Today I attended a lovely reception at Susan Brotman's exquisite Medina home in honor of the women who have been involved with WWF for 10 years or more. By the way, WWF does NOT stand for the World Wrestling Federation, but instead for Washington Women's Foundation.
Founded 15 years ago by Colleen Willoughby to encourage larger philanthropic gifts by women, I was one of the first 100 women that Colleen recruited to become a member in her new Foundation. Today, Chairman of the Board, Anne Farrell welcomed us and current WWF President, Carla Lewis, announced that there are now 500 members and that during the past 15 years, we have invested over $10 million in 63 pooled grant recipients in addition to the individual grants, all awarded to Washington State nonprofits.
Though I have been in Susan's home several times previously, each time I am always absolutely intrigued and mesmerized by the depth and breadth of their art collection. Susan shared a few stories about individual artists she and Jeff have met as they have been collecting. It was especially entertaining to hear some of the insider stories about individual artists, who mostly sounded fairly eccentric.
It was fun to see and talk with so many women that I haven't seen for awhile including my neighbor, Debbie Killinger, Beverly Jefferson, Gail Richards, Anne Holt, Dottie Simpson, Margaret Breen, Gail Ransom, Dee Dickinson, Sally Behnke, Janice Huseby, and Lucy Pruzan to name just a few. Another interesting statistic that was shared was that 70% of the WWF members serve on at least one nonprofit board. This is a very impressive group of women!
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