G4GC Archives - Grantmakers for Girls of Color

Conference supporting girls and gender-expansive youth

carissa — Sat, 09 May 2026 19:06:39 +0000

Dr. Monique Couvson, President and CEO of G4GC, spoke with WCNC Charlotte to share the goals of her organization, and what organizers want participants to know.

Watch the video on wcnc.com.

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Investing in Girls

carissa — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:31:00 +0000

Dr. Monique Couvson and Dominique Johnson speak with Fox 8 Live news about the importance of investing in girls and how to do that.

Watch the full clip on fox8live.com.

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A Conversation with Monique Couvson, President and CEO of G4GC

carissa — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 18:51:57 +0000

Dr. Monique Couvson is the president and CEO of G4GC (formerly Grantmakers for Girls of Color), a philanthropic intermediary that supports organizations and movements that center the wellbeing of girls and gender-expansive youth of color. She also cofounded the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, which seeks to dismantle pathways to criminalization and confinement and increase safety and opportunities for Black women and girls impacted by the criminal and juvenile legal systems.

Couvson’s more than three decades in the fields of education, civil rights, juvenile and social justice include roles at Mount St. Mary’s College of California, the University of San Francisco, and California State University, Sacramento. She was also an executive producer and co-writer of the documentary, “Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools,” which was based on two of Couvson’s books, “Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools,” and “Sing a Rhythm, Dance A Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls.” She has written several other books, including “Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century” and the graphic novel “Charisma’s Turn: A Story of Girls and Their Gifts.”

We recently connected with Couvson to discuss her latest book, “Girls, Unlimited: How to Invest in Our Daughters with More Than Money,” which looks at how and why everyone from philanthropists to parents and policymakers should invest in girls. Her book looks at several areas of investment, including increasing knowledge and awareness, dismantling the barriers to girls’ success, protecting girls from gender-based violence and supporting education and mentorship.

Read the full interview by Martha Ramirez on Inside Philanthropy.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You mentioned in your book that part of the reason why you wrote “Girls, Unlimited” was a high school student asking when you would write your own story. Can you elaborate a little on how you came to write the book and why you chose to interweave your own story into your discussion of how to support girls of color? I found it a very effective and very striking approach.

As I started to reflect on what brings me to this work — and especially the question from that student — I realized that my personal story is not as divorced from, and is actually intrinsically linked to, what drives me to lead my work professionally in this realm. This was an opportunity for me to locate myself in the work and do some reflection on the things that I have learned along the way, but also on the things that have taught me about how to show up in this moment for girls, and how we structure systems and create platforms for girls to be their full selves in this work.

I’m actually a very private person. It was a challenge to write as much as I did about my own personal story because I’ve survived a lot of systems and a lot of things. But I think it was an important part of helping people understand that women in positions of leadership don’t just appear, that there are specific things that happen in their lives, specific people who show up in their lives, to make that trajectory possible, to make their leadership plain, to create spaces for girls to practice leadership so that when they do become women who are interested in leadership, they have some experience in that domain.

For me, it was an important part of bringing people in closer so that they can hopefully do the same thing, read the book and begin to locate themselves in the work.

As a journalist, when I write about women and girls, I’ll often draw from reports that present statistics. And they’re always helpful, of course, but it’s very different to read about someone’s experiences. It puts things in a better context.

I would hope so. We know that less than 2% of philanthropic giving goes to women in this country. And we know that giving to girls of color is nearly nonexistent. Less than half a percent of philanthropic giving goes to women and girls of color around the globe. And so when we look at those numbers, we’ll say, “oh, this is really low. This is abysmal.”

But what I wanted to share in “Girls, Unlimited” is what it feels like to be in conversation with these girls, to recognize their brilliance and recognize that when we are underinvesting in that brilliance, we’re doing ourselves a grave disservice. I say in the book, a lot of times, people will see girls and think, oh girls are cute, and so we get cute money. It’s important to recognize girls are powerful, to recognize girls as transformative, to recognize girls are critical and essential people in creating the kinds of worlds we want for ourselves and our descendants.

And so the intention around the storytelling in “Girls, Unlimited” is sharing my own experiences as a girl but also thinking about the things that I learned as a mother and things that I have learned as an advocate for girls. If I had to boil it down, I do want people to see the statistics because I think the statistics are critical for us to understand the gravity of the situation, but I also want people to hear the stories of young people who are doing incredible work and who are taking deficits in their lives and transforming those into positive outcomes and transforming communities as a result.

As you noted in your book, money matters, but how can funders change their grantmaking to better support girls of color and go beyond just writing a check?

I love that question because that was the whole point of the book. Of course, money matters. Of course it does. But I wanted to start with all the things that we can do that don’t necessarily involve writing a check. That doesn’t mean that they’re not related.

Investing in girls’ knowing, and understanding that this critical capacity for girls to be able to analyze the lives that they’re living and the society that they’re living in is essential to recognizing that there are parts of intervention that philanthropy can engage in. It is critical to understand that if we prioritize protecting girls’ bodies and investing in their education and mentorship and thinking about exposing them to policies that will ultimately impact their lives, that if we understand that these are nonfinancial investments that we can make, then we align our financial investments to support the practices and capacity for organizations to do those things.

I also think it’s important for people to recognize that philanthropy comes in many different ways. People give in different ways, and the biggest thing we have to give is our time. And so it is important for philanthropy to recognize a much more expansive way of giving, such that it is also about relationship-building and trust-building.

We’ve had these kinds of conversations a bit in philanthropy around trust-based interventions or other strategies to rely more on the expertise of those who are living the experience. But what’s critical for me is for us to build relationships with people that allow us to align our actions with our funding. If we fund girls’ programs, then we should also be in relationship with them.

Yes, we have young people who are part of our decision-making structures, but we are also in routine conversation with the organizational leaders who are working directly with girls every day, and we are in direct conversation with young people and young people who identify as girls all the time. They are part of critical analyses. They are part of our strategic planning. Their comments have been part of how we approach fundraising to educate the field about the importance of working with girls. They are embedded in so much of what we do because the relationship is key. So the invitation from “Girls, Unlimited” is to grow philanthropic capacity to be more proximate to the issues affecting girls and to girls themselves.

And on the funding side, philanthropy has long been aware of and has acknowledged that girls and girls of color are vastly underfunded, and yet we’ve seen little progress. What would you say to funders to encourage them to open their pocketbooks?

We celebrated that funding to women and girls reached 2%. And it’s not that girls are not benefiting from some of the other investments that philanthropy is making, but we’re not being intentional about locating girls in those spaces, which continues to perpetuate the disparities that we see on the outcomes.

So I would say: Understand that when we are developing priorities around issues that every issue impacts girls. If your priority is around policymaking and political mobilization, locate girls in that conversation. If your funding is primarily about health and healthcare access, locate girls in that conversation. If your funding is around education, don’t just think about institutions; think about young people who are experiencing those institutions. When we name them, we consider them a priority.

That’s a lesson I learned just doing my research work, and developing my scholarship around pushout and education. It’s when we have these kinds of conversations and we begin to locate girls in the conversation, that’s when we can hold ourselves accountable to building out priorities that include girls in grantmaking.

You wrote about the retrenchment in funding for racial justice and gender justice. How do we move forward from this moment where it seems like so many people and institutions are pulling back?

I think people are pulling back out of fear, and I also think people are pulling back out of ignorance. I believe it is our responsibility at this moment to continue to educate those who are responsible for setting priorities around giving to better understand the outcomes of the investments that they make. Investing in girls, investing in girls of color, investing in people of color, investing in women are not strategies to reduce giving to those who don’t identify with those communities. These are strategies to improve the conditions for all of us. When we say “justice for all,” we are not in a competition around our humanity.

The retrenchment is something that is painful. When I write about it in the book, I’ve intentionally shared that some of the hardest conversations we had were with grantees who did not survive this retrenchment. And it was infuriating in some ways that people would want to take away a program that allows girls to dream about their futures. It’s unconscionable that we see these programs as anything other than opportunities to remedy centuries of bias. That’s all they are — opportunities for young people to dream, opportunities for young people to have access to opportunities that they have previously been left out of. It’s an intentional way to bring people in, not to exclude.

My response to the retrenchment is that we have an opportunity in front of us to think about all that we have learned from the gender-conscious interventions that we have built over the past few years in response to the intentional exclusion of women and girls. We have learned so much from our time in that space that it’s time for us to then think about how we consider supporting the things that we know are working — whether or not we call it the things that we have called it in the past — that we have lessons that we have learned from this work and that we move forward. What is most critical in this moment is to protect the work, protect the things that we know to serve all children.

If you talk to young children, they also believe in equity and justice. They also believe that everyone can win in this scenario. They’re not yet afraid of each other. And so when we talk to and engage with young people, we can reflect and mirror the values and priorities that they set for their lives, such that our grantmaking can support their visions into the future.

My hope is that this retrenchment ends, that we are able to understand now and into the future that not only are these sound investments in the future, but that building ecosystems that engage every child is how we come to a philanthropic agenda that serves every community.

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Transforming trans survival into trans joy

carissa — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 17:53:44 +0000

By Nahr Suha and Dr. Monique W. Morris

Trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color deserve to be safe, free and thriving.

But today, trans and gender-expansive communities are facing multiple, interlocking systems of oppression. Across cities and states, trans communities are under attack from anti-trans legislation that aims to direct physical, psychological and spiritual violence in homes, schools, facilities and communities. This includes legislation that specifically targets youth, as well as trans folks who are Black or come from other communities of color.

In 2022 alone, there have been more than 100 bills introduced in state legislatures across the country targeting young trans people. Beyond political targeting and systemic discrimination, too many young people coming into their trans and queer identity find themselves on the streets compared to their cisgender counterparts.

One year ago, Grantmakers for Girls of Color and the Black Trans Fund, incubated at Groundswell Fund, created the Holding a Sister Initiative, the first national fund explicitly dedicated to resourcing and uplifting trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color. We created this necessary space for cis and trans girls of color to build solidarity and community with one another. To date, we have invested $2 million in more than 20 organizations serving, and led by, trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color through this initiative alone.

Our incredible grantees work every day to ensure that trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color have access to gender-affirming care, which includes hormone replacement therapy, mental health support, as well as affirming clothing and spaces, all of which serve as healing tools. They work to ensure trans youth can meet their basic survival needs including help with securing short- and long-term housing, food, and other necessities. Our grantees do the important work to shift and dismantle the systems that continue to perpetuate violence on trans youth of color. They are engaged in work to advance research, respite and healing, activism toward liberation, policy work, and — most importantly — joy, play and power.

This is why the Holding a Sister Initiative was created: to resource places to heal, find joy, and to co-create a world in which trans girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of color thrive. Through our work of deep listening and relationship building with our grantee partners, we affirmed two critical and primary needs we need to fulfill to achieve this goal.

First, we need to create and hold dedicated spaces for our trans girls and gender-expansive loved ones to heal from the layers of trauma they have accumulated throughout their lives. Second, trans girls and gender-expansive youth need to feel safe in their own bodies and in all aspects of their lives. They need connection among one another so they can build a community of care, affirm their own humanity, advocate for themselves and their rights, and have access to opportunities for growth and development. They need their own spaces to celebrate their authentic and unapologetic selves.

Trans people deserve to exist as the artists, healers, visionaries, caregivers and builders that they are and have always been. When we look back to history, trans people were held up as divine keepers of deep knowledge that exists beyond masculinity and femininity. In Native culture, two-spirit identity was widely believed to be the result of supernatural visions or dreams. In many Native Nations, two-spirit people filled special religious roles as healers, shamans and ceremonial leaders. And in the Hijra community in South Asia, they are considered to be a third gender and have been revered throughout history.

Trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color are their own examples of people leading successful, happy, loving lives. They have a depth of knowledge and wisdom that we can all benefit from if only we let them. By centering the leadership of Black trans women and girls, we can secure all of our safety and vitality.

As funders, those of us who support racial and social justice must also resource our trans, femme, and gender-expansive youth of color siblings, niblings and cousins.

Philanthropic organizations and leaders can invest deeply into and partner with existing funds and foundations created by and for trans people, especially those led by and serving Black trans and other trans people of color. They can invest in queer- and trans-led intermediaries and philanthropic serving organizations like the Black Trans Fund, Third Wave Fund, Funders for LGBTQ issues, Fund for Trans Generations, and our own Holding a Sister Initiative. They can take the GUTC pledge and begin the journey to meaningfully increase and track their investments in trans communities, and ensure that trans girls of color are included in those investments. Finally, they can help influence their philanthropic colleagues to follow their example of centering trans communities.

As we commemorate this year’s Trans Week of Awareness and Trans Day of Remembrance, let us memorialize our Black and brown trans femmes and folks. Let us keep creating and expanding space for trans joy, and working toward a world where trans girls and gender-expansive youth of color are robustly invested in — and loved.

This commentary was originally published in TheGrio.

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Let Black women-led funds and Black girls lead the way: Centering Black women-led funds to lead social justice efforts

carissa — Wed, 19 Oct 2022 17:53:43 +0000

By Monique Couvson and Tynesha McHarris

Black women and girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of color deserve abundant investments in supporting our liberated futures. Tragically, philanthropy has always underfunded us.

In 2018, just $15 million out of almost $428 billion in philanthropic giving in the United States reached Black women and girls. That means less than 1 percent goes toward supporting the voices, visions, and experiences necessary for the liberation of Black girls and all people. The lack of funding in the Global South is even more dire: Funding for Black women, girls, and trans people constitutes roughly 5 percent of funding designated for human rights efforts—both in dollars and number of grants.

In the past two years, a growing movement of Black women leaders have been working to transform this inequality. In September 2020, we partnered with a collective of other outstanding Black women leaders to launch the #1Billion4BlackGirls campaign. Our goal was to mobilize robust investment in Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth’s leadership, genius, wellness, power, and capacity to thrive. The campaign was launched on the anniversary of the racist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four Black girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley–and wounded another, Sarah Collins.

Black girls and young women must play a central role in discussions about discrimination in education, health care, sexual assault, and policing. Yet, our stories are notably absent from public narratives, policies, and justice movements most crucial to addressing inequality and racial trauma. A bold call for investing $1 billion over 10 years in organizations and movements focused on supporting the liberated futures of Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth shows us the way forward.

The $1 billion goal is not only achievable; it is also an intelligent and essential investment. We established two signature funds—the Black Girl Freedom Fund and the Black Feminist Fund—that have demonstrated how investments in Black girls and gender-expansive people not only remains an urgent need, but produce direct and residual outcomes for others in their homes and neighborhoods. This return on investment makes these funds essential agents for community economic development, and we know that Black women and girls are worthy of investment even without such evidence.

In the two years since we launched those funds, other essential initiatives centering Black women and girls have emerged and/or expanded, including the Southern Black Girls and Women’s Consortium’s Black Girl Dream Fund, the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund, and the Black Women and Girls Fund at the Baltimore Community Foundation. Together, we have invested millions more into the brain trust, innovation, health, safety, education, artistic visions, research, and joy of Black women, girls, and their families.

While we celebrate this milestone and the necessary gains, we must keep this momentum going.

The same energy that led organizations in the philanthropic, public, and private sectors to pledge significant investments—more than $4 billion—toward racial justice efforts in recent years should also drive decisions to invest in Black women, girls, and femmes in this moment. Now is the time to fulfill those unmet commitments. Philanthropic efforts that lack an intersectional analysis, and those that deprioritize funding racial justice efforts at the intersections of our communities’ identities, contribute to the harmful narrative that Black girls and femmes do not require investment. This lack of intersectional analysis will only undermine efforts to grow funds that resource young people whose experiences are often the result of compounded traumas associated with race, gender, sexuality, and age.

Philanthropists who care about racial justice must realize that people who are closest to the problem must be part of the solution. Black women are political, social, and cultural leaders. We are power players shaping our country today despite being grossly underfunded, under-resourced and underestimated. We must keep giving abundantly to this community because we know that all social justice efforts benefit when we place value in Black girls’ and women’s lives and leadership. And we must center Black women-led funds.

Imagine what 2030 will look like if there is a significant investment in the lives and livelihood of Black girls and women’s leadership, innovation, wellness, and advocacy. We will be closer to our vision of collective freedom and liberation.

This commentary was originally published in Philanthropy News Digest.

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