Since 2004, Roanoke Women’s Foundation has granted more than $6 million to area nonprofits.
On a crisp, fall Thursday, 170 women gathered in the event space at St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Roanoke. There were smiles, hugs, and a general hum of old friends catching up.
But as important as their connection was, something bigger bound them this day. As they shared salad and focaccia, they also heard stories: of a church food pantry that served 16,000 people in 2025; of the desperate need for mental health counselors in the region; of an organization expanding its services to Roanoke’s homeless.
Camp Easterseals Virginia camp director Amber Braley walked to the microphone and relayed a conversation she’d had with a wheelchair-bound camper. Braley told the audience she had asked what his favorite part of camp was, and he’d said, “How much I was out of my chair.” At camp, there were staff and facilities to support his movement, his freedom.
The women in the room understood they had helped make that happen.
For 21 years, a growing group of women has come together to make an impact greater than they could make on their own. In 2025, Roanoke Women’s Foundation awarded six nonprofits a total of $432,000—funding that paid for staffing, updated infrastructure, and provided services. Over the decades, RWF has handed out a total of 108 grants to 79 local organizations, worth more than $6 million.
“For a lot of us who could not sit down and cut a check for $30,000 or $50,000 or $100,000…this is a way that, by pooling the resources, you really can look at a gift that was given and go, ‘I was a part of that,’” said Roanoke Women’s Foundation co-founder Kandy Elliott.
How it all began
In 2003, financial adviser and Roanoke philanthropist Ginny Jarrett attended a national conference where she learned of a new giving model that was gaining traction. The idea was simple: Women committed to donating a specified amount in a given year. The money was pooled. The women collectively decided where to spend the sum.
Jarrett returned home and called her long-time friend Elliott, who had a background in banking and a history of serving her native Roanoke as a volunteer and nonprofit board member.
The two pulled in five more influential women to become founding board members. They staged a kickoff event at the Jefferson Center, inviting 600 women to hear Colleen Willoughby, founder of the original Washington Women’s Foundation in Seattle, explain this philanthropic concept. When 67 women signed up, Roanoke Women’s Foundation became the first collective giving group established in Virginia.
By 2005, RWF had set up a fund at the Community Foundation Serving Western Virginia and identified four areas to guide their giving: arts and culture, education, the environment and health and human services. They awarded their first grants to the Local Office on Aging’s Meals on Wheels program, Presbyterian Community Center and St. Francis Service Dogs, for a total of $138,000.
Over the next two decades, RWF followed a template created by the Washington Women’s Foundation, of monthly board meetings and committees for governance. Interested nonprofits applied, and a grants committee winnowed the requests from 70-some down to around 10. Each RWF member gets one vote. The top vote-getting nonprofits won the grants, starting at $30,000. The largest grant ever awarded was $135,000 to the Roanoke Valley SPCA in 2019.
“The intention all along was to do impactful, meaningful grants,” Elliott said. “When I would meet with nonprofit groups, I would beg the question of them: ‘What is it you might be able to do with a grant from us that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do? Really stretch your thinking.’ ”
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