Why Women in Tech Are Sounding an Alarm

There wasn’t any one thing that led to the slow death of Girls in Tech, a standard-bearer nonprofit that provided Silicon Valley women with the kind of mentorship and training opportunities that men took for granted.

First, the pandemic struck, and donors shifted their attention to health and science causes. Then the Black Lives Matter movement prompted donors to shift their focus to groups that were more obviously working on racial issues.

“I would say 50% of our funding just went out the window due to BLM,” said Adriana Gascoigne, co-founder of Girls in Tech. “This situation was really hard to digest: We’re very supportive of all different diverse communities within tech, including the Black community.” Still, she found herself in the painful position of competing with other underrepresented groups for the same pile of limited funds.

The next two years saw a near-recession in technology, which further closed donors’ pocketbooks and put more pressure on Gascoigne. She cut staff and pared back programming but still couldn’t save the organization: In June, it had less than $500,000 in the bank. “We couldn’t keep the lights on,” Gascoigne told me.