The Women's Fund of Greater Milwaukee and the Brico Fund focus on improving the lives of women and girls through their grantmaking and promote issues that affect women and girls uniquely.
Women bring a distinct and necessary perspective to good governance in the public, nonprofit and private sectors; however, studies show nationally that the political pipeline is 86% male and 81% white and men are twice as likely as women to self identify as political leaders and run for office before the age of 35. In Wisconsin women comprise only 22.7% of the state legislature; the lowest percentage in nearly two decades.
In November 2007, the Women's Fund and the Brico Fund partnered with The White House Project to bring their Run-Vote-Lead Initiative to Milwaukee, opening the door to civic leadership for a richly diverse group of women who do not traditionally identify as potential political leaders.
Go-Run is a nonpartisanleadership training program of the Run-Vote-Lead initiative that demystifies the political process by educating women on the basic skills and various obstacles faced by women running in and winning elections.
Through community partnerships, Go-Run also connects participants to other local training and mentoring resources to help women decide how and when to get more involved in the political process.
"That involvement might be with a neighborhood association, a local school committee or, eventually, the decision to run for local or statewide political office," said Anne Summers, executive director for the Brico Fund.
Seventy-five women from Milwaukee, Madison, and Chicago participated in the weekend-long workshop, which teaches the nuts and bolts of running for political office from fundraising to communications and campaigning.
Of the group, more than two-thirds of the participants were women of color; more than half were under age 35.
"Our organization's unique contribution was to conduct the outreach and education at the grassroots level, focusing on our grantee organizations and the women they serve, to insure maximum participation at the training," said Elaine Maly, executive director for the Women's Fund of Greater Milwaukee.
This training was so successful that there are plans to bring it back and continue building the pipeline of women leaders in Wisconsin.
