The HERitage Giving Fund at Texas Women’s Foundation has awarded more than $23,000 of fully unrestricted grants to six nonprofit organizations that are both led by and serve black women. The intent is to support the organizations’ operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The six nonprofits that earned the grants from HERitage were Texas Tenants’ Union, Inspiring Tomorrow’s Leaders, Carter’s House, Heart of Courage, ilooklikeLOVE, and Hopeful Solutions. 

HERitage simultaneously created resources in leadership education for grant recipients with the hope that its partnership will help leverage additional funding from other resources in one fell swoop of complete corporate aid. 

A HERitage member meeting before the time of COVID-19. [Courtesy: TWF]

Since 1985, Texas Women’s Foundation has maintained a mission of transforming Texas for women by empowering them to build socially and economically equitable communities. One of the world’s largest women’s foundations, Texas Women’s Foundation raises funding from a broad base of donors—individuals, foundations, and corporations—to invest more than $6.3 million annually into furthering the progress of Texan women and girls.

The Foundation’s statewide research on gender disparity issues provides Texas lawmakers with critical data to inform policies and programs that best allow women to thrive. 

Financially supplementing their vision, Texas Women’s Foundation has led in the gender lens investment movement. The foundation has deployed 100 percent of its assets, which includes endowments, operating investments, and donor-advised funds, in a gendered impact portfolio that yields substantive social and financial benefits to women. 

Meet the nonprofits

The Texas Tenants’ Union is a tenants’ rights organization that works to capacitate residents through education of their entitlements to preserve homes and improve living conditions in Dallas communities. Frequently offering provisions to lodgers, the Texas Tenants’ Union holds free weekly workshops, written materials that keep tenants on a need-to-know basis, individual counseling, and legal referrals. 

Inspire Tomorrow’s Leaders serves today’s workforce to create generational legacies of higher education, job security, and employment retention through workplace development in STEM careers.  

Carter’s House, headquartered in the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Dallas, aims to holistically support the family unit by providing low-cost education to children and professional support to parents in order to encourage self-sufficiency. Meeting a real need in North Texas, Carter’s House assists families with children ages 0-18 (up to 21 if enrolled in a state-accredited high school) that do not meet the housing criteria required by assistance programs in most school districts. 

Heart of Courage provides support and advocacy for women who have their children placed in the Texas foster care system and mothers who have aged out of the foster care system. Their mission is centered on an aspiration for the unification of mothers with their children in foster care. 

For even more resources, given the 29 percent of impoverished children residing in Dallas, ilooklikeLOVE bestows families with both material and intangible tools to have a thriving baby and financial freedom. For comprehensive progress, ilooklikeLOVE focuses its programming on two issues pertinent to young families, diaper insufficiency and single parent sustainability, to create an integrated approach that yields healthier babies even in households with limited capital. 

Hopeful Solutions empowers single mothers by providing the total support needed to sustain sobriety and independence with their children. Providing emotional, social, mental, and spiritual guidance to incite a sense of dignity to single moms who have addictions, Hopeful Solutions is exactly what the nonprofit sounds like an organized strive for the ideal resolution. 

Whether these black female-led nonprofits are satisfying a habitational basic, an occupational hope, or a familial dream, the six businesses are closer to achieving their missions with the support of the HERitage Giving Fund at Texas Women’s Foundation. 

“We thank our members for donating funds to help these wonderful nonprofit organizations during such a difficult time,” Akilah S. Wallace, HERitage chair, said in a statement. “We also invite other nonprofits to follow us on social media for information about upcoming funding opportunities, leadership development, and resources.”

GALLERY

The HERitage virtual grantee celebration was held via Zoom with members and grantees. Photos are courtesy of TWF.

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