2022 A Year in Review

Before we leap into the New Year, we want to take some moments to reflect on what your support made possible in 2022.

The Atlanta Women’s Foundation strives to break barriers for women and girls in metro Atlanta so they can live economically self-sufficient, successful, safe, and healthy lives.  AWF supports organizations that improve the lives of economically vulnerable women and girls in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties.

AWF invests in organizations that lift women and girls up and out of poverty by increasing their access to services. One of the ways we accomplish this is through strategic grantmaking. In order to achieve the greatest impact with the funds AWF invests in the community, we have incorporated a Collective Impact Model into our grantmaking.  Through this approach AWF brings together our grantees in order to do the most good for the largest number of women and girls. AWF guides the vision and strategy of the project, maintains communication, ensures all data is collected and measured in the same way, and provides supportive activities like annual convenings.

In 2022 we funded organizations in 4 categories:

Social Justice

With our support Legal Aid will help approximately 350 women obtain or maintain stable housing for at least 30 days and approximately 75 women obtain or maintain benefits such as, unemployment insurance benefits, SNAP, Medicare or Medicaid coverage.

Senior Women’s Mental Health & Wellbeing

Our Promoting Senior Women’s Mental Health & Wellbeing Project funded by the Ann K. Spear Humanitarian Foundation allows AWF to provide grants to nonprofits providing the most effective physical and mental health programs to senior women impacted by poverty.  Our 2022 grant supports Project Healthy Grandparents in which grandparents are raising their grandchildren in parent-absent homes. Many grandmothers take on this role to “keep the family together” rather than having their grandchildren grow up in the foster care system. Unlike traditional foster parents, many grandparent caregivers who informally assume this responsibility are offered no training to raise traumatized children and receive limited financial assistance to meet their basic needs.

Rebuilding Women

In an effort to address the needs of nonprofit organizations serving women impacted by COVID-19, AWF established the Rebuilding Women Initiative. Through the Rebuilding Women Initiative, AWF address the intersecting barriers women face in the wake of the pandemic with grants to 3 nonprofit partners.

These grants have:

• Empowered refugee women. It made sound legal advice and support to flee their abuser and make a fresh start possible for an abused woman and her children.
• Provided savings matches to cover basic needs such as rental assistance and transportation. As these basic needs continue to be met, this funding helps women not only thrive, but flourish as they adjust to an empowered life that previously seemed unobtainable
• Supported a career coach, training and education to ensure the graduates of the program have access to tools to obtain a living wage and achieve and sustain market-rate housing for their families.
• Developed a Youth Enrichment Program for children in grades K-12. This program recognizes the benefit and importance of embracing the two-generational approach to poverty and trauma. The program design aligns seamlessly with the mothers’ program and address needs through a trauma-informed lens.
• Helped organizations better meet the diverse needs of survivors by supporting programming that is individualized, responsive, relevant and resiliency-focused.

Women’s Pathway to Success

Since the launch of this program, AWF has awarded $1.8 million to 10 local nonprofits and have provided access to almost 17,000 women in 4 years. The Atlanta Women’s Foundation’s Women’s Pathway to Success Program has been transformative, resulting in job creation, reduction in poverty, and eliminating barriers to employment for women in metro Atlanta.  We applied a collective impact approach to our Women’s Pathway to Success Program.  The grantee cohort continues to provide the critical combination of services to help women move to economic self-sufficiency through workforce training and development, microenterprise development, access to childcare, financial literacy, and employment opportunities.

November 2022 also saw a Successful Numbers Too Big To Ignore back in person at the Georgia World Congress Center where we awarded Girls Inc the 2022 Sue Wieland Embracing Possibility Award.  And we were so thrilled to hear Saadia Madsbjerg, President of The Coca-Cola Foundation announce another grant of $500,000 to fund the Atlanta Women’s Foundation’s Breaking Barriers, Building Women: Economic Empowerment Program program for a fourth year.  In combination with the Coca-Cola Foundation’s grant and with funding from our event sponsors, Fund-The-Mission funders and donations made during the luncheon, The Atlanta Women’s Foundation raised over $1.4 million to provide services to support women and girls in Atlanta impacted by poverty!

Also, in 2022 AWF commissioned a research report on the state of girls in metro Atlanta, which will be presented to the Atlanta community in early 2023.  The research has already informed the upcoming summer launch of our new grantmaking initiative called All Girls Forward.

Thank You – we can only accomplish all we do because of your generous investment in our mission. We hope you’ll continue to join us in helping Atlanta’s women and girls in 2023!