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Home › Articles › General › Girls as Grantmakers

Girls as Grantmakers

Giving, Mentoring and Learning

By Kelly Burgess

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It was the "girlcott" heard 'round the world – or at least around the country. A small, handpicked group of preteen and teenage girls was trying to find a way in which they could empower other young girls. One thing that came up over and over in their meeting was the proliferation of demeaning T-shirts sold by retailer Abercrombie & Fitch with slogans such as "who needs brains when you have these?"

The girls, all of whom, by the way, have both brains and breasts and choose to use the former, decided this was a trend with which they were not comfortable. They organized a "girlcott" to protest the messages on the shirts. The national media picked it up, the girls got a meeting with Abercrombie officers, the shirts were pulled from the shelves, and the very first action of the new group, Girls as Grantmakers, made history, put a feminine spin on our cultural lexicon and proved that girl power isn't just a cute slogan.

Girls to Women, and Back
Girls as Grantmakers is a program of the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania. The organization was started in 2002 by a group of women who wanted to establish a local women's fund. Executive Director Heather Arnet says groups such as hers have been around for about 25 years. "Independent groups like this are all over the world," she says. "What they share is a similar history where a group of women get together and share their money to focus on women and girls."

In forming the group, Arnet visited similar organizations for inspiration and ideas. From the very beginning, she knew it was important to get girls involved in the grant and mentoring process. "I thought we already had the women part, and we'd made grants to and by women and some of those projects served girls, but we felt we weren't incorporating them," she says. "It was important to me they didn't feel as if they were just being served, but were being granted ownership."


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