Total Giving: $8.3 million[1]
Total Giving (2007): $1.6 million
Prominent Grants: Giving primarily focused in Illinois. Established Sisters Empowering Sisters (SES), a leadership development program.
Summary: The Girls’ Best Friend Foundation was started to promote and protect the human rights of girls and young women by advancing and sustaining policies and programs that ensure their self-determination, power, and well-being. The Foundation’s mission was to support those who challenge the status quo by offering alternatives to the societal messages that girls and young women receive.
When Cyndie McLachlan founded GBF in 1994, it was with the plan to be a short-term foundation, not a perpetual one. The foundation has chosen to use our relatively modest resources for the greatest impact. They spent down their assets over a three-year period and officially closed out in 2007.