Women's Foundation of Montana ~ Women's Wire

Good Granting
Financial literacy classes tackle credit card debt and payday lending

In 2007, the Women’s Foundation awarded $5,000 to homeWORD to help support financial fitness classes for low- and moderate-income women, with the goal of getting them on the path to financial self-sufficiency and home ownership. Here are the stories of two who took the classes:

Living on a fixed income after her husband died, Lisa was buried by medical and dental bills, which she was trying to pay with credit cards. At 65, she was unable to find part-time work, partly because of the dental work she needed. During the course of her homeWORD classes, she decided to consolidate her debt and take out a loan to pay off her credit card bills. Working with a homeWORD counselor, she learned that she qualified for the loan because she was taking measures to correct her financial situation and because she had a small, steady income. With a loan from Missoula Federal Credit Union, Lisa paid her entire credit card debt. With help from homeWORD, she was able to lower her monthly expenses by $200 and develop a spending plan that ensured she would not have to rely on credit cards to pay her bills.

Dawn took out several payday loans to pay off her mortgage and nearly lost her home as a result. On the brink of foreclosure, she turned to homeWORD. One of the organization’s counselors helped her apply for a foreclosure prevention loan and then assisted her in renegotiating her loans. Dawn had originally fallen behind in her mortgage payments due to an abusive boyfriend and relatives who drained her finances. She had a good-paying job that could have easily sustained her mortgage payments, but the payday loans entangled her in debt. Since climbing out and saving her home, Dawn has become a vocal advocate for homeWORD and against predatory payday lending.

Single mothers are especially vulnerable to the traps created by credit card debt and payday loans. With the help of organizations like homeWORD and the Consumer Credit Counseling Service, another organization we have supported, we are trying to educate women to make better financial decisions when they get in trouble. But predators won’t be stopped until state and federal policy makers act to bring down usurious interest rates and rein in credit card availability. Montana has one of the highest payday lending rates in the nation with an average APR of 521%. Next time a legislative candidate knocks on your door, ask her what she plans to do about it.

For more information about homeWORD, visit www.homeword.org

The Women’s Foundation of Montana awarded $57,500 to eight agencies working for girls and women this year, up from $35,000 in 2007. In addition, we helped finance three projects aimed at developing leadership and self-sufficiency among young women. In June, WFM advisory committee members reviewed applications requesting just under $113,000 from 14 nonprofit agencies throughout the state. While we were unable to fund all of the requests, we are pleased that the endowment has reached the point where we can provide meaningful support to several organizations.

Here are the eight that received funding:

Big Sky Youth Empowerment Project, Bozeman
$10,000 for continuing support of disadvantaged teenage girls living in Gallatin and Park counties to participate in Girl Power, a personal empowerment program featuring outdoor activity and life skills workshops.

GUTS! YWCA Missoula, Missoula
$10,000 for support of Girls Using Their Strengths (GUTS!) Girls Leadership Project designed by and for young women, ages 9-18, to encourage girls to explore their personal values and discover their strengths.

Montana Credit Unions for Community Development, Statewide
$10,000 for operating assistance to support financial education programs, payday loan alternatives, individual development accounts and volunteer income tax assistance.

Working for Equality and Economic Liberation, Blackfeet Reservation
$10,000 to assist in the development of a new American Indian chapter of WEEL on the Blackfeet Reservation,

NARAL Pro Choice Montana Foundation, Statewide
$5,000 for support of a project to promote legislative and administrative approaches to comprehensive sex education and to improve Montana’s guidelines on sex education,

ExplorationWorks Girl Tech, Helena
$5,000 for continuing support of Girl Tech, a program that mentors young girls in science and technology, specifically computers and robotics.

Blue Mountain Clinic, Missoula
$5,000 for support of an outreach campaign to increase awareness of family planning services and sexual health options among vulnerable populations.

North-Missoula Community Development Corporation, Missoula
$2,500 for support of the Real Meals and Community Kitchen Project to promote nutrition and cooking skills, provide low-cost meals using local foods and a venue for exploring women-owned food enterprises.

In addition to these grants, the Women’s Foundation donated $1,000 each for support of three projects.

Women’s Policy Leadership Institute, Helena
Support for a training and mentorship network to facilitate the transfer of policy skills and experience from current women leaders to future women leaders.

Thrive - Girls for a Change Conference, Bozeman
Support for an empowerment program founded in 1997 that builds on the individual strengths of girls to develop leadership and self-sufficiency.

University of Montana -Helena
Support for a “Women in Gear” educational fair designed to highlight careers in the trades by providing hands-on activities and educational resources.

On November 4, roughly 60 percent of our nation will decide our nation’s future. Based on 2004 general election returns, the turnout will be closer to 70 percent in Montana. Nationally, women take the responsibility a little more seriously than men: about 65 percent of women voted in the 2004 presidential election; voter turnout in Montana is not tracked by gender.

The importance of this election cannot be over-stated. Will we maintain our presence in Iraq at a cost of $10 billion a month? Will we continue to pile up debt that will become the responsibility of our children and grandchildren? Will we come to grips with our dependence on foreign oil? Will we break the grip of the insurance industry on our health care system? Will we be able to defend women’s reproductive freedom?

The stakes for women are higher than ever this year, and it’s hard to imagine that roughly a third of Montana women won’t vote because they can’t get away from work…or because they think their vote doesn’t matter…or because they think they have something more important to do.

How we got the vote
In 1914, Montana became the 11th state to adopt woman suffrage, but the fight had been going on for a long time before it was put to a vote of the people. By 1897, Montana had 35 suffrage clubs whose combined ranks numbered between 300 and 400 members. Several individuals had been working for suffrage long before then.

The suffrage movement in Montana was closely tied to the temperance movement. The Women’s Christian Temperance Movement (WTCU) needed the support of women to pass prohibition, so became allies in the fight for woman suffrage. As a result, the liquor industry was one of the chief opponents to suffrage for women. “Liquor wholesalers, saloonkeepers and associated businessmen constituted a core of hostility,” according to historian T.A. Larson: “The Montana Protective Association (of the liquor interests) early in 1913 had appealed to associates in the east for financial aid in launching a statewide fight.” (1)

But the liquor industry couldn’t match the spirit and organization of the suffragists, most notably Jeannette Rankin. The first woman elected to Congress worked tirelessly for suffrage, visiting mines and union halls, debating anti-suffragists, organizing parades, bringing out-of-state luminaries to Montana for speaking engagements and speaking in schools, encouraging children to go home and talk to their fathers about suffrage.(2) “On election day,” according to Rankin’s biographers, “she enlisted children to wear yellow sashes that said, ‘I want my mother to vote.’”

Rankin was joined in the fight by many steadfast leaders, including Dr. Maria M. Dean, Mary O’Neill, Ella Knowles, Sarepta Sanders, Harriet Sanders and prohibitionists Mary Long Alderson and Maggie Smith Hathaway, along with national activists Carrie Chapman Catt, Frances Willard, Emma DeVoe, Anna Howard Shaw, Katherine Devereaux Blake, Harriet and James Laidlaw, Jane Thompson and Ida Craft.

All of the predictable arguments were made against suffrage: a woman’s place is in the home; woman suffrage would cause trouble at home; women don’t really want the vote, and women are not qualified for military duty or law enforcement. One of the more interesting arguments, especially in light of the influence of religion on politics today, was made by Democrat Martin Maginnis of Helena. According to historian Larson, Maginnis was afraid that female voters would be guided by ministers and, “theocracies, he warned, had provided the worst governments in history.”

None of the arguments was enough to defeat an idea whose time had finally come. On November 3, 1914, Montanans granted women full rights to vote and hold public. Two years later, Jeannette Rankin was elected to Congress and prohibition was passed, due largely to the newly enfranchised women. Six years later, in 1920, women won the right nationally to vote with passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 2007, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman Speaker of the US House of Representatives and one year later, Hillary Clinton became the first serious woman contender for the presidency.
Nationally, it took legions of women over several generations organizing, lobbying, lecturing, practicing civil disobedience and going to jail to achieve what 35 percent of American women now regard as unimportant or inconvenient.

We suspect our readers are not among that 35 percent, but you may know someone who is. Please talk to your neighbors, the parents of your children’s friends, your car-pooling partners and co-workers. Find out if they are registered to vote, get them registered and offer them a ride to the polls. So much is at stake.

1“Montana Women and the Battle for the Vote” by T.A. Larson, Montana the Magazine of Western History, Vol. 23, 1973.

2Jeannette Rankin: A Political Woman, James J. Lopach and Jean A. Luckowski, University Press of Colorado, 2005.

“When I first started coming, the issues were much more survival-oriented. But now, there’s more of a sense of celebration.”

“I feel a level of confidence and capability in life now that I’ve never felt before….the abuse-survivor experience is no longer our dominant identity, but we delight in sharing and supporting each other and celebrating our accomplishments as we take on far more joyful challenges.”

These are the kinds of comments that make us feel like we’re on the right track and that make donors feel good about being donors. The Women’s Foundation of Montana is all about economic self-sufficiency, so when we were approached two years ago by Bozeman’s Network against Sexual and Domestic Abuse to help launch a Self Sufficiency Support Group, we responded with a $5,000 grant, which we renewed last year.

SSSG is a small group with staying power. Its members are diverse, but their common denominator is domestic violence. Some have been with the group since its inception.

According to Emily Tofte, executive director of the Network, “We are dedicated to continuing this group so our clients have the resources and support needed to establish lives free from violence.”

The Network also conducts financial literacy courses and individual counseling for women in domestic violence situations to help them gain economic self-sufficiency.

Women's Wire ~ Issue 6, fall 2008