New 2011 Catalyst Fund Evaluation Released

The Overbrook Foundation’s grantee, the Catalyst Fund, has released its annual evaluation (conducted by Korwin Consulting) of the fund’s activities and those of its partners and grantees in 2011. This report provides an analysis of the work of the Catalyst Fund to expand the amount of available funds going to support grassroots Women of Color-led reproductive justice organizations. In doing so, the report also provides a sense of the challenges and opportunities facing the reproductive justice field as a whole across the country. It explains the diminishing funds going to support this work even though the impact of the groups has been higher in 2011.


The report lays out the model for the fund. 26 national foundations support Catalyst which then gives grants to 12 women’s foundations around the country. In turn, these women’s foundations must raise the money to match the grant from Catalyst and then use both of these amounts to grant to 96 grassroots reproductive justice groups. In spite of the economic downturn, the Catalyst Fund has encouraged donors, including many individual donors, to move $8.6 million in new money to support the reproductive justice field since 2008.

Beyond the explanation of this exciting funding mechanism this gives a great overview of the reproductive justice movement and the field. It introduces the issues being addressed by these groups (ranging from abortion access to parenting rights to environmental justice) and the communities being served. It also reports the number of organizations that are engaging in different strategies like alliance building, policy advocacy, community organizing and more.  As the report states, “Collectively, Catalyst grantees in 2011 were instrumental in the passage of 10 laws and 10 non-legislative policies while blocking passage of 28 harmful new laws and protecting two existing policies from repeal.” The evaluation also addresses the challenges to the fund’s work and in the field as a whole. It highlights the fund raising, communications and capacity difficulties for the groups as well as the current political environment which can be both helpful and harmful to their efforts.

In addition to the quantitative data on policy victories, opinion leaders influenced and alliances built, qualitative interviews and stories of the grassroots groups’ work reveal why foundations and other partners, including Overbrook, have been so excited to be a part of this project. The evaluation reveals that this work is not easy, but these groups are continuing to demonstrate impact. From our perspective, supporting local grassroots groups working on the issues most important to their communities and led by those who are most impacted by reproductive health inequities is essential to expanding access to reproductive justice here in the United States.

Please click here to read the report’s summary and here to read the full evaluation found on the Groundswell Fund’s (which houses the Catalyst Fund among two other reproductive justice funds) website.

National Advocates for Pregnant Women in the New York Times Magazine

This past weekend, the New York Times Magazine ran an article, “Mommy Had To Go Away For A While", and its website published it under the title, “The Criminalization of Bad Mothers”.  In the article, Ada Calhoun tells the story of several women who have been arrested under Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law, a law which requires the prosecution of mothers abusing substances that might harm their children or fetuses.  She traces the cases and family backgrounds of several women impacted by this law.  She also provides background on both the groups supporting this law and fighting it. Beyond covering an issue of importance to the Foundation’s grantee, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and extensively relying on information from its Executive Director Lynn Paltrow and  Director of Policy and Advocacy Emma Ketteringham, this article is remarkable for its exploration of the complexities around this law and the criminalization of several women who have used drugs during their pregnancies.  

It soon becomes clear that these are tough cases to get involved with because the women are not always that sympathetic; they can be bad mothers and they may be engaging in illegal activity.  On the other hand, the article exposes that these cases are often more complicated.  These women do seem to care about their children and they have often struggled with addiction so abandoning drugs during pregnancy proves quite difficult.   

Regardless of your feelings towards these women, one thing remains clear.   Advocates, like NAPW, continue to take on these critical cases because they are extremely important for defending women’s rights and fighting fetal personhood laws that have appeared around the country.  In fact,  

[Ms. Ketteringham] argues that applying Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law to pregnant women “violates constitutional guarantees of liberty, privacy, equality, due process and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.” In effect, she says, under Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law, pregnant women have become “a special class of people that should be treated differently from every other citizen.” 

They also argue that criminalizing these behaviors is neither appropriate for the families nor the health of women.  Alternative measures need to be created that respond in a way to encourage healthy behaviors rather than take away the rights of women in favor of fetuses.  We truly recommend you read this article.  It offers a nuanced examination of an extremely complicated set of issues that bring about these laws and why it is important to support NAPW’s challenge, despite personal feelings towards the mothers.  Again, to read the article, please click here.