Women's Funding Coalition

The Women's Funding Coalition (WFC), envisioned as a "United Way" to fund women's organizations through payroll deductions, and representing over thirty community and women's organizations in New York City, was established in 1981, and appears to have been in existence throughout the 1980s. The task of identifying likely employers that would participate in this scheme appears to have occupied the bulk of the WFC's energies, although a few projects were undertaken, including one apparently not represented in this collection, Project Open Doors (funded by New York's Department of Employment), through which hundreds of low-income women were placed in apprenticeship positions with the participating organizations which included women's shelters, health clinics, rape crisis centers, and other community agencies. The donor of these records, Connie Kopelov (b. 1926), represented the Coalition of Labor Union Women on the board of the WFC.

Fifteen women's organizations in the city announced yesterday that they were combining forces to raise funds, and that they were aiming in particular to gain access to the workplace and to payroll deductions.

Conducting charitable drives in the places where people work is considered a most efficient and effective forms of fund-raising. But, with some exceptions of traditional women's organizations, such as the Girl Scouts and the Y.W.C.A., which belong to the United Way, it has generally not been available to women's groups.

''If every one of the approximately two million women who work in New York City gave $5 a year to women's programs, $10 million would be available to organizations working to support, expand and improve women's lives,'' Virginia Cornue, executive director of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, said at a news conference held by the Women's Funding Coalition in the city's Department of Cultural Affairs Building. ''We're tired of being unable to conduct programs because we lack money, especially with the Reagan budget cuts hitting women so hard.''

In addition to N.O.W., the coalition includes Women Office Workers, the New York Chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the National Congress of Neighborhood Women, the Pre-School Association of the West Side, and the Reproductive Rights National Network.


The coalition intends to conduct special events to raise money, but its primary efforts will focus on opening the doors of industry and government, and on expanding efforts begun by other groups to broaden the choices of charities available to employees. For example, one woman's group to have considerable success in workplace solicitation is Women's Way, a Philadelphia federation.

In the last few years controversy has been growing over the virtually exclusive entree the nation's United Way groups have to private industry and the Combined Federal Campaign has to Federal Goverment offices.

As Walter Bremond, president of the National Black United Fund, said, ''It is important for people in any work setting to have the right to give to the charity of their choice.'' The fund recently gained the right to payroll fund-raising at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey and at I.B.M.

Asked if individuals did not now have the freedom to choose their own charities by contributing outside the office, Miss Cornue emphasized the ease of office giving and the appeal of automatic deductions. When people are asked to give outside, she said, ''Their hearts may be in the right place, but their pens are someplace else.''

In addition, the coalition considers working women an untapped source for funds. As Emagene Walker, president of the New York City chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, said, ''Over the years women have been the main fund-raisers for churches, schools and community organizations. Now we believe that working women want an opportunity to choose to give to programs that benefit women. That option is not available to us now.''

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 17, 1981, Section C, Page 5 of the National edition with the headline: WOMEN'S GROUPS JOIN TO RAISE FUNDS