Potential funding opportunity for woman-led EA organization

tae 🔸

Many apologies in advance if I'm not formatting correctly or posting in the right place. I'm brand-new to the forum.

https://www.ascenaretail.com/our-culture/ascena-foundation/jaffe-awards/

This awards program has $100,000 to give to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in "innovative and entrepreneurial social reform" run by a woman. The deadline for nominations is May 15, 2019. It would be great to nominate an EA-aligned organization that meets these criteria. Any ideas?

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Avi NorowitzMar 14 201914

The eligibility criteria seems to rule out nearly all EA-aligned organizations:

"Nominees must meet the following requirements to be eligible ... "
"Legal residents of one (1) of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or Canada (excluding Quebec) (“Territory”)"
"A creator or founder of a social impact organization (“Organization”) that ... Has a primary objective related to improving health, education, or esteem or to leadership development and serves low- and middle-income women and/or children in the Territory. (The Organization may have tangential operations outside of the Territory, but, to be eligible for this contest, its core mission and programming must be directed within the Territory.)

KirstenMar 14 20193

Yeah, I don't know of any EA organisations that primarily serve North American women and children.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Mar 14 20196

I'd recommend changing the title of this post to something like: "Funding opportunity for woman-led EA organization", so that people know what it's about before clicking (and to reduce the chance that people confuse it for a fundraising post, which I did at first).

tae 🔸Mar 17 20191

Thanks for the suggestion! Done.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Mar 14 20194

This is a fine place to post questions like this!

A few EA-aligned organizations with female leaders (not a comprehensive list):

Animal Charity Evaluators (nearly all-female staff, as well)
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (nearly all-female staff, as well)
J-PAL (the executive director of J-PAL North America is a woman, and one of the two co-founders was a different woman)

J-PAL may also be the most "entrepreneurial" organization on the list, though SCI's direct work seems to make them a closer fit for the types of organizations that have won in past years.

Questions:

1. Do you have any personal connection to the award/program?

2. Do you know how many charities were nominated last year?

3. Are you planning to nominate an organization, and would it help if multiple people nominated the same organization?

tae 🔸Mar 17 20193

Great, this is exactly the sort of response I was hoping for!

I do not have a personal connection to the award, and I don't know how many charities were nominated last year. I plan to nominate the organization that stands out in this discussion (thus far J-PAL). The website doesn't mention any kind of voting system, so one nomination should suffice.

Frustratingly, I think the requirement that the organization must serve North American women rules out ACE, SCI, CFAR, and Encompass. J-PAL may have a chance.

Aaron Gertler 🔸Mar 18 20192

J-PAL would be very unlikely to qualify (they may have done a bit of work in Mexico, but I'm not aware of them having any coverage in the U.S. or Canada). I'd recommend checking that before you take the time to nominate them. (Still, thanks for broadcasting this award in the first place; it's nice to know that people are keeping an eye out for good funding opportunities like this.)

Howie_LempelMar 18 20193

I think J-PAL North America does do lots of work in the US although I doubt they're focused enough on women/children to qualify for this. https://www.povertyactionlab.org/na/about

Dawn DrescherMar 15 20192

CFAR and Encompass (https://encompassmovement.org/) might also fit the bill? Maybe also some (other) EA meta-charities whose current team configuration I don't remember well enough.