Feel Good Friday - Ms. Foundation for Women

Oh no, I'm back with another post inspired by the passing of a prominent public figure. This time it's feminist trailblazer Gloria Steinem. Two weeks, two icons gone, which makes this a fitting day to talk about the organization she helped create more than 50 years ago, Ms. Foundation for Women.

Founded in 1973 by Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Marlo Thomas, and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, the mission of Ms. Foundation for Women is: “We build women's collective power in the U.S. by investing in, and strengthening, the capacity of women-led movements to advance meaningful social, cultural, and economic change.”

As the nation's oldest women's foundation, the Ms. Foundation doesn't run programs directly. Instead, they fund and strengthen grassroots, women-led organizations working on reproductive health and rights, economic justice, and safety from violence, with a particular focus on women and girls of color. Current grantmaking initiatives include the Birth Justice Initiative, which addresses maternal and infant health disparities, and the Girls of Color Initiative, which funds leadership development for adolescent girls and gender-expansive youth of color.

Their Take Our Daughters to Work Day, created in 1993, became a national institution that's now known to eight out of ten people across the country and involves 35 million participants each year. The Foundation also hosts the annual Women of Vision Awards, originally launched in 1988 as the Gloria Awards in Steinem's honor, celebrating women whose leadership is changing the world.

In the fiscal year ending June 2025, the Ms. Foundation distributed more than $7.6 million in direct grants to 194 grantee partners across 108 cities and towns in 38 states and territories! Over 98 percent of that portfolio is led by women and gender-expansive people of color.

If you'd like to honor and celebrate Gloria Steinem, you can do that by supporting Ms. Foundation for Women. Make a monetary donation, become a monthly giver, or shop their store, with proceeds going toward their grantmaking and advocacy work. You can also amplify their message on social media. Follow the Foundation on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or subscribe to their YouTube channel, and share their fight for equity and justice with your network.

Rest in power, Gloria. ✊ 

Feel Good Friday - Dolly Parton's Imagination Library

As you’ve likely seen by now, Dolly Parton passed away this past Tuesday at age 80, so we’re going to revisit a Feel Good Friday post I wrote in September 2021 about Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.

Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Sevierville, Tennessee,  Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is "a book gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth to age five, no matter their family's income." 

The idea was deeply personal. Dolly's father never learned to read or write, and she often said she wanted every child to have the chance he didn't. The Imagination Library became the flagship program of the Dollywood Foundation, the nonprofit Dolly started in 1988 to keep kids in her home county in school, and it's since grown from one Tennessee county into a global movement supported by local partners everywhere it operates.

Here's how it works if you haven't come across it before: once a child is registered, they receive one specially selected, age-appropriate book every month, personally addressed to them, all the way until their fifth birthday. The titles are chosen by a Blue Ribbon Selection Committee of early childhood literacy experts, and the whole thing is free to families, funded through Dolly herself and local community partners in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland.

When I first wrote about this program, it had mailed just over 172 million books. By the end of 2025, that number had grown to more than 304 million books, with over 40 million going out in 2025 alone, a rate of roughly one book mailed every 0.78 seconds. The program is now celebrating 31 years of getting kids excited about reading, one mailbox at a time.

If you'd like to honor Dolly's memory, her family asked that donations be made to the Imagination Library to keep her promise of free books going to children who need them most. You can also check availability in your community to participate in the program. And while tributes are still coming in, take a moment to amplify this work on social media. Follow Imagination Library on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Rest in peace, Dolly. 

Feel Good Friday - Shot@Life

August is National Immunization Awareness Month, a nationwide observance dedicated to the vaccines that protect people at every stage of life, and there's no better week to spotlight Shot@Life.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., Shot@Life is a United Nations Foundation campaign working to ensure everyone in the world has access to lifesaving vaccines and all children have a shot at life. Despite decades of medical progress, one in five children worldwide still lacks access to routine immunizations, and pneumonia alone kills more than 800,000 kids every year, a death toll that's almost entirely preventable with a vaccine that costs just a few dollars.

Shot@Life tackles this gap through education, advocacy, and partnership. Its flagship program trains everyday Americans to become Shot@Life Champions, volunteer advocates who meet with their members of Congress to push for continued U.S. investment in global immunization programs. Champions come from every state and every walk of life, and this February nearly 100 of them gathered in Washington for the campaign's first-ever National Advocacy Summit, held jointly with its sister campaign, United to Beat Malaria, for a day of meetings on Capitol Hill. Shot@Life also partners directly with UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, channeling private funding and public pressure toward the on-the-ground work of vaccinating children in the hardest-to-reach communities.

Since launching in 2012, Shot@Life has had a big impact. They’ve helped secure more than $5.7 billion in U.S. government funding for global vaccine programs and supported the delivery of over 120 million vaccines to children through private partners and donors, all while training more than 4,000 Americans to become vaccine equity advocates.

If you believe that people should have access to vaccines, there are several ways to support Shot@Life and their push for #VaccinesForAll. Become a Shot@Life Champion! It’s a meaningful way to get hands-on with advocacy if you're curious about meeting with your own representatives. You can also amplify their message on social media. Follow Shot@Life on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

Happy National Immunization Awareness Month!