Women's Fund for the Fox Valley Region

Women's Fund for the Fox Valley Region

The Women's Fund for the Fox Valley Region started in 1995 as a field-of-interest fund housed at the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region. A group of 108 founding donors each contributed at least $1,000, creating an endowment base north of $130,000. In 2005 the fund converted into a separate 501(c)(3) supporting organization, though it continues to operate out of the Community Foundation's office on West Lawrence Street in Appleton. The vehicle exists for one purpose: to direct grants, advocacy and education programming exclusively toward women and girls in Calumet, Outagamie, Shawano, Waupaca and Northern Winnebago counties. Grantmaking concentrates on continuing education and training, mental and emotional wellness, life-skill mentoring and support. The organization has funded over 120 area nonprofits, with named recipients including Christine Ann Domestic Abuse Services, COTS Inc., Youth Go and Fox Valley Technical College. Programming runs through vehicles such as Starting Point 2.0, ConnectHER mentorship cohorts and the Girl-Powered Giving youth philanthropy initiative. The Fund does not operate as a direct investor in for-profit assets; its capital sits inside a donor-advised and endowed structure managed alongside the Community Foundation and an affiliate called the Community Real Estate & Personal Property Foundation for complex gifts. The team consists of three staff members led by Executive Director Julie Keller, supported by Development Manager Terri St. Lawrence and Communications and Outreach Specialist Stacie Hazlett-Rothe. A 13-member volunteer board oversees governance, drawing directors from local employers including Plexus Corp., NAI Pfefferle, Galloway Company and Fox Valley Technical College. The Fund belongs to the Women's Funding Network, an alliance of similar foundations, and runs a young-professional circle branded Brighter Female Futures (B.F.F.). In October 2021 the Fund wrapped the first ConnectHER mentoring cohort with plans for a second launch in January 2022. The structural differentiator is the Fund's permanent endowment architecture inside a community foundation. Unlike a private foundation, it pools hundreds of smaller gifts alongside corporate partnerships — J. J. Keller Foundation and Plexus Corp. among them — to sustain a rolling grant cycle tied to a specific five-county geography. That hybrid donor-community foundation model lets it accept and liquidate complex assets such as real estate while maintaining a narrow gender-lens mandate that captured less than 2% of U.S. charitable giving at the time of its founding.