The Victorian Women's Trust

And more about us...

The Victorian Women's Trust was started in 1985 with a state government gift of $1 million. This was part of the sesqui-centennial celebrations and was seen as an acknowledgement of the work that women had done in the development of Victorian society over the 150 years. It was decided to create a Trust for women and girls.

In 1993, the Trust became fully independent from government - no ties, no funding from government and able to speak freely on issues affecting women and girls. In the time since, almost everything we do is done on the basis of donations we receive from women, mainly from across Victoria, but also some from interstate.

We are now one of the oldest women's funds in the world.

Some of our projects have started with government grants. For example, we started a business incubator, called Business Matrix, for women and ran this for 8 years. To do so, we secured a seed funding grant from the Federal government in 1997. We also received a grant from VicHealth which we used to start our anti-volence program called Be The Hero. We also enjoy some business partnerships. For example, mecubank has helped us to roll out the Be the Hero program for boys across Victoria.

Women contribute to our work through two ways, either by paying a membership fee, which is not tax deductible or by making a donation which is tax deductible. These donations go to our annual grants program. Each year we manage to fund about 15 grants to women and girls. So far, we have funded over 400 projects.

We also have 5 sub-funds. These have all been started from an initial endowment from women who want to honour someone special in their lives and who are keen to support our work. For further details of each sub-fund please go to the Our Grants page.