Who We Are
Women Building Up is a movement-accountable philanthropic organization built by and for women, girls, and gender-expansive people directly impacted by carceral systems.
We direct financial resources to grassroots leaders and provide a space in Brooklyn to support work and collaboration across grassroots efforts.
Our Mission
We advance gender, racial, and social justice by supporting women, girls, and gender-expansive people whom carceral systems have directly impacted. We support them in claiming their power and becoming agents of transformative change in their communities and the world.
We envision a world where power and opportunity are equitably distributed, and marginalized communities are in a place of stability, sustainability, and personal and professional advancement.
Our Vision
Our Values
We honor our dreams.
We carry the visions of our ancestors and our communities forward, building on the dreams we’ve shared and the future we’re creating together.
We honor our roots.
We stay accountable to grassroots movements and resist the corporatization of nonprofit work, ensuring our spaces reflect the communities that birth and sustain them.
We center those most impacted.
Cis and trans women, girls, and gender-expansive people — especially Black, Indigenous, and people of color — are at the heart of everything we do.
We sustain ourselves and our communities.
From who we hire to where we direct resources, we prioritize directly impacted people and historically disenfranchised workers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.
We own our story.
As people impacted by carceral systems, we tell our story in our own voices, with integrity and authenticity.
We create multiple spaces.
Our Brooklyn hub is just one piece of the vision. We build accessible, safe spaces — physical and beyond — that serve as models for care and collaboration.
We work from love, not fear.
We care for each other with courage and trust, choosing healing and possibility over scarcity and pain.
We engage in struggle now to transform the future.
Even within systems of oppression, we fight strategically and create moments of liberation that build a better future for generations to come.