantmaking.

If you are interested in starting a girl grant-making program, a tool kit is available with program resources from five different girl grant-making groups nation wide.

The Girls' Grantmaking Tool Kit is for anyone who is planning a girls' grantmaking program and contains materials from five different women and girls' foundations' successful programs. This comprehensive package will streamline your process of gathering information and comparing methodology.

The Took Kit contains a video from Sisters Empowering Sisters along with supporting program documents. It also contains, The Women's Foundation's book on young women and philanthropy: The World Belongs to Us, as well as materials from the Michigan Women's Foundation, the Boston Women's Fund, and Women's Foundation of Greater Kansas City.

The toolkit may be ordered through the Women’s Funding Network. Each tool kit is $85. To order a kit email Anita Lalwani at alalwani@wfnet.org. To view a description of the publication and other publications available through the Women’s funding Network visit: http://www.wfnet.org/getinformed/publications

The Girls' Grantmaking Tool Kit is a production of the Girls' Grantmaking Network. This network is a group of program staff who work with girl grantmakers nationwide and meet on a monthly conference call and in person as needed to share ideas, experiences, best practices, discuss issues pertinent to girls and young women and plan opportunities for girl grantmakers to hone their skills such as the girl grantmakers track at the Women’s Funding Network conference.