2017 Annual Report

Your continued support of the Women’s Fund makes our work possible and our voices stronger. Thank you for standing with us and advocating for women and girls in our community. In 2017, we invested $3.8 million in grants to local nonprofits.

Here are highlights of our work in 2017:

Women in Leadership

Welcomed 27 new circles members, a network that builds safe and affirming spaces to empower women of all identities
Developed a Diversity and Inclusion Committee for Circles with the goal of updating the application and selection matrix to remove biases and barriers

Economic
Self-Sufficiency

Continued to advocate for effective policies, including payday lending reform, paid family leave and equal pay
Hosted five focus groups with women in poverty to collect data on local economic insecurity and identify insights that will help us develop our policy agenda moving forward

Freedom from Violence

Shared the first empirical data on sex trafficking in Nebraska in our Commercial Sex Market report
Advocated and passed LB 289 creating harsher penalties for sex traffickers and buyers
Facilitated community-wide trainings on domestic violence, sexual assault and trafficking with a focus on law enforcement and trauma for more than 6,000 community members
Facilitated development of best practice protocols for both domestic violence and sexual assault for three Omaha medical systems, law enforcement, advocacy and prosecution

Sexual Literacy

Increased STD testing across the metro by 42.6% through our Adolescent Health Project in 2017 compared to 2016
Provided more than 500,000 free condoms and nearly tripled the number of women using long-acting reversible contraception
Facilitated “Askable Adult” sessions for 11 youth-serving agencies with more than 160 participants