2025 Stories of Impact

Your gift to community shares of Wisconsin member nonprofits has impact. Support powerful work on the front lines of social and environmental justice.

Fostering Civic Engagement

Since 2012, the Wisconsin Women’s Network has been committed to increasing the number of Wisconsin women who have the confidence, skills, and strategic knowledge to successfully engage in their local and statewide communities on policy issues that matter to Wisconsin’s women and girls. To work toward this goal, the Wisconsin Women’s Network Policy Institute provides hands-on leadership, communications, and policy advocacy training to 25-30 women from around the state every year.

Working for the Environment, Sustainability, Food, and Farms

Rock River Coalition’s stream monitoring program has been monitoring streams in Wisconsin for over 20 years and providing invaluable data to the public, scientists, and municipalities. In 2024, Rock River Coalition worked with Water Action Volunteers (WAV) and Wisconsin EcoLatinos to host a bilingual (Spanish and English) stream monitoring training to connect with a previously untapped set of environmentally minded volunteers. Due to the success of the bilingual training, the organizations plan to hold another bilingual training in 2025.

Empowering People with Disabilities

Co-organized by member nonprofits Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (formerly Madison Audubon) and Wisconsin Council of the Blind & Visually Impaired, along with the Aldo Leopold Nature Center, Birding by Ear classes provide the tools and techniques for identifying birds by close listening. The classes are specially designed to serve those who experience blindness or low vision, as well as individuals with full sight. People of all physical abilities, ages, and birding skills are welcome.

Supporting Women, Children, And Families

ECCHO (Engaging Communities to Change Health Outcomes), a project of Embolden WI, is a civic engagement training program that seeks to improve community health outcomes by engaging those most impacted by generational and systemic racism in Dane, Milwaukee, and Rock Counties. During the two-year training program, participants work together as a cohort to design and implement a community-based project that meets the health and civic health needs of their community.

Ensuring Affordable, Accessible Housing

In 2021, member nonprofits Tenant Resource Center and Legal Action of Wisconsin, along with Community Justice Inc. and the UW Law School, partnered to set up the Eviction Diversion & Defense Partnership. The EDDP improves housing stability for Dane County tenants by providing housing support, housing counseling, court navigation, mediation services, and rental assistance. The program also refers eligible tenants whose housing stability is at risk to partner attorneys who provide legal representation at no cost to tenants.

Working for a Just, Equitable Society

Every other year, Fair Wisconsin hosts Equality Day at the Capitol, a day of connecting and grassroots advocacy with fellow activists from around the state. Fair Wisconsin Education Fund works to build a fair, safe, and inclusive Wisconsin for all LGBTQ people by advancing, achieving, and protecting LGBTQ civil rights and workplace equality through education, movement capacity building, grassroots organizing, civic engagement, research, and legal challenge preparation.