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helen Helen LaKelly Hunt Biography

Dear Friends,

My first encounter with the women's movement was in 1973, when a domestic violence shelter in Dallas asked me to join their board. In visiting that shelter I learned not only about the magnitude of the problem of violence against women, but also what a little bit of resources could do to match the passion and courage of women who want to live with dignity.

A few years later, I moved from Dallas to New York, and began to learn about the stock market. I grew up in a family which encouraged males but not females to learn about money. I invested in oil and gas, and had a very profitable year. For the first time, I had money which was my own, and had the power to spend it according to my will, and what I had become passionate about was social justice.

My sister Swanee Hunt and I founded the Hunt Alternatives Fund in 1981, to support disenfranchised populations in the cities where we lived. While we now do our philanthropy separately, our work is still deeply connected.

The Sister Fund is the private women's foundation I formed in 1993 in honor of my actual blood sisters as well as my sisters who care about equality in our society.

  • The Sister Fund supports spiritual women and their organizations, both grassroots activists for justice, and national and international social change agents.
  • The Sister Fund acknowledges the role of faith in generating compassion, an essential part of social change. We see our grantees as generating this compassion and we strive to be "sisters" to them in their work.
  • I am a founder of the Dallas Women's Foundation and the New York Women's Foundation, and have been very connected with the Women's Funding Network. The Sister Fund is a part of a community of women's foundations and justice-embracing women donors; building the women's funding movement in the United States and around the world is a Sister Fund priority.
The Sister Fund is almost ten years old, and we have learned much about the energy and synergy that occur when women are empowered to connect with their own spirits, dreams and desires, and with other women. I envision that The Sister Fund will become a closer partner with grantee organizations in the years to come, listening closely and responding sensitively to the foremost concerns of women and girls.

In sisterhood,


Helen LaKelly Hunt