ShortSighted
(1992, Linda Lipton, Holly Delany Cole, and Mary Servatius)

How Chicago-area grantmakers can apply a gender lens to see the connections between social problems and women's needs.

Chicago Women in Philanthropy's 1992 ShortSighted report alerted local grantmakers to the lack of funding available to support the needs of women & girls.
The research found that 3.2% of the dollars awarded by Chicago-area grantmakers in 1990 went to women and girls. They also learned that these funders generally did not see a need to view their funding decisions in gender-specific terms.
The report recommended that Grantmakers:

* Examine current grantmaking using a gender lens.
* Seek out opportunities for funding organizations that are serving women      & girls through RFP's, newsletters, annual reports, or partnerships and         collaborations.
* Increase funding to organizations intentionally working for and with              women to more effectively deliver services and to advocate for change in      the institutions and systems which keep women marginalized.


Because these regional figures are remarkably similar to the comparable national figures (reported by Women and Philanthropy), they appear to form a national pattern of both philanthropic giving and board representation. They indicate a pervasive and consistent pattern of funding allocations to programs for women and girls and raise questions about why such a pattern exists.

The Chicago research study was greatly assisted by a pre-existing data base, developed by the Donors Forum in Chicago, which tracks grantmaking by a variety of classifications, including gender. Few other areas of the country have such a data base, so others wanting to document funding patterns in their region must either develop the data base (a time consuming and expensive proposition) or rely on the Foundation Center’s data which includes a smaller sample of grantmakers by region than is ideal.

The primary goal of this research study was to document and disseminate data about the percentage of foundation funding allocated to programs for women and girls. The assumption of the researchers seems to have been that documenting the consistently small proportion of funds made available to programs specifically for women and girls would in and of itself raise serious equity issues in the minds of funders and, therefore, lead to a change in funding priorities. There is little evidence that this has occurred. The research did serve as a vehicle to begin conversations within and across foundations about gender equity issues, but it did not lead to a dramatic change that many had wanted