The Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy today released its sixth annual Women & Girls Index (WGI), the only systematically generated, comprehensive index that measures charitable giving to organizations dedicated to women and girls in the U.S., including the amount of philanthropic support they receive from individuals, foundations, and corporations. The 2024 WGI adds finalized IRS data from 2021(the last year for which financial data is available) across 54,588 organizations—providing an analysis on the decade 2012 to 2021 that highlights both gaps and growth in philanthropic support for women and girls.

For the first time, women’s and girls’ organizations surpassed $10 billion in giving as they received $10.2 billion in philanthropic support in 2021. This historic milestone is set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic’s ongoing disproportionate impact on women, particularly women of color and those in low-wage jobs, and ongoing discussions about the systemic barriers to gender equity. While awareness of gender-focused issues such as pay equity and reproductive rights has grown, overall charitable giving that supports women and girls remains relatively small at 1.9% of total giving. This statistic highlights the continued need for greater philanthropic support across the full spectrum of causes that improve the lives of women and girls.

The decade-long dataset allows for an examination of long-term trends, offering a broader context for understanding how giving to women’s and girls’ organizations has evolved. The data reveals that while women’s and girls’ organizations are seeing growth in charitable dollars raised, they’re often keeping pace with or still falling behind other causes such as human services and education. There is no single measure tracked by the report (such as philanthropic support, assets, revenues, expenses) in which WGI organizations outpaced growth for non-WGI organizations over the last decade.

Extending a consistent trend over time, reproductive health and family planning organizations continued to receive the greatest amount of philanthropic support for women’s and girls’ organizations in 2021, at $1.8 billion. This was followed by women’s and girls’ human services organizations and family and gender-based violence organizations, each receiving $1.6 billion in 2021. Organizations serving women’s and girls’ civil rights and advocacy saw the largest growth in philanthropic support at 60.9% from 2020 to 2021. In addition to growing the most from 2020 to 2021, this group of organizations more than doubled the amount of philanthropic support they received over the decade.

Read the full article about philanthropic support for women's organizations at Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.