Rachel's Network

Rachel's Network (RN) was established in 1999 by Winsome McIntosh with a grant from the McIntosh Foundation. McIntosh gathered a group of fellow women philanthropists who had committed at least $25,000 annually to environmental causes to form the “Founder's Circle” of the organization. The founders chose “Rachel's Network” as the name of their group to honor Rachel Carson (1907–64), whose book Silent Spring is credited with beginning the environmental movement in the early 1960s. Believing that collaboratively the group could be more effective than as individual voices, the founders determined to strengthen the representation of women on the boards of nonprofits, corporations, and government commissions and to use their power to protect the earth and the health of its citizens.

[Page 1199]Seventeen women made up the original group. McIntosh served as president for the first 10 years. McIntosh brought to the job decades of experience on the board of the McIntosh Foundation, a family philanthropy established in 1949 by Josephine H. McIntosh, whose grandfather George Hamilton Hartford founded the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (later renamed A&P). In 2009, Lisa Renstrom, a former Sierra Club president and a trustee of her family's foundation, Bonwood Social Investments, succeeded McIntosh, who became board chair. By the time McIntosh stepped down as president, RN had more than 90 members. Among them were foundation presidents, board directors, businesswomen, and community leaders from across the United States and representing a range of political ideologies connected by their commitment to environmental causes and to the empowerment of women in shaping the policies that addressed those causes.

The diversity within the membership of RN allows the organization to use innovative ways of fostering collaboration even among unlikely partners. The Congressional Women's Networking Initiative provides resources and events that encourage women in Congress to work together in a nonpartisan, informal setting to solve environmental problems. RN has served, since 2005, in an unofficial capacity to connect leaders in the National Association of Evangelicals, for whom “Creation Care” has become an increasingly important issue, and in the environmental community. RN also founded as a separate organization Rachel's Action Network, a nonpartisan 501(c)(4) organization that promotes the engagement of women in the political process and campaigns for female candidates committed to environmental issues.

RN has also worked closely with the Environmental Working Group (EWG), funding studies for that research and advocacy organization. Eighteen members of RN and their families went beyond funding and volunteered to participate in a 2005 Body Burden test conducted by EWG. Researchers sampled the volunteers’ blood and urine and analyzed them for toxic chemicals. Although RN member volunteers lived in various parts of the country, the study showed their toxic chemical load to be similar, with all of them testing positive for 60 percent of the 75 chemicals evaluated, including fire retardants, Teflon chemicals, fragrances, bisphenol A (found in plastics), and perchlorate—a rocket fuel ingredient. In 2007, RN funded a second EWG study that tested the umbilical cord blood of U.S. newborns. For the first time, synthetic fragrance chemicals were detected in cord blood, providing evidence that infants in the womb are contaminated with toxic chemicals used in cosmetics and other consumer products. Such studies help to build a case for improved regulation of controversial chemicals.

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