BPW - An Organization of Firsts
Based on the premise of women helping women, Business and Professional Women/USAwas the first organization to focus on issues of workingwomen.
BPW/USA was one of the first women’s organizations to endorse the Equal Rights Amendment in 1937.
Business and Professional Women’s (BPW) Foundation became the first foundation dedicated to conducting research and providing information solely about workingwomen, in 1956.
BPW Foundation was the first 501 (c)(3), women’s organization to have its articles of incorporation signed by a woman, Marguerite Rawalt.
BPW/USA is the first and only non-governmental agency offering assistance to transitioning women veterans through the Women Joining Forces: Closing Ranks, Opening Doors (WJF) program.
BPW Foundation was the first foundation to offer scholarships to assist workingwomen with career advancement and education goals in 1972.
BPW/USA was one of the first organizations to lobby for and lead in the passage of Title IX in 1972.
BPW/USA established National Business Women’s Week in 1928, to celebrate women’s accomplishments and their contribution to the workforce and the economic success of the nation.
President Kennedy recognized BPW/USA as a leader in the passage of the Equal Pay Act with the first pen he used to sign the Act into law.
Forms and downloadable information:
BPW COLLECT
Keep us, 0 God, from pettiness; let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with faultfinding
and leave off selfseeking.
May we put away all pretense
and meet each other face to facewithout
selfpity and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment
and always generous.
Let us take time for all things,
make us to grow calm, serene, gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses, straightforward and unafraid
Grant that we may realize it is
the little things that create differences,
That in the big things of life
we are at one.
And may we strive to touch and to know the great, common human heart of us all, and
O Lord God, let us forget not to be kind.
-- Written by: Mary Stewart