Tully: New effort poised to help young women

Two years ago, leaders at the Women’s Fund of Central Indiana decided to take a closer look at the area’s nonprofit landscape in order to determine if there were specific areas of need that weren’t being met. They hosted a year of conversations, studying existing programs and talking with just about anyone they could about the challenges facing at-risk girls and women.

Time and again, they heard the same thing: There is a gap in programs serving at-risk women in their first years of adulthood. No longer in school, foster care or other youth programs, these 18- to 24-year-olds also aren’t a great fit for many programs that serve women. They’re too often left on their own.

And that has tremendous consequences, as this period in life is filled with unique and crucial choices, challenges and minefields, particularly for those lacking strong families and resources.

“Anybody you talk to says the biggest mistakes they made in life were in that time frame,” said Jennifer Pope Baker, executive director of Women’s Fund, which has long provided grants to programs aimed at helping girls and women. “You’re so vulnerable but also at a time in life where you think you know everything. There is a need for programming that is culturally competent for that age group, and that helps them use that bold confidence they have in themselves.”

With that in mind, the Women’s Fund next week will announce an exciting, potentially transformational initiative to fill the void. It’s doing so in a creative way -- planning to spend possibly millions of dollars in the coming years to help nonprofit entrepreneurs build and grow start-up programs or organizations.

Once the initiative is formally announced, the fund will accept applications from anyone in Indiana and beyond with a plan to serve young women. Two or three grants will be awarded in the initial round, and the winners will become full-time employees of the Central Indiana Community Foundation while they are developing their nonprofits. The hope is that this development stage will lead to new community organizations and programs, which the Women’s Fund will then support.

Baker said the group is “throwing the barn door open” with the hope of attracting as many innovative ideas as possible. Her group is open to “just about anything,” but the bottom line must be about helping young women who have been through a lot emerge with a greater chance at sustainable success.

“It is not going to work if a program just gets people to a minimum-wage job, because that does not get them to economic stability,” Baker said. “We want to fund the most creative people who can provide a solution to get that age group on the path to economic mobility and security.”

That can mean a focus on everything from job skills and education to parenting and healthy living. The goal is to infuse Central Indiana with new ways of tackling old problems.

“It’s about determining where we want to be, and how we get there,” Baker said

She said the grant competition, which will be detailed next week at www.womensfund.org, has received a tremendous response from potential contributors. There appears to be a deep understanding of the tremendous consequences of not addressing the challenges facing low-income young women, many of whom, by the way, are already mothers.

While the Women’s Fund will scale back some of its other giving in the coming year or two to prepare for this new initiative it will continue to support a long list of other programs that serve girls and women. The group has done great work over the years. But this new undertaking could be its most significant yet.

“Now that we understand the ripple impact of not serving this population we know we have to come up with solutions,” Baker said. “We have a responsibility to change things. We can’t walk away from this issue. It’s too important.”

You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar.com or on Twitter @matthewltully.