Philanthropist Ritchie Scaife Awards Challenge Gift to WGF

Ritchie Scaife Makes Lead Gift of $50,000 to

The Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania

Philanthropist Establishes Challenge Campaign

to Increase Investments in Women and Girls

News Release - PITTSBURGH— March 8, 2011 — The Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania (WGF) announced today, that in honor of Women’s History Month, and in support of women’s futures, philanthropist Ritchie Scaife has made a lead gift of $50,000 to the Women and Girls Foundation to support WGF’s grantmaking pool for 2011.

This gift is a matching challenge posed to other individuals to meet Mrs. Scaife’s donation by making their own generous gifts to the Women and Girls Foundation. This new matching challenge campaign, “Battle For Equality: The Ritchie Scaife Challenge For Women and Girls” was created by Ritchie Scaife to encourage other individuals to increase their investments in advancing women’s and girls’ rights.

“What impresses me most about the Women and Girls Foundation is their approach to social change,” explained Mrs. Scaife. “Their grants empower women and girls by breaking down systemic barriers to equality. I encourage more women to join me in investing in change not charity. Together we can get to the root causes of poverty, wage inequity, domestic violence, and other forms of gender discrimination and begin to improve them.”

“Ritchie is committed to leveraging her philanthropy to improve the lives of other women and girls,” said Women and Girls Foundation CEO, Heather Arnet, “She understands that in order to ensure long term change, we must invest in policy advocacy to increase and defend women’s rights in our country and in our state.”

To meet the challenge the Women and Girls Foundation must raise at least $50,000 in new donations from individuals this year. Once the match is met, the Foundation will have a grant pool of $100,000 to award to local grantees in 2011.

The Foundation’s mission is to achieve equality for women and girls in the region. Grant awards made by the Women and Girls Foundation are 100% supported by individual donations. Grants are invested in non-profit, non-partisan, public policy initiatives to increase women’s and girls’ rights in Southwest Pennsylvania. By focusing this challenge on the grantmaking pool, donor gifts will have maximum impact reaching dozens of grantee agencies and improving the lives of thousands of women and girls through the public policy improvements achieved by these grants. A request for proposals will be released in May inviting non-profits to compete for the grant awards. Agencies interested in receiving a copy of the RFP should email susan@wgfpa.org. Individuals interested in making a donation to the “Battle For Equality: The Ritchie Scaife Challenge For Women and Girls” should contact Jui Joshi, Director of Philanthropic Engagement, 412-258-2559, jui@wgfpa.org.