Skip to main content Skip to accessibility controls

About Us

Investing in the Future

We invest in innovative community-based, community-led solutions to ensure safety, opportunity and pathways to economic security for women, girls, gender-expansive people and families across Minnesota.

Our Mission

The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota invests in ending systemic inequities and driving innovation for gender and racial justice.

Our Vision

A world of opportunity where all women, girls, gender-expansive people across intersecting identities – and their families – have the power to create and lead safe, prosperous lives.

How We Define “Woman”

Women and girls includes anyone who identifies as a woman and/or girl. Our programs are inclusive of transgender and gender expansive people that experience gender-based structural harm.

Diving Deeper

Our Work

We leverage community investments, research, policy and advocacy, strategic communications and narrative change, and cross-sector convening to ensure gender and racial justice for women, girls, gender-expansive people and all Minnesotans.

People icon

Our People

Together, we are building power to create a world of safety, economic justice, holistic well-being & reproductive justice, and leadership for all women, girls, and gender-expansive people in Minnesota.

Our History

When founded in 1983, the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota became the nation’s very first statewide community foundation dedicated to gender equality.

“When the young women in our state do better, we’re all going to do better.”

Hope Hoffman
Cabinet Member, Young Women’s Initiative of Minnesota

Our Research

We Conduct Research to Listen, Learn, and Drive Action

In Minnesota, data show that women, girls, and gender-expansive people, particularly from Black, Indigenous, and communities of color and those who live in Greater Minnesota, experience systemic barriers in economics, safety, health, and leadership that create longstanding disparities and limit their ability to thrive.

We conduct qualitative and quantitative research to better understand the lives of women and girls within communities, identify assets and barriers, and fund solutions.

Woman reading equity in design report

Annual & Financial Reports

Research + Grantmaking + Policy + Cross-Sector Partnerships

Each year, we invest millions of dollars in innovative, community-led solutions across the state to build a Minnesota where all women, girls, and gender-expansive people have safety, economic justice, well-being, and leadership.