Women & Children First Creates Unique Way to Celebrate 25 Years

Women & Children First, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month, has become such a venerable institution that Chicago's mayor, Richard Daley, has proclaimed the store's anniversary date -- November 10 -- "Women & Children First Day." Festivities to celebrate the store's silver anniversary include a November 20 party and benefit for two local charitable organizations. And, in conjunction with the celebrations, Women & Children is launching the Women's Voices Fund to sponsor all of the bookstore's important nonprofit programming.

"We wanted to use the occasion of our 25th anniversary to try to raise money because a lot of our programs are not self-supporting," said former ABA president and the store's co-owner Ann Christophersen. The Women's Voices Fund is a "donor-advised fund" of the Crossroads Fund, which is a public foundation seeking to support organizations working on issues of social and economic justice in the Chicago metropolitan area. Contributors give their tax-deductible donation to the Crossroads Fund, which is earmarked for and placed in an account of the Women's Voices Fund. Women & Children First controls the account, which is in a separate account from the business.

The idea to create the Women's Voices Fund coalesced during a committee meeting of longtime Women & Children customers, women's studies academics, and executive directors of Crossroads and other charitable organizations, when it was recommended that in order to fund programs, Women & Children establish a donor-advised fund.

"We do a lot of not-for-profit work and these days it's hard to pay for all of it," said Christophersen. "This is an important reason for creating the fund. It will help, we hope, keep our programs going. We often have three events a week, book discussions, children's story hour, and lots, and lots, and lots of writers. Sometimes sales of books offset the cost of [hosting] these programs, but the bulk of it isn't supported by sales."

Christophersen said that in Women & Children's neighborhood of Chicago, as in much of the country, business has become so competitive that the bookstore "flat out cannot afford" to maintain their current level of programming. "Like many independent bookstores, our business is really affected by the exploding chain development…. It's been really challenging to keep financially healthy, which is why we're looking to offset costs. It all comes down to the operating budget and that's getting tighter and tighter."

Tickets are $40 for the anniversary party, which includes a silent auction of authors' personal memorabilia -- Ellen DeGeneres, Ann Patchett, and Julia Alverez are among the authors who have contributed -- as well as music and dancing, a drag king show, and hors d'oeuvres. Proceeds will benefit the Lesbian Community Cancer Project; Literature for All of Us, an organization working towards improving reading and writing skills of young women and girls; and the Women's Voices Fund.

The fund, Christophersen said, is in keeping with the original mission of Women & Children First, which co-owners Christophersen and Linda Bubon developed 25 years ago. "Our guiding purpose has been focusing on work by and about women and supporting their work, focusing on the depth of women's voices," said Christophersen. "We've focused on bringing writers and readers together in an audience of both men and women." --Karen Schechner