The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham

The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham

Website: http://womensfundbirmingham.org/

 205-326-4454

 2201 5th Avenue South, Suite 110, Birmingham, AL 35205

Armed with a vision of a fund that would create greater opportunities for women and girls, Lin Carleen founded The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham in 1996. She wanted to create an endowment fund to honor the memories of her mother and her infant daughter, both of whom did not have the opportunity to reach their full potential as women. Her vision for this endowment fund is to encourage the full participation of women and girls in the community by creating opportunities for educational, physical, emotional, social, artistic, and personal growth and empowerment.

For the first fourteen years, The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham was a component fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. In 2011, The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham, governed by a volunteer Board of Directors, became an independent 501(c)(3) organization with an endowment solely to support programs for women and girls in the Birmingham area. In 2000, the Women’s Fund published Portraits and became the leading authority on the status of women in the region. In its role as a convener for agencies to address critical needs for women, the Women’s Fund’s major focus for the past five years has been on domestic violence. In 2009, the Council on Foundations tapped The Women’s Fund and its Voices Against Violence campaign for its national Critical Impact Award. The Women’s Fund was cited as being on the cutting edge of social change.

At the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham, we continue to work together to transform the conditions of poverty and to create an equal and just future for low-income women and girls. Most recently, The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham has expanded its initiatives to address the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Women’s Economic Security.

Our work is rooted in a tradition of educating women of all means about how we can help each other by engaging as activist philanthropists. It is this singular commitment of women helping other women that sets The Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham apart from other philanthropic foundations.