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Our Year Together

“The holidays are a season of gratitude, and this year I could not be more grateful to be part of the YWCA movement. I want to extend my sincere thank you to every YWCA association, CEO, staff member and volunteer, and the YWCA USA team who have ensured that this great organization continues to move our mission forward amidst significant transitions. As we look forward to 2018, I am eager to help build a visible, sustainable YWCA movement!” – Alejandra Y. Castillo, YWCA USA CEO

Dear Martha,

As 2017 comes to a close, we look back on another challenging, impactful year in our work together. This year, YWCA – powered by you – has helped over 2.3 million people in a wide array of community-responsive programs. As one of the largest networks of domestic violence service providers in the nation, you’ve helped 500,000 women, girls, and families seek safety in your gender-based violence programs. You’ve provided support to over 145,000 women and families in housing, food assistance, and immigration programs, and over 260,000 women in empowerment and economic advancement programs. You’ve helped more than 170,000 children and parents learn and grow in your childcare, teen, and parenting programs. With all of these critical services under way, YWCA continues to be a force for lasting change with over 155,000 advocates for racial justice, 52,000 volunteers, and 12,500 staff members powering our movement.

Along the way, we’ve worked to provide both leadership and support from the national office. We’ve produced new materials to help guide our work, including the newest in our Persimmon Paper Series, “On A Mission: The YWCA USA Generational Imperative,” which explores our commitment to advancing young women’s leadership in the movement. New this year was the mini-paper series that delves into various facets of our work, including childcare, housing, and our commitment to women of color. In addition, more than 300 new resources and reports were added to the YWCA USA Resource Library.

We have continued to build on our Mission Impact Framework, providing models like Run Jump Throw and the comprehensive Racial Justice Training Manual to guide our shared work. Furthermore, the new “Leveraging Our Collective Power” guide provides an interactive tool for program evaluation as it relates to the Mission Impact Framework and, in particular, to applying a racial justice lens. We look forward to hosting a webinar on how to best leverage this tool in 2018.

This past year, we created new member services processes to support your work, including a CEO onboarding process to assist new and interim CEOs during the first few months on the job. As a result, we have seen a decrease in CEO turnover. We also instituted regular check-in calls to identify challenges you may be facing, new opportunities, and to help connect you with the best resources we have available here at YWCA USA.

Our bold movement remained visible this year, and this was exemplified by the YWCA USA National Conference in Washington, D.C., last June. You traveled from far and wide, sending 337 attendees from 152 associations to the conference, which featured high-impact speakers and new leaders, and rolled out the findings from the Alford Group strategic planning research. On Capitol Hill Day, 265 YWCA advocates took to the halls of Congress to continue critical dialogues around federal funding.

We spent time together this year strategizing and collaborating, including at five geo-network meetings in early 2017, where 250 local leaders participated in a listening tour to help fuel our strategic planning process. We are excited to continue this process and have already embarked on our second year of geo-network meetings. We also gathered YWCAs from California, Michigan, and North Carolina for a two-and-a-half-day training to build a state pilot cohort around advocacy for racial equity. Using a curriculum drawn from the Racial Justice Training Manual, we helped 21 associations build YWCA coalitions, create statewide campaigns to end the criminalization of people of color, and build advocacy capacity.

Meanwhile, our work to shore up the financial vitality of the movement is moving forward with our continued partnership with the Allstate Foundation as well as new partnerships with T-Mobile, Centene, and Nordstrom. We are especially proud of the network-wide benefits of these relationships. We anticipate that 70 percent of the funds donated by Nordstrom will go directly to YWCAs engaged in STEM/STEAM work. Moreover, we are excited to deepen our relationship with the Allstate Foundation as we embark on a state expansion.

Finally, we worked together to raise our public profile this year by standing at the forefront of the most pressing issues of the day. YWCA USA has been present and active this year, from the Women’s March in January and the March for Black Women in September to our mobilization to protect the Affordable Care Act and our consistent, bold responses to policies that harm our communities.

Thank you for your continued work this holiday season and all year long. From our office to yours, we encourage you to find time for self-care and reflection during this pivotal time of year. Truly, we are on a mission together – it takes courage, it takes compassion, and it takes you.

Sincerely,

YWCA USA Communications

YWCA USA
1020 19th Street NW, Suite 750
Washington, D.C. 20036