Ann McGuiness, Major Fund-Raiser for Women’s Health, Dies at 65

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 obtainable 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.

Over time 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 Girls’s Political Caucus, then for NARAL Professional-Alternative America (initially the Nationwide Affiliation for the Repeal of Abortion Legal guidelines), the place she was improvement 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 together 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 power into fund-raising,” Ms. Richards mentioned by e mail. “However make no mistake — she was an awesome 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 essential.”

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 places of work after a few hours on the prepare from her dwelling 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. Generally the listing had pink wine stains on it from work the evening earlier than.”

“In case your identify was on that listing,” Ms. Liley added, “you have been going to listen to from Ann. It might be years later. She was going to determine how you can join you to the work she devoted her life to.”

Ms. Richards recalled a selected journey with Ms. McGuiness that demonstrated her tenacity.

“At some point we drove hours via southern Florida, to a distant and splendid villa on the coast, to fulfill with a possible donor who supplied 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 acquired a million-dollar reward from the identical lady. She didn’t take no for a solution.”

“She is a kind of unsung heroes — raised actually a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} for reproductive rights and justice, and was a key strategist all over the 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 targeted 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 college, 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 Girls’s Caucus and for the marketing campaign of the Colorado Democrat Tim Price, throughout his profitable 1986 run for the USA Senate, Ms. McGuiness joined NARAL in 1987. She labored for that group for 17 years as a guide and improvement director earlier than her transfer to Deliberate Parenthood.

One essential 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 could be exponentially better if there have been a whole bunch 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 enthusiastic about explicit causes, she additionally noticed the worth of giving generally. In an opinion article for The Occasions Union of Albany in 2010, when the American financial system was nonetheless recovering from the recession of the earlier three years, she made a plea aimed toward non-millionaires.

“Non-public assist established colleges, libraries, hospitals and firehouses,” she wrote. “Because the excessive unemployment charge persists and the financial system stalls, philanthropy can be known as upon once more to make our communities entire.

“Open the letters out of your favourite charities. Give and provides once more. Don’t be involved that the presents are usually not as large as Rockefeller’s. Our presents have an effect — irrespective of the scale.”