Women's Giving Alliance: New focus to address 'alarming' violence against women and girls
The Women’s Giving Alliance, an initiative of The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, announced $750,000 in 2024 grants to 18 area nonprofits.
The grants and the nonprofit recipients for 2024 were announced at a recent member forum. The grants will support women and girls' basic needs, such as housing, health services and workforce support, which has been the alliance's focus for the past five years.
At the forum, the alliance also announced its five-year grantmaking focus to begin next year — violence against women and girls, including child abuse and neglect, harassment and bullying, intimate partner and domestic violence, predatory social media, rape and sex trafficking.
"Our research and community feedback indicated that women and girls are experiencing violence at alarming rates across Northeast Florida," said Sheila Collier, alliance president. "We hope to have a significant impact through both our grantmaking and community efforts. We support traditional solutions to this insidious problem, as well as new and innovative approaches."
Part of the 2024 funding was a challenge grant that raised about $108,000 from members. For 18 months the alliance also has worked on growing its membership, which now totals 445 women, each of whom makes annual contributions to the grants pool.
The nonprofits funded this year include Hubbard House in Jacksonville, a full-service certified domestic violence shelter that annually serves about 5,000 Duval and Baker County survivors and their families. The $50,000 grant will be used for transportation and hotel support, according to Kristi Brandon, chief development and administration officer.
"The demand on our shelter is high year-round, so this funding is a crucial opportunity for us to further expand our capacity to serve women and girls in need in our community," she said.
Dedicating the next five years of alliance funding to address violence against women and girls is "incredibly important … not only because of the life-saving impact WGA will have through their grants, but because of the network of providers this discussion supports," Brandon said. "WGA has a proven track record of selecting the focus areas that most affect our community and boosting the profile of those issues."
CEO Gail Patin said, "Hubbard House was founded by passionate women in our community who saw the need to support women in abusive relationships. … I can’t help but see WGA’s path as right alongside those founders — they see this need, they are contributing to this movement."
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Here are the other 2024 grant recipients and who they serve:
Duval County: Family Promise of Jacksonville, $50,000; Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida: $50,000; Northside Community Involvement: $50,000; Rebuilding Ex-offenders Successfully Through Opportunities Rehabilitation and Education (R.E.S.T.O.R.E.), $50,000; We Care Jacksonville, $30,000; Delta Research and Educational Foundation, $5,000.
Nassau County: Barnabas Center, $50,000.
Putnam County: Lee Conlee House, $50,000
St. Johns County: Betty Griffin Center, $50,000
Clay, Duval and St Johns: Muslim American Social Services, $50,000; ReThreaded, $50,000
All Northeast Florida counties: Feeding Northeast Florida: $50,000; Sulzbacher, $50,000; Volunteers in Medicine Jacksonville, $49,554; Operation New Hope, $40,377; Literacy Alliance of Northeast Florida, $15,000; Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center, $10,000.
bcravey@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4109
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville women's group dedicates $750,000 to help women and girls
