We Have Our Winner!

Dance Mission is the winner of our People’s Momentum Award!

Founded in 1984 as a feminist, activist dance company, their mission is to create and perform dance-theater that addresses the complex problems of contemporary American women. Their Dance Brigade and Grrrl Brigade create powerful performances that explore social issues such as war, poverty, breast cancer, women’s history, death and dying and spirituality from a feminist perspective.

Their Grrrl Brigade is both a dance and a leadership development program for girls ages 9 to 18. Their upcoming San Francisco performance is titled “Show of Resistance: Stand Against Domestic Violence” and we invite all San Franciscans to attend. We’ll see you there!

Dance Mission won our contest after receiving 5,023 votes from their committed community supporters. Last year the winner of our People’s Momentum Award was Los Angeles-based Alexandria House with 3,280 votes. This year, Alexandria House came in third place after Dance Mission and Sol Collective.

“Dance Mission is a community, a place where I’ve learned everything I know. Our classes teach dance technique, yes, but we emphasize girl empowerment, self-esteem, resilience and positive body image,” said Marivel Mendoza, dance teacher who herself attended Dance Mission for 12 years. She’s now pursuing a degree at San Francisco State and teaching two days a week at Dance Mission.

“So many incredible organizations were nominated in the People’s Momentum Award contest,” said Nancy Kauffman, passionate supporter and mother of a Dance Mission Grrrl Brigade student. “Trans Lifeline, Alexandria House and Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence are such great organizations doing really important work. And then I realized: what Dance Mission is doing is grooming our young girls to become the future leaders of our communities. They’re taught to be strong, confident and empowered and they will be the future executive directors of great organizations like Alexandria House,” said Nancy.

We launched the People’s Momentum Award contest because we wanted to celebrate Women’s History Month in a unique way. We wanted to raise visibility for the often hidden work of women’s organizations. We wanted to engage our community in a fun way and ask them to identify a women’s rights organization they admire the most. We wanted to award that organization an unrestricted $10,000 grant, which we know they urgently need to run their programs. And, we wanted to “break the Internet” and have all of California talking about women’s rights groups, their work, their incredible contributions and their vision for California.

I think we succeeded in many ways. We’ve brought a lot of attention to women’s organizations this month and those organizations have energized, inspired and motivated their communities of supporters.

Our hope, now, is that all the nominated organizations will be able to build on this momentum and continue engaging their voters to support them with a donation. Because, the fact remains, only seven percent of all philanthropic dollars in the U.S. go to support women and girls’ causes. And we need to change those numbers.

We—foundations, individual donors, businesses and the government—all need to increase our investments in women and girls.

Meet our top 10 organizations

1. Sol Collective
2. Alexandria House
3. Trans Lifeline
4. Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence
5. Interval House
6. East Bay Meditation Center
7. Christie’s Place
8. Women’s Center – Youth & Family Services
9. Planned Parenthood Northern California
10. Good Shepherd Center for Homeless Women & Children

Meet our sponsors

Thank you, Wells Fargo, Southwest Airlines and Lyft, for your generous support of the People’s Momentum Award.