Ann McGuiness, a behind-the-scenes power in girls’s well being and reproductive rights who raised huge quantities of cash for Deliberate Parenthood and different teams after which was a founding father of the Contraceptive Entry Initiative, which seeks to make hormonal contraception extra accessible over-the-counter, died on Aug. 3 in Albany, N.Y. She was 65.
Her household mentioned the trigger was leiomyosarcoma, an aggressive most cancers.
Through the years Ms. McGuiness, who lived in Selkirk, N.Y., south of Albany, utilized her appreciable abilities as a fund-raiser to quite a lot of organizations, however her ardour was girls’s points. Starting within the mid-Nineteen Eighties she labored for the Nationwide Ladies’s Political Caucus, then for NARAL Professional-Alternative America (initially the Nationwide Affiliation for the Repeal of Abortion Legal guidelines), the place she was growth director.
In 2006 she started a 12-year profession on the Deliberate Parenthood Federation of America, the place Cecile Richards, president of the group throughout that point, traveled along with her usually and skilled her dedication to the trigger.
“It was merely the motion’s success that she selected to pour her expertise and vitality into fund-raising,” Ms. Richards mentioned by e-mail. “However make no mistake — she was an important fund-raiser due to her perception in the reason for abortion rights. Her aggressive streak — and it was fierce — was as a result of to her the mission was so vital.”
Betsy Liley, who labored with Ms. McGuiness on fund-raising at Deliberate Parenthood, remembered her as a tireless colleague.
“Ann would arrive on the Manhattan Deliberate Parenthood Federation of America workplaces after a few hours on the prepare from her residence simply south of Albany,” she mentioned by e-mail. “She’d pull this dog-eared listing of names out of her pocket or purse. It was handwritten in pencil. Typically the listing had crimson wine stains on it from work the evening earlier than.”
“In case your title was on that listing,” Ms. Liley added, “you had been going to listen to from Ann. It might be years later. She was going to determine tips on how to join you to the work she devoted her life to.”
Ms. Richards recalled a selected journey with Ms. McGuiness that demonstrated her tenacity.
“Someday we drove hours by means of southern Florida, to a distant and splendid villa on the coast, to satisfy with a possible donor who offered fresh-baked scones however no contribution,” she mentioned. “We laughed all the best way again, however Ann wasn’t despondent, she was merely dedicated. A yr later, she received a million-dollar present from the identical lady. She didn’t take no for a solution.”
“She is a kind of unsung heroes — raised actually a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} for reproductive rights and justice, and was a key strategist in every single place she labored,” Ms. Singiser mentioned by e-mail. “And she or he was a motivator to all of us round her — at all times centered on the mission, not her personal profile.”
Ann Catherine McGuiness was born on July 27, 1957, in New Britain, Conn. Her mom, Catherine (Jones) McGuiness, taught elementary faculty, and her father, Edward, was a steamfitter.
Ms. McGuiness grew up in Newington, Conn., and earned a bachelor’s diploma in political science at what’s now the College of St. Joseph in West Hartford in 1979. In 1984 she earned a grasp’s diploma in public administration at Columbia College.
After working for the Nationwide Political Ladies’s Caucus and for the marketing campaign of the Colorado Democrat Tim Wirth, throughout his profitable 1986 run for the US Senate, Ms. McGuiness joined NARAL in 1987. She labored for that group for 17 years as a guide and growth director earlier than her transfer to Deliberate Parenthood.
One vital facet of her work in all her roles, Ms. Richards mentioned, was mentoring a youthful technology of fund-raisers for ladies’s causes.
“She understood that her personal success can be exponentially better if there have been a whole lot extra educated and dedicated as she was,” Ms. Richards mentioned.
Ms. McGuiness is survived by her husband, William T. Reynolds; a daughter, Nora McGuiness Reynolds; a son, Nicholas McGuiness Reynolds; two brothers, Patrick and Timothy McGuiness; and a sister, Mary Kate Hallisey.
If Ms. McGuiness was obsessed with explicit causes, she additionally noticed the worth of giving normally. In an opinion article for The Instances Union of Albany in 2010, when the American economic system was nonetheless recovering from the recession of the earlier three years, she made a plea geared toward non-millionaires.
“Personal help established colleges, libraries, hospitals and firehouses,” she wrote. “Because the excessive unemployment charge persists and the economic system stalls, philanthropy can be known as upon once more to make our communities complete.
“Open the letters out of your favourite charities. Give and provides once more. Don’t be involved that the items are usually not as huge as Rockefeller’s. Our items have an effect — irrespective of the scale.”
