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Black Lives Matter Everywhere

Jun 3, 2020

Communications, Together Women Rise

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Black Lives Matter Everywhere

At Dining for Women, we come together as a community dedicated to equality and justice for women and girls around the world. While gender equality is our organization’s guiding star, we, as a community, know that this fight does not exist in a vacuum. We cannot separate gender inequality from other injustices we see in the world, no matter where they occur.  As Martin Luther King Jr. stated,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”  Details

Mar 29, 2017

Communications, News, Together Women Rise

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DFW Delegation Visits New York on Learning Trip

By Beth Ellen Holimon, DFW President

As Dining for Women grows, we see this as an opportunity to enhance the successful methods we have used to empower women and girls around the world. Growth inevitably brings change, and we are ensuring that we have relationships and access to research as we make decisions about the future. And this is not something we do without our members! We are always looking to improve, but 2017 is a more intense year of exploring and learning from other sources. Details

22
Apr, 2016

Best Practices, Communications, For chapters, For leaders, For members, Fundraising, Together Women Rise

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DFW Implements Best Practices in Program Funding

2015 was a big year for Dining for Women! Significant changes took place that have strengthened the vision, management, and operations of our organization. In her first full year at the helm, our Executive Director, Beth Ellen Holimon, realigned the duties and reporting structure of staff, led the Board of Directors through an extensive visioning process, and successfully created and executed DFW’s first, formalized fund development plan.

Details

23
Mar, 2016

2016, Communications, Featured Year, For members, Together Women Rise

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DFW Supports Peace Corps’ Let Girls Learn Program

On March 8th – International Women’s Day – Dining for Women announced its first Strategic Partnership with a $100,000 commitment to the Peace Corps’ Let Girls Learn Fund in support of girls’ education. On that day, we were honored to participate in a special event with First Lady Michelle Obama in Washington DC to support the Let Girls Learn Initiative. (See White House Fact Sheet) Details

22
Feb, 2016

Communications, For chapters, For leaders, For members

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New Committees Set Up to Advance Our 2020 Vision

We are very excited to announce our latest steps toward achieving DFW’s 2020 Vision.  We are launching a new Operational Committee structure which will allow our members to engage more in the decision-making processes of DFW and influence the directions we will take in the future. Details

28
Dec, 2015

Chapters, Communications, For chapters, For leaders, For members, Fundraising, Together Women Rise

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Speaking With Our Hearts

I’ve been writing and rewriting this message for over a decade. The heart of it is always the same: collective action drives social transformation. When individuals believe they have found a way to change the world, it’s a powerful force for good. Dining for Women is a way to change the world. And in this world of unprecedented division, Dining for Women is a movement where individual differences are inconsequential and unity and solidarity prevail. Details

29
Nov, 2015

Communications, For chapters, For leaders, For members, Programs, Together Women Rise

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DFW’s 4 Programs Add Up to Big Impact

In my very first week at Dining for Women, I sat around a table with our Board of Directors while Barb Collins, Board Chair and Co-Founder, asked each of us to share our “Dining for Women Story”. It was my first time meeting Anne Capestrain, but she told a story I will never forget. She shared how DFW had given her the opportunity to be a part of other women’s lives and, in doing so, she was inspired and her life had been transformed. I have visited about 50 chapters this year and have heard similar stories across the country.

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27
Aug, 2015

2016, Communications, News, Programs, Together Women Rise

New Grantees Selected for First Half of 2016

Equipping women in rural Mexico to farm a highly nutritious local grain crop; helping marginalized girls in Mumbai, India to complete their schooling; empowering Maasai women in Tanzania to protect their natural resources for themselves and future generations; and helping victims of human trafficking achieve justice and prosecute their traffickers. These are some of the objectives of the six featured programs that you – our DFW members – will support in the first half of 2016 through grants totaling more than $275,000. See the Program Flyer for a complete list of the newly-selected grantees.

Details

26
Aug, 2015

Communications, Fundraising

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Why Is Giving Internationally Important?

by Beth Ellen Holimon, DFW Executive Director

Philanthropic reports tell the story that Americans are among the most generous in the world.  Private giving exceeded $358 billion in 2014 with individuals giving 72%, foundations giving 14%, bequests 8% and corporations at 5%.  The only category of giving to decline in 2014 was international giving, making it the third year in a row that giving has dropped in this category.

Details

22
Nov, 2014

Best Practices, Communications, Connections, Together Women Rise

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Stop the Starvation Cycle

Nonprofits are trapped in a “starvation cycle” – a concept identified by some of the largest oversight and watchdog organizations in the nonprofit world like Charity Navigator and Guidestar. It’s destabilizing good organizations that do important work and can eventually threaten their sustainability. Details

20
Oct, 2014

Communications, Connections, Programs

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Featured programs announced for first half of 2015

Dining for Women is pleased to announce its grant program for the first six months of 2015, which will provide more than $331,000 to grassroots program from Jordan to Haiti. The programs will directly benefit more than 13,500 women and girls, and countless more indirectly.

The programs work toward improved health, increased educational opportunities, training of healthcare workers to return to rural villages and medical care. Details

25
Sep, 2014

Communications, Connections, For chapters, For leaders, For members, News, Together Women Rise

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A conversation with Nicholas Kristof

Marsha Wallace hosted a conversation with “A Path Appears” co-author Nicholas Kristof about the new book, the gains made in reducing extreme poverty and women’s equality — and the distance yet to go. The authors mention Dining for Women in several spots throughout the book. “Sheryl and I are such big fans of what you guys do,” Kristof said during the Hangout. View the on-demand video of this insightful conversation. Details

16
May, 2014

Communications, News, Together Women Rise

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Great Day (Louisville, KY) interview with Marsha Wallace

Marsha Wallace visited Louisville to meet with local chapters, to present at a University of Louisville-sponsored conference and stopped by WHAS11’s Great Day program. Joined by Louisville member Christy Haas, Marsha talked about the important role women play in the world and the power they have to change their communities when they are given a hand up. Take a listen.  Details

Jan 18, 2014

Best Practices, Communications, Education, For chapters, For members

Questions about our programs? Here’s how to get answers

By Jamye Cooper
DFW Executive Director

Our education team works hard each month to provide key information to enrich our members’ understanding of our featured program. But occasionally members or leaders have questions that aren’t addressed in our materials.

When that occurs, people may be contacting the program director or staff directly. Some of our funded programs report that they may be answering the same question from more than one DFW member or chapter. These can be time consuming calls for the program. But beyond that, if one program has a question, there’s a good chance others might as well.

Details

Jan 17, 2014

Chapters, Communications, For chapters, Together Women Rise

You’ve got photos? We want them

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By Laura Haight
DFW Communications Director

There are some amazing things happening in dining rooms, kitchens, living rooms and great rooms across the country. Some of them are newsworthy – perhaps to a DFW audience or sometimes for a more general interest audience.

The most common content is photos – from anniversaries, fundraisers or meetings with special speakers. Social media gives us ways to share a lot of photos that don’t find a home on our website with a large audience every day. While photos tell a story, they do need a little help in the form of captions and descriptions. It’s important for us to know who’s in the photo, what they’re doing, where they are from and why it’s significant. Large group photos of your chapter do not need to identify each person; but photos of five or fewer should include IDs with first and last name, location, title and affiliation, from left to right.

Details

22
Dec, 2013

Best Practices, Chapters, Communications, Connections, For chapters, For leaders, For members, Together Women Rise

Email: Love it or hate it, it’s an important tool for DFW

email-marketing

 

By Laura Haight
DFW Communications Director

With 8000 members spread out from Bangor to Santa Cruz, DFW uses email as the most efficient way to communicate. These messages include monthly newsletters, donation acknowledgements, tax receipts and other messages.

Dining for Women is very aware of the flood of emails all of us receive on a daily basis. To that end, in 2013 we significantly reduced our communications. Most months, the average member receives one email from us – The Dish; chapter leaders get two with the CL Newsletter. We have consolidated what used to be separate emails for new programs, trips or products into these monthly communications.

Details

Dec 17, 2013

Best Practices, Chapters, Communications, For chapters, For leaders

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DFW-branded PowerPoint presentations – a guide for presenters

By Marcie Christensen
DFW Education Coordinator

The Education Team has developed a slide show template we will use to offer each month’s program in a brief and consistent format, rather than requiring each grantee to develop a PowerPoint presentation. Beginning with our January Featured Program, presenters will have clearer options for sharing the month’s featured program in ways that work best for each chapter.

Details

22
Oct, 2013

Best Practices, Communications, For chapters, For leaders

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Managing photography in today’s digital age

By Laura Haight
DFW Communications Director 

Technology has put incredibly high-end photography features into the hands of everyone with a smartphone, but it hasn’t done a great job of educating this new class of photographer.

This becomes a problem for us when media calls and wants a “high-resolution” photo for print publication. This primer may help you understand some basics of managing digital photos – whether it’s personal or professional.

Details

Jul 29, 2013

Best Practices, Communications, Together Women Rise

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Keys to writing a good press release

Press-releases

By Laura Haight
Communications Director, Dining for Women

On the wall in my office there’s a map showing newspapers and periodicals in a portion of the country based on data from the 1880 Census. It is actually one of the first infographics with red triangles showing dailies, blue dots showing weeklies, squares showing periodicals and different colors denoting the number of each in the area. There is hardly a town not covered with dots, triangles and circles.

 

Today, there are many fewer formal publications and yet probably even more communication channels when one considers blogs, websites, tweeters and more. Nonetheless, when a group, business or non-profit wants to get information out they turn to the established media: newspapers, television stations, magazines and, perhaps, established mainstream blogs.

 

Often, they find they don’t get the response they expected. So here are five tips to get your press release or information noticed.

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