
Serious Money for Women's Rights
As executive director of Women Moving Millions, Sarah Haacke Byrd bridges the gap between funders and organizers in the ongoing fight for women’s rights.
With rising domestic violence, 750 million girls out of school worldwide,
and large numbers of adult women forced out of the workforce, the
ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has been particularly hard on women and
girls. To make matters worse, there remains a persistent lack of capital
flowing to support organizations and leaders fighting these challenges, with only 1.6
percent of philanthropic dollars going to organizations that support women and girls,
and only 0.5 percent of foundation dollars going to women and girls of color, according to the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Sarah Haacke Byrd (B.A. ’00) has been working to rectify that as the executive
director of Women Moving Millions, a global membership community based in New
York City. More than 340 philanthropists worldwide, primarily women, have committed
nearly $800 million to organizations benefiting women and girls. Individuals who belong to the organization commit to donate a total
of $1 million or more within 10 years to such
nonprofit organizations or initiatives.
Executive director since 2018, Haacke
Byrd was raised to work for the greater
good. Both of her parents were teachers;
her father was president of the school
board, city councilor, head of the teachers’
union; and both parents regularly volunteered on political campaigns.
But more than that, it was Haacke Byrd’s
educational experience at the University of
Minnesota and beyond that cultivated her
dedication to working to strengthen civil
society. “Political science was always my
passion,” Haacke Byrd says, “and fortunately,
the U of M has one of the top political science programs in the country.
“The professors enriched my understanding of global political theory and
human rights issues,” she says, “and the
University has an ecosystem where I was
able to explore various ways to think about
how I would actualize a career with a degree
in political science.”
One of those ways was volunteering 10
hours a week in the fundraising office of the
Center for Victims of Torture during her
junior year. Another was a year later, when
the executive director of that organization
needed help with a study of tactical innovations that were happening globally around
human rights practices.
“I worked directly with him on that, which
was really rewarding,” Haacke Byrd says.
“He also introduced me to a fellowship
opportunity through the Human Rights
Center at the Law School for aspiring
human rights practitioners to work in nonWestern contexts.”
Through that fellowship, Haacke Byrd
was able to spend the summer working with
the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in Istanbul,
Turkey.
After college, Haacke Byrd continued her
human rights work at the Anti-Defamation
League in leadership development until
2010, and in 2012, began work as the
director of operations for the Bellevue/
NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. “That
experience was transformative,” Haacke
Byrd says. “To find a leadership position
in a nonprofit organization after having
that volunteer experience in Minneapolis,
and bringing that commitment to helping
survivors of political violence thrive in a
complicated city like New York, felt like coming full circle for me.”
It was also during that time that the World Health Organization released a groundbreaking study on women and violence globally. “The study said 1 in 3 women are victims of intimate partner violence globally, and I didn’t know that,” Haacke Byrd says. “Anti-violence work had been threaded throughout my entire career, but that’s where I realized my passion is women’s rights.”
Haacke Byrd discovered that, at a time
when the women’s rights movement was
gathering strength, it wasn’t seeing a
significant uptick in funding. That was also
when she was recruited to work for Women
Moving Millions. “I thought that if I could
help strengthen the connection between
the funders and leaders on the front lines
of the gender equality movement, then that
could be my contribution to the movement.”
This year, in response to the gendered
impact of Covid-19 on women, particularly
women of color, Haacke Byrd and Women
Moving Millions made the decision to
launch a new $100 million campaign called
Give Bold, Get Equal. Since the campaign’s
launch in September 2020, it has secured
$95 million in commitments.
But Haacke Byrd’s ultimate goal is to
move beyond the group’s member community and put pressure on other individuals,
companies, and foundations to examine
their funding so they can give organizations
like Women Moving Millions a bigger slice of
the philanthropic pie.
“Parity isn’t going to be achieved with one
board member on one corporate board,”
Haacke Byrd says. “To change the structural
and systemic inequities that exist for women,
you’ve got to have more funding going to
support those leaders who know exactly
what to do.”
Steve Neumann is a freelance writer based in Pennsylvania.