Only in Kentucky

KFW director Judi Jennings enjoyed the festivities.

And while you may have seen less fuzzy photos of Sallie Bingham, you've seldom see photos of a woman as radiant as she is here. Her glee is well-deserved. Her $10 million gift in 1985 created the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Through the granting of funds to feminist artists in Kentucky, the Foundation has birthed, nursed, and nurtured a vibrant community committed to feminist expression and to social justice.

Bingham's commitment is even more remarkable in light of an article in LEO, one of Louisville's alternative weeklies. In that 2005 piece, which celebrated KFW's twentieth anniversary, writer Molly Cunningham cited figures from the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy that show nationwide only six to seven percent of philanthropic donations go to women's issues and less than one percent go toward social justice issues.