Worth: Do you have a way of measuring the effectiveness of the programs you fund?

Grumm: We have a new tool we call Making the Case, with which we measure social change. We look at what changes have to take place within a community to move the wheel, to make the difference. We have an online tool that we created that allows women’s funds to sign on with the grantee partner to look at the work they’re doing. We have some measurement tools they can use as a comparison now. One of these is the issue of domestic violence, which we managed to shift, through funding and activism, from a private to a public issue, so that people started paying attention and police departments learned to take it seriously when women were victimized by violence in the home. We’re testing Making the Case in South Africa, Nicaragua and Nepal first, then we will take it all over the U.S. You cannot ask for big investment if you’re not going to show effectiveness.

Disney: We can see from what we’re doing that we are building citizens. Girls’ programs used to be about keeping girls from becoming pregnant. So a girl was a terrible event to be stopped; she wasn’t really seen as a resource for her community. These are not pregnancies that didn’t happen—non-event successes, which would be impossible to measure. These are people who will grow up, vote, pay taxes and teach their children well.

Worth: Bit by bit you are effecting changes.

Gary: Now we are poised to turn around the world in which there is a lot of pain and isolation. We would like to do something about this stressed life people lead of being constantly on cell phones. I’ve worked in 50 states and 20 countries doing this and all people ask is, “How do I sign up?”