Giving with Purpose - International Women's Day
Giving With Purpose
Tima Bansal | London Community Foundation | International Women's Day 2026
Tima Bansal
Tima Bansal has been researching and teaching business sustainability and strategy for nearly 30 years as a professor at the Ivey Business School at Western University. Bansal founded and leads Innovation North and founded the Network for Business Sustainability. She served on the Board of Directors at London Community Foundation and several committees.
A few months after my mother died, my father visited me in London, Ontario, last year. We were talking over lunch in Old East Village, the way one does when grief leaves space for reflection. That's when an idea of how we could honour my mother’s memory came to me.
We could fund a prize for the best teaching case studies on the Sustainable Development Goals.
I had been a professor at the Ivey Business School for 27 years and was serving as Chair of the Advisory Board of PRME — the United Nations' Principles for Responsible Management Education, which works to embed sustainability into business school curricula around the world. I had long seen the potential connection between the two, but it took a quiet lunch with my father to bring them together.
Within hours, I reached out to Ivey Publishing, PRME, and London Community Foundation. By the next day, all three organizations had jumped on board — each immediately seeing the alignment of the idea with their own mission.
What excites me most about this gift is its potential ripple effect. I hope this prize will encourage faculty to write more cases on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); inspire teachers to bring these issues into their classrooms as high-quality cases become easier to find; and ultimately shape students who go on to lead corporations, shape policy, and build communities. Even though we weren't meeting immediate needs, I had hoped that the prize would create knock-on effects long into the future.
I was also excited to see how the gift aligned with my own professional commitment to advancing sustainability through teaching. My family insisted, though, that the appreciation for the donation be relatively muted. No hoopla or big print about the donation.
We’ve had a family fund at London Community Foundation for about a decade, which is our main vehicle for giving. It’s one of the most meaningful things our family does together. Yet, we haven’t been particularly systematic in the past, responding to requests and opportunities that support London-based community initiatives and mental health causes.
Writing this piece for the Foundation pushed me to not only reflect on my own experience, but also beyond it. What I found in the research surprised me. My personal approach to giving was consistent with the evidence on women's philanthropy more broadly.
What Makes Women’s Philanthropy Unique
Women tend to give to causes rooted in need rather than prestige. We give through trust — often to people and organizations we know personally. We want to do more than write a cheque; we want to be involved, to advocate, to bring others in. And we're drawn to giving that can catalyze change, not just address symptoms.
Women seem to be led by purposeful philanthropy: we want the money we donate to make a real difference to the people and causes we care about.
This week, I talked to a couple of friends about these ideas. It was remarkable how much the conversation energized us. One friend wrote afterwards: “I love the conversation you’ve started. I feel inspired to step up my own giving.”
This International Women's Day, let's celebrate not just what women give — but how, and why that difference matters.
Tima has written more fully about the research on women and philanthropy in her recent Forbes column, "The Quiet Revolution In Philanthropy." The article is behind a paywall, but after March 8, 2026, the full text will also be posted on Tima’s LinkedIn. Please share this post with others. The quiet revolution becomes louder when more of us join it.