October 2016: Fundraising and development update

Starting this fall, the role of leading our fundraising and development efforts is shifting from former JAWS President Katherine Rowlands to current Operations Director Roxanne Foster.

Kat was awarded a JSK Fellowship at Stanford University for 2016-17 and is taking a leave of absence from her editing job at the San Jose Mercury News as well to focus on her project: How we can overcome gender disparities in newsrooms, especially in leadership positions, to more accurately reflect and report on society.

She and Roxanne have been working together on our crowdfunding campaign, annual fund plans, auction, Conference and Mentoring Project (CAMP) sponsorships and foundation grant efforts to ensure a smooth transition.

“It has been rewarding to tell potential supporters about the great work we do at JAWS, watch that enthusiasm spread and then see so many donors step forward to help us expand our capacity to support women in journalism,” Kat said. “Growing our budget by raising more than $100,000 in contributions and sponsorship each of the last two years was very gratifying.”

Roxanne, who has been managing all the day-to-day operations of the organization for more than a year, is well poised to take on this new task and build on the work underway. She is currently enrolled in a Master of Public Administration degree program at the University of Colorado, Denver; her concentration will be nonprofit management with a heavy emphasis on finance and fundraising development, a great complement to her work at JAWS.

“I’m excited to tackle managing a new area of the organization and build on the solid foundation for fundraising that Kat established over the last few years,” Roxanne said. “My goal is to continue nurturing our current donor relationships while cultivating new ones. We’ve come a long way, but there is still so much we can do to further the mission of supporting women in journalism if we have the resources to do it.”

The board thanks both Kat and Roxanne for their commitment to JAWS, which has been growing its membership (now at 850), programming (with CAMP and regional events year-round) and reach (with 16 chapters across the country) thanks to the sustained financial support of donors large and small. Let’s keep it up!

– Sandra Fish, JAWS President