The Women's Sports Foundation was legally set up in 1974 by
Billie Jean King, her business manager
Jim Jorgensen, and her then-husband
Larry King. The Foundation was originally supported by Olympic swimmer
Donna de Varona and Olympic skier
Suzy Chaffee. In 1972 and in 1973 King was awarded the Bob Hope Cavalcade of Sports for the "Outstanding Female Athlete of the Year". In 1974, she donated her winnings of $5,000 to incorporate the Women's Sports Foundation. Simultaneously, she started a new magazine titled
womenSports. The WSF began its multi-sport emphasis at the 1975 ABC TV show Women's Superstars which was held at the Houston
Astrodome. It was there that
Donna de Varona working as an ABC Billie Jean King invited the women athlete contestants to join in on the effort. For ten years, from 1976 to 1986, under the direction of Executive Director,
Eva Auchincloss and Associate Director
Holly Turner and the Chairwoman Billie Jean King, the Board of Trustees was expanded to include Olympian
Peggy Fleming,
Peanuts creator
Charles M. Schulz, and Vice-President of
Bristol-Myers Marvin Koslow,
David Foster, CEO of Colgate Palmolive. In 1979, Donna de Varona was appointed the first president of the Foundation. Under the leadership of Executive Director
Eva Auchincloss and her team, the foundation grew from an organization with $500 in the bank to one with a $1M endowment and an operating budget of $1M. In 1990, in recognition of King's long standing efforts to promote the rights of women,
Life magazine named her one of the "100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century",[5] in part because of her promotion of sports for women such as the Women's Sports Foundation. Women's Sports Foundation advocates equal opportunity for girls and women's sports in the United States and around the world. Past presidents include Donna de Varona,
Carol Mann,
Lyn St. James,
Nancy Hogshead-Makar,
Wendy Hilliard,
Benita Fitzgerald Mosley,
Nancy Lieberman,
Julie Foudy,
Dawn Riley,
Dominique Dawes,
Aimee Mullins,
Jessica Mendoza,
Laila Ali,
Angela Ruggiero,
Angela Hucles,
Grete Eliassen,
Elana Meyers Taylor,
Alana Nichols, and
Phaidra Knight. The current president is
Meghan Duggan and the current Board of Trustees Chair is Sandra Vivas. A statement by 16 women's rights organizations including the Women's Sports Foundation, the
National Women's Law Center, the
National Women's Political Caucus,
Girls, Inc.,
Legal Momentum, End Rape on Campus, the
American Association of University Women and
Equal Rights Advocates said that, "as organizations that fight every day for equal opportunities for all women and girls, we speak from experience and expertise when we say that nondiscrimination protections for transgender people—including women and girls who are transgender—are not at odds with women’s equality or well-being, but advance them" and that "we support laws and policies that protect transgender people from discrimination, including in participation in sports, and reject the suggestion that cisgender women and girls benefit from the exclusion of women and girls who happen to be transgender." ==Initial goals==