A few years ago, philanthropist Martha Richards needed to figure out what to do with nearly half a million dollars. She’d talked to the board of her Northampton-based nonprofit, WomenArts, about how she wanted to slow its operations down because of her age, but that meant she needed to figure out what to do with the endowment she’d built over the last three decades. She gave $100,000 to a performing arts nonprofit in California, but what to do with the rest?
She knew she wanted to give the funds to an arts organization, and all the better if it was one that had a specific focus on women artists. There weren’t many organizations with that focus big enough to “take on the burden of an endowment,” she said, but she’d read about the arts programs at the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, a Springfield nonprofit.
“I was really impressed with the team there,” Richards said. “I felt like the money would be in good hands.”
It also helped that it was based in Massachusetts, where she’d originally raised that money. “It felt like it was better to give it back here so that it was serving the people who had given me the money in the first place,” she added.
The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts is celebrating a $431,000 donation from WomenArts. The donation will support the Community Foundation’s goal of funding a $5 million endowment for its arts initiative, ValleyCreates, by December 2026. Although WomenArts actually moved the endowment over in 2024, they had to wait for the state attorney general’s office to approve the transfer.
Richards clarified that WomenArts has been “primarily a service organization instead of a grant-making organization.” She explained that its focus has been “helping artists raise money for their projects by writing grant proposals for them or providing other services. Sometimes we have been the fiscal sponsor, sometimes we have been the producer, and sometimes the money went directly to the artist’s nonprofit.”
Now that the Community Foundation has the endowment, the funds will go toward programs like the ValleyCreates Capacity-Building Grants. These awards provide $2,500 unrestricted grants and professional development opportunities to selected artists in Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden counties.
Community Foundation President and CEO Megan Burke said the donation is “both really large and it feels a little different, because it in and of itself is a combination of support that others have provided over the years to build up this endowment. It is a single gift, but it feels more like a collective effort.”
“If I could be so bold, I think [the donation] also supports our entire region, because it really supports our creative economy,” Burke added. “It reminds folks throughout Massachusetts and even, arguably, across the United States that western Massachusetts is an incredible place to be, to see art, to participate in art and to really see the work of these individual artists.”
Richards founded WomenArts, originally called The Fund for Women Artists, in 1994. She worked with four area theater companies — Chrysalis Theatre, Enchanted Circle Theatre, Serious Play Theatre Ensemble and Sleeveless Theatre — as a grant writer and manager. The nonprofit continued to help thousands of individual artists over the next three decades. Richards also co-founded a holiday called SWAN (Supporting Women Artists Now) Day. Inspired by Eve Ensler’s V-Day, the initiative ran from 2008 to 2020 and featured events in 36 countries.
Richards lives in Northampton, but she’s also lived and worked elsewhere. In fact, she’s a member of the bar in California. After graduating law school, she worked as a lawyer for a year in the Bay Area. She learned about available federal funding through the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA). She wrote a proposal to become the company manager for a theater in San Francisco where she’d been taking acting classes, securing her funding for that position through those CETA funds.
She later worked at other theaters. Her roles included executive director at Brooklyn College’s Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts from April 1986 to December 1988 and managing director at StageWest in Springfield from January 1989 through June 1993.
“I really love administrative work. I mean, it’s different from law because you’re not arguing with people — most of the time,” she said with a laugh. “You’re mainly trying to figure out how to make things work, and I’m really good at that kind of logistic planning and figuring things out.”
Richards spent more time in California before returning to Massachusetts in 2024. She moved back in part to be closer to her daughter, and in part because she wanted to live somewhere where she didn’t have to worry so much about fires, earthquakes and traffic.
Her donation comes at a critical time, following the National Endowment for the Arts’ decision to withdraw hundreds of grants to individual artists and arts organizations last year.
“Supporting individual artists and arts nonprofits, quite frankly, is a really important part of having a healthy, holistic society with a thriving economy,” Burke said. “And when the federal government decides that it’s not going to support [the arts] anymore, we see that it’s even more important for private philanthropy to step up.”
“I still believe that artists are the ones who are able to help us imagine a different future or different reality,” Richards said. “The country is so divided, and we just need more ideas about how to move forward. I think artists really have the potential for that.”
For more information about the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, visit communityfoundation.org. For more information about WomenArts, visit womenarts.org.
