Our 2026 report Catalyzing Change: Leading with Purpose in Times of Uncertainty builds on the findings of the first two reports published in 2024 and 2025, offering a deeper look at how WMM members responded to a year of heightened instability and growing threats to gender equality.
Against this backdrop, WMM began the year with a clear hypothesis: its members would not retreat in the face of disruption, but were instead prepared to embrace risk, adapt their strategies, and move resources through new and more responsive approaches. That hypothesis proved correct. In 2025 alone, members moved $214M to gender equality causes—increasing 2024 giving by a staggering $41M.
Members increased their giving, strengthened their relationships with organizations and peers, and moved resources with greater urgency, flexibility, and intention. They expanded unrestricted and multi-year support, deepened collaboration, and stayed close to the leaders and organizations navigating rapidly shifting conditions on the ground.
The report highlights the growing ripple effects of WMM’s collective model. Members expanded their giving across a broad range of issue areas—including sexual and reproductive health and rights, economic empowerment, education, democracy, arts and culture, and gender-based violence—while increasingly exploring gender-lens investing, advocacy, and movement-building as complementary tools for impact. By combining financial resources, social capital, and collective action, WMM members continue to shape the broader gender equality landscape, demonstrating how strong philanthropic communities can drive more courageous, coordinated, and transformational change.
Taken together, the findings make something else clear: these responses were not spontaneous. They were made possible by years of investment in community, trust, learning, and shared purpose. The impact of this investment is concrete. Stronger ties within WMM and across the movement are translating directly into more generous, more responsive, and more purposeful giving.
In the context of the historic transfer of wealth to the next generation, with women expected to control roughly $34 trillion in financial assets by 2030, this represents one of the most significant opportunities in modern history to reshape the future of philanthropy and accelerate progress for women and girls.
