I recently received the 2025-26 Impact Report in the mail, and paging through, found a comprehensive list of our 110+ Women’s Fund groups and 120+ individual members. As many of you know, one ballot vote requires a contribution of $2,750. Groups reach this threshold collectively, while Individual Members (IM’s) make this contribution on their own.
What may surprise you is that many women participate in both membership classes!
Ann Lippincott (above left), a former veteran of the Research Committee, created and is a member of four different groups, each representing a part of her life. Before filling out her individual ballot, she chats about potential grantees with her groups; “melding the different perspectives to inform my decisions.”
Robin Masson (above right), current Research Committee member, decided to become an Individual Member last year after seeing “the impact of the drastic and unprecedented cuts in governmental funding on which so many of our local agencies depend.” Rather than leave her group to become an IM, she opted to do both, as her group members had become dear friends over the past decade, mixing social activity with Women’s Fund voting.
Ann and Robin continue to give so much to the Women’s Fund. Our hope is that what we give in time, heart, and contribution, we reap in community, friendship, and in knowing we’ve done the right thing. Ann shared this quote from her father, which helps explain the burden lifted off our shoulders by the Women’s Fund: “It is easy to give money away, but it is difficult to give money away well.”