National Women's Education Fund Records

The National Women's Education Fund was founded in 1972 with the express purpose of increasing the number and influence of women in public life, through providing educational programs and an information service. Originally an outgrowth of the National Women's Political Caucus, its first project was a series of seminars designed to teach women how to become delegates to national party conventions. In 1973, the NWEF opened an office in Washington, D.C. and was granted tax-exempt status. Its first chairperson, Margot Polivy had been elected in 1972. NWEF policy was determined by a multipartisan, fifteen-member Board of Directors representing leadership from women's organizations, the professions, and politics. The NWEF was supported by grants from corporations, unions, church groups and interested individuals.

The NWEF sponsored programs in three areas: political skills development, assistance to office holders, and information service. The initial projects in the area of political skills development were a series of regional Campaign Techniques Institutes. These three-day intensive workshops taught women the basic skills of planning and managing campaigns for public office at the state and local levels. Women were chosen from several contiguous states for skill-building sessions with national and regional experts; the first Campaign Techniques Institute was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1974. An attempt was made to include women from diverse geographic, socio-economic, racial and political backgrounds by offering low tuition and financial aid. The Milwaukee Institute was followed by others in various regions of the country, including Atlanta (1974), Phoenix (1976), Dallas (1977) and Cherry Hill, New Jersey (1979). In 1980, a special institute for minority women was held in Overland Park, Kansas, and in the same year a workshop was conducted in Washington, D.C. focusing on women's judicial campaigns. The NWEF kept in touch with former institute participants, and conducted surveys to determine how many women went on to hold political office or worked for political campaigns.

As early as 1975, the Fund realized that there was a need to reach women who could not attend the institutes. They developed the Campaign Workbook, a comprehensive guide for women involved in campaigns for state and local office, which could be used by individuals and organizations. Along with course outlines, reading lists and audio-visual materials, the workbook was available for sale. The NWEF also acted as a consultant for various membership organizations, educational institutions and individuals. The Campaign Workbook was published until 1982.

The NWEF also sponsored continuing education programs. Under the Women's Educational Equity Act (1974), the U.S. Office of Education provided federal funds for schools and colleges to create programs and materials that would actively counter sex-role socialization and stereotyping. In 1978, the NWEF was subcontracted to design and develop curriculum for universities that were awarded grants. Two pilot courses were held in the spring of 1979; topics included political campaigning, public policy issues and leadership skills. This project was conducted jointly with Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs, where the NWEF had helped design and conduct a continuing education course in the fall of 1977.

Another continuing education program in which the NWEF was involved was the Public Leadership Education Network (PLEN). In 1978, in conjunction with the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University, the NWEF received a federal grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) and a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York for a two-year project to develop public leadership education for undergraduate and community women at five small, private women's colleges: Carlow College in Pittsburgh, Goucher College in Maryland, Spelman College in Atlanta, Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, and Wells College in Aurora, New York. Each college developed its own courses and programs. The Network structure was designed to facilitate communications and cooperation among the schools, as well as coordinating publicity and outreach aimed at instituting similar programs at other colleges. The NWEF and CAWP provided consultant services to the institutions in the Network, and the Network staff worked out of the Fund office. Later six more colleges were added to the Network--Alverno College in Milwaukee, Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, Marymount Manhattan College, the College of St. Catherine in Minnesota, and Mount Vernon College in Washington, D.C. The Public Leadership Education Network operated until 1984.

In the fourth year of its existence, the National Women's Education Fund decided to extend its scope into assisting women already holding elective office. In 1977, a three-day conference was held at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in Colorado to assess the needs of women office holders. Twenty women serving in state legislative, county and municipal offices from all over the country participated. The conference resulted in the publication of The Woman Elected Official in 1979.

A direct result of the Aspen Conference was the holding, in 1979, of a series of four regional seminars in management for women state and local officials. These seminars, which were financed by a grant from the U.S. Civil Service Commission under the Bureau of Governmental Personnel Programs, were designed to advance the personal administrative skills of women office holders. Another service administered by the NWEF was the Washington Women's Network, formed in 1979. This was an informal communications "old girl" network for women appointed to executive-level positions in the Carter administration. The NWEF served as its secretariat. The Washington Women's Network sponsored at least two events monthly, including a lunch with speakers, after work wine-and-cheese parties, and policy briefings on Capitol Hill. After Carter's defeat in 1980, the NWEF operated a job clearinghouse for several months, which helped place outgoing women Carter appointees. In 1980, the Department of Housing and Urban Development funded another workshop "Promoting the Exchange of Information and Skills between Women in Local Government Management and Locally Elected Women."

The third area in which the NWEF became active in the 1970s was information service. Soon after its foundation, NWEF members realized that women candidates received little public attention. Beginning in 1974, the Fund collected information about women candidates for congressional, state-wide and state legislative offices, and made this material available to the media. Eventually the Women's Election Central, as it was called, compiled and analyzed national election data, published information summaries, and served as a clearinghouse of information and referrals on women in politics. An outgrowth of the Women's Election Central was the Roster of Women State Legislators, issued from 1975 to 1982, a state by state listing and statistical summary of women legislators.

The NWEF also commissioned several research projects on women and politics. The Campaign Financing Study investigated the effects of the Campaign Act Amendment of 1974, which limited campaign contributions. The authors concluded that the law worked to protect the already privileged position of the incumbent, and thus tended to favor men. The NWEF, working jointly with the Center for the American Woman and Politics compiled case studies of women's political campaigns in 1976, commissioning eleven journalists to gather information on races in ten states. Their reports were later published as a book, In the Running, edited by Ruth Mandel, the director of the Center. Other projects during this period were a voter attitude study, a mini-roster of black women state legislators, fact sheets on women in public life, and an internship program in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund.

In the early 1980s, the NWEF maintained programs such as the Women's Election Central and the Public Leadership Education Network, as well as establishing several new programs. One example was the Women's Vote Project (1982) which tried to encourage voter registration, education, and turnout, especially among younger, less educated, and lower-income women; the NWEF provided fiscal and administrative services to the project. The decreases in government funding during the Reagan administration, however, made it increasingly difficult for the organization to fulfill its objectives. Furthermore, other organizations began to assume some of the training function of the NWEF, and the Fund disliked competing with sister organizations. These factors contributed to the dissolution of the NWEF in 1987.

The 1980s began, however, on a positive note for the National Women's Education Fund. In 1980, the organization received grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Charles H. Revson Foundation to conduct a two-year nationwide political education program for women, known as the Training and Information Service for Women and Public Leadership. Its objectives were to teach women how to gain access to the public policy process, how to earn positions of influence within that process, and how to develop and use skills and resources necessary to lead effectively. Workshops were held in designated sites throughout the country. The sessions were given by the National Training Group, a group of women trained by the NWEF, which eventually included sixty-five members from thirty-one states, forty percent of whom were minorities. The NWEF created a series of sixteen standardized skill-building programs, called the Model Political Campaign, for use in the workshops, which were also available commercially. This program was also designed to be used by other women's organizations to plan and deliver workshops to their members. Among the groups with which the NWEF worked extensively was the United Methodist Women, which sponsored a series of one-day entry-level workshops.

During the 1980s, the NWEF also established a new program to aid women office holders, the Resource and Technical Assistance Service. The RTAS was an information bank for women state and local policy makers partly funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund and administered by the NWEF. Organizations and individuals agreed to answer mail and telephone inquiries in their area of expertise. In 1984, however, the NWEF began to experience serious financial difficulties. There was an $100,000 gap between the Fund's expenses and their income, much of which came from consulting fees and sale of publications. The NWEF disaffiliated itself from some programs, such as PLEN, and the NWEF office staff was reduced. The Board began to discuss affiliation with another organization, searching for one which was feminist, served a racially diverse population, and had a relatively stable funding base as well as a commitment to training. Eventually a five-year affiliation was approved with the YWCA. In October 1985, the NWEF moved into rented space in the YWCA (DC) headquarters, and the two organizations gave a joint training program. The NWEF had been unsure, however, from the beginning whether the arrangement would be satisfactory, and in April 1986 decided to suspend its activities rather than merge with the YWCA. The NWEF's archives were transferred to the Center for the American Woman and Politics, and today are housed in the Department of Special Collections and Archives at Rutgers University.