Today, as women across the country head to the polls for the midterm elections, many of us will also have dedicated time and money as candidates, volunteers, or voters to support the candidates or causes we care about the most. The work doesn’t stop once your ballot is cast. Women are increasingly using their dollars to amplify their political voices—but you don’t need an election year or a massive bank account to make your voice heard.
A report from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute revealed that women are the ones leading the charge when it comes to embracing charitable giving as a means of civic engagement. According to the report, women’s giving to top 501(c)3 charities significantly increased compared to men’s in weeks following the 2016 presidential election. The report found that in the week before the election, women gave an average of $1,586 more than their male counterparts. In the week after the election, the difference between women and men’s giving more than doubled to $3,905.
Regardless of your income level, engaging in philanthropy can be a powerful way to actively support the ideas you champion at the polls or within your own activism. For political campaigns or mission-driven organizations, financial resources often make the crucial difference between success and failure. Philanthropy is not the “soft stuff”—it’s the platform women can embrace to wield economic power to create meaningful, purpose-driven change.
Understand the power in your money.
Let’s be honest: Money is a tough subject to broach, and for some of us the idea of using money as a tool to influence change can seem greedy or corrupt. But consider the type of impact money can have when it’s rooted in your values.
When you align charitable giving with your passions, you’re investing to create sustainable impact. Think of it this way: If advocacy is the engine of change, money is the fuel that sustains and propels advocacy campaigns. In addition to the variety of hands-on ways you can support nonprofits or political causes, like volunteering and canvassing, one of the simplest and most effective ways to create impact is through donations.
Through charitable giving—even at small amounts—you are supporting both the real-time actions of nonprofit programs, like after-school activities, as well as the large-scope projects like bringing an advocacy campaign to national scale. (For more on assessing impact, read on.)
You don’t need to be rich to give.
Whether you’re donating $5 a month or becoming a major contributor, your money can go the extra mile to support the causes you care about.
If large donations are like the ice cream in a sundae, then small donations function like toppings. Nonprofits rely on that extra bit of cash to provide paper and pens to classrooms, or print an additional banner or two. The small donations help organizations go that extra mile. The organization Givewell details what a select group of high-impact charities can do with donations as small as a few dollars.
