WILMINGTON — The Fund for Women at the Delaware Community Foundation has awarded a record $243,070 in grants to 18 nonprofit organizations across the state.

The grants were given at a dinner celebrating the work of the organizations earlier this month.

“It has been exhilarating to be able to provide so many wonderful organizations with funds that will help move their individual missions forward,” said Fund for Women outgoing Chair Pam Cornforth, who was named earlier in the year one of USA Today’s Women of the Year.

“But the work does not stop. Whether these groups are operating statewide or in a specific county or town, each is making life better for the women and girls in Delaware, impacting not only this but future generations, and we look forward to offering more support in the years to come.”

In addition, the program honored Lynn Evans, director of the Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware, the recipient of the 2024 Driving Force Award. This award is presented annually to a founder or group who has gone above and beyond in moving Fund for Women forward to achieve its mission.

Since it began awarding grants in 1994, the Fund for Women has awarded a total of 439 grants valued at more than $4 million. The Fund for Women’s one-year grant offers organizations seed money for innovative, creative programming, or funding to continue or expand programs where effectiveness has been demonstrated.

This year’s recipients include:

• Catholic Charities-Diocese of Wilmington ($15,000, Statewide)– To expand the organization’s Basic Needs Program to include a childcare benefit and ongoing case management for moms who are re-entering the workforce.
• Delaware Breast Cancer Coalition ($15,000, Statewide)– To reduce health disparities statewide, by removing insurance, language, cultural, and socio-economic barriers, among underserved communities including women of color with a higher propensity for Triple Negative or late-state breast cancers.
• Leading Youth Through Empowerment ($15,000, Statewide)– To offer BIPOC girls from under resourced communities a chance to change their life trajectories through the pursuit of a rigorous high school education leading to acceptance to college.
• Survivor Ventures ($15,000, Statewide)– To enhance the Survivors to Entrepreneurs program, which offers comprehensive support including rental assistance, housing advocacy, utilities assistance, supported employment, and business development services, as well as enable access to trauma-informed, trafficking-specific behavioral mental health counseling services.
• The Salvation Army ($14,570, Statewide)– To utilize the Healing Art Studio Method for trauma processing by focusing on emotional, relational, and personal growth through art.
• Unite for HER ($15,000, Statewide)– To deliver integrative therapies to bridge the health equity gap, provide a basic need, and allow the underserved and/or women of color diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer to adhere to treatment. 
• Zoe Ministries, DE ($15,000, Statewide)– To provide trauma-informed, survivor-centric services including therapy, counseling, equine therapy, mentorship, medical care, legal support, education, employment training, life skills, and optional spiritual studies for female survivors of sex trafficking, aged 12 to 17.
• Central Delaware Housing Collaborative ($15,000, Kent County)– To support case management services that help homeless single women at the House of Hope (HoH) as they work towards achieving independence.
• People’s Place II Inc. ($15,000, Kent & Sussex Counties)– To provide specialized domestic violence therapeutic services for adult and teen survivors and their children, domestic violence community health advocacy, primary prevention programming for adolescents in public high schools, and intervention treatment for those who have bene abusive in Kent and Sussex Counties.
• CHILD, Inc ($15,000, New Castle County)– To provide rental assistance and funds for other transitional needs to ensure that victims and their children have stable housing.
• Delaware Shakespeare Festival ($4,000, New Castle County)– To equip the students at Serviam Girls Academy with the tools for confident public speaking and authentic interpersonal communication.
• Friendship House, Inc. ($15,000, New Castle County)– To rebuild the reputation, renew the spirit, and reinvent justice-involved or homeless women with an opportunity to master the skills needed to be successful in the workplace, navigating job readiness activities to allow women to begin to seek long-term employment, and finally, securing long-term employment.
• Latin American Community Center ($15,000, New Castle County)– To increase the incidence and duration of breastfed infants in the WIC-eligible Latino population by providing expecting and breastfeeding mothers with education and resources, and to provide the essentials for their babies through the celebration of motherhood at bi-annual community baby showers.
• Ministry of Caring Inc. ($15,000, New Castle County)– In partnership with Dignity Grows at Jewish Family Services; to provide free hygiene kits and wellness training to women experiencing homelessness.
• Read Aloud Delaware ($15,000, New Castle & Sussex Counties)– To address the educational needs of Hispanic mothers and their children in Delaware.
• STEHM INC ($4,500, New Castle County)– To provide women who are unhoused with essential financial decision-making skills through one-on-one meetings with a certified financial coach from Stand By Me, a Wilmington-based nonprofit organization focused on financial education and by attending finance-based workshops.
• Wilmington Hope Commission ($15,000, New Castle County)– To connect recently incarcerated women to cognitive behavioral interventions, case management, workforce readiness and trauma-informed reentry services program.
• La Esperanza, Inc. ($10,000, Sussex County)– To provide classes and coaches to assist women from the immigrant population learn to navigate unfamiliar financial systems and to establish a foothold in the community.