Women's Foundation for the State of Arizona

We create social, political, and economic change that achieves equity for women and girls of all identities in Arizona.

📝 We research
Nonpartisan research is at the heart of everything we do. We identify economic barriers and opportunities for women and girls in Arizona to inform our work.

⚖️ We advocate
WFSA strives to remove systemic barriers facing women and girls through policy change. We write, run, support, and enact legislation that levels the playing field.

🌱 We innovate
Big problems need bold solutions, so we seek to achieve long-lasting systemic change with innovative approaches. We create, pilot, and scale programs like Pathways for Single Moms and Unidas Teen Philanthropy, that empower and uplift women and girls.

💰 We invest
Organizations that support women and girls are chronically underfunded. WFSA aims to change that by investing in a wide range of organizations that position women and girls to thrive.

What we're up to in 2025:

1. WFSA's Self-Sufficiency Standard Updated 2025 Report will launch in Spring 2025 and will be used by legislators to inform policy, professionals when developing workforce development and wage setting, and nonprofit leaders in determining the level of support needed for programming and more. 
2. WFSA has proudly launched the FORGE (Fund for Racial and Gender Equity) Grant in January of 2025 as part of our commitment to trust-based and unrestricted funding to BIPOC centered nonprofits in Arizona. These $65,000 grants will be awarded to eight Arizona organizations in May 2025.
3. WFSA writes and runs our own policy and during the 2025 legislative session we are running two upcoming bills with bipartisan sponsors that will prioritize access to childcare and gender pay equity, as well as stewarding the Gender Equity Network (GEN) Advocacy group with quarterly sessions. Two bills we are currently championing at the capitol are HB2648 - Expanding Access to Childcare Eligibility (Sponsored by Representative Sarah Liguori) and SB1197 - Salary Wage History Ban (Sponsored by Senator Analise Ortiz). 
4. WFSA is collaborating with RE:Frame Youth Center in South Phoenix to relaunch our Unidas Youth Power and Leadership program with plans to expand to Southern Arizona in late 2025. Join WFSA and RE:Frame for a Youth Showcase event in May 2025! 

ABOUT WFSA: 

Since the Foundation's inception, we have invested over $30 million to support over 600 programs to date, serving thousands of women and girls in Arizona. WFSA research helps inform people across the state, and the growing focus on advocacy led to WFSA advising the Executive Office and passing legislation that can help hundreds of thousands of Arizonans. A comprehensive process of research and evaluation ensures that donations from the community are thoughtfully directed to programs that can demonstrate long-lasting impact.

The concept for WFSA began in 1991 when two Tucson women, tired of philanthropy's failure to address the economic challenges facing women, decided to take matters into their own hands. With $20,000, Melody Robidoux and Harriet Silverman launched their idea for a women's scholarship fund in Tucson. This fund evolved into the Women's Foundation of Southern Arizona and was officially incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in 1999.

In 2021, as WFSA celebrated 30 years of impact, we could not ignore what was becoming increasingly apparent: after watching the pandemic destroy decades of momentum for women, it is essential that we scale our work to impact women and girls across Arizona. WFSA announced in October 2021 that we were expanding our scope to include the whole state, and changing our name to The Women's Foundation for the State of Arizona. WFSA's first statewide grant, the Women & Girls of Color Fund, was launched that same year and was Arizona's first grant specifically designed to support organizations led by and serving women of color.