2026 Mid-Year Donor Report: Scholarships, Research, Expanded Collaborations, and More

NACPM is excited to share our 2026 Mid-Year Donor Report — a look at what supporters helped make possible in the first six months of this year. The short version: we expanded collaboration across the field, while continuing progress in growing the midwifery workforce and building an NACPM infrastructure to carry us strong into 2027.

What’s new—and why it matters

This spring, NACPM expanded community-rooted partnerships and received awards from the Skyline Foundation, Wagner Foundation, Pritzker Children’s Initiative, Oregon State University Foundation, and Johns Hopkins University. These investments are fueling collaborative work with key allies, including:

Together, these relationships help us advance an equitable, integrated, midwifery-focused perinatal system—one that centers community birth, accountability, and access.

A new philanthropic engine: NFCPM

This year we also built upon 2025’s establishment of our sister organization, the National Foundation for Certified Professional Midwives (NFCPM) — a dedicated platform to grow charitable investment and sustain long-term impact. The Foundation is designed to:

  • Grow philanthropic investment for CPMs and CPM allies

  • Sustain scholarship, research, and systems-integration projects

  • Accelerate equity-focused workforce development for CPMs

Working in tandem, NACPM (the CPM professional association) and NFCPM (a charitable foundation dedicated to CPMs) give this movement both the advocacy strength and the philanthropic capacity needed to scale.

Inside the report

  • Milestones from the first half of 2026

  • Partnership spotlights and funded collaborations

  • Progress toward an integrated, accountable community birth system

  • What’s next for the second half of 2026

👉 Read the full 2026 Mid-Year Donor Report

Fuel what’s next

Our supporters’ belief in this work allows us to move both efficiently and thoughtfully. NACPM extends our heartfelt gratitude for standing with NACPM and the communities we serve.

July 2026 Newsletter: Global Development of the Midwifery Workforce →

Midwifery stands at the intersection of clinical care, cultural tradition, and community trust. Yet, the global development of the midwifery workforce has too often mirrored inequities found across health systems, where Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are underrepresented in formal leadership, under-resourced in training pathways, and undervalued despite generations of knowledge and practice.

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Joint Statement From NACPM and NARM Regarding MEAC’s Withdrawal from U.S. Department of Education Recognition

The North American Registry of Midwives (NARM) and the National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) recently learned of the Midwifery Education Accreditation Council’s (MEAC’s) decision to withdraw from recognition by the U.S. Department of Education. Neither NARM nor NACPM participated in or had advance notice of that decision.

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Issue Brief 2026.2: Birthright Citizenship, and the Protection of Perinatal and Infant Health Systems

The National Association of Certified Professional Midwives (NACPM) issues this brief to articulate our opposition to proposals that would restrict or eliminate birthright citizenship in the United States. Such policies would have far-reaching and harmful consequences for maternal, infant, and family health, while placing untenable burdens on perinatal care systems and providers.

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International Day of the Midwife 2026 →

Too many women still die from preventable causes during pregnancy and childbirth. Skilled care before, during, and after birth can save lives — and midwives are best placed to provide it. Achieving universal coverage of midwife-delivered interventions by 2035 could avert 67% of these deaths. But, the world is short one million midwives. We need urgent action to grow, support, and sustain the global midwifery workforce. This #IDM2026, sign the global petition calling on policymakers for #OneMillionMore

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We Are Not Advocates for a New Idea. We Are Keepers of an Ancient One.

On the plane to Washington, I read bell hooks. Her essay Killing Rage met me where I was. She writes about the particular fury that lives in the body of the oppressed. The rage that we are taught to swallow, to soften, to share only at home among our own. She asks a question I have been turning over ever since: can rage, when connected to our passion for justice, be healthy? Can it heal?

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Midwives Sue Georgia Over Restrictions →

We have asked politely. We have asked strategically. We have asked in legal terminology and legislative language.

Community-based midwives in Georgia have been asking for licensure since 1991. Initially the state of Georgia said “No”, stating that the maternal mortality rate would surely go up. Unfortunately, that rate did go up because midwives were not accessible.

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March 2026 Newsletter - Making Teachers of Future Midwives

“It is always our goal to make teachers of our students.”

In 2016, less than two years into my independent midwifery practice, I began apprenticing with the Dakota master quillwork artists David and Merna Lewis. The pair had spent years revitalizing the art: learning from their own elders, looking at old books, combing through museum archives, trying to figure out how certain techniques were done by our ancestors. In other words, they had done a lifetime’s worth of revitalization work so that their students wouldn’t have to. So that their students could go farther than they had.

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February 2026 Newsletter: Collective Power in Midwifery

Collective Power & Collective Voice in Continuing the Legacy of Midwifery
By: Lisa Gendron, LM, CPM

As midwives embedded in and working within our communities, CPMs are often called to examine our relationship to those communities — especially in times of social, economic, and cultural change. Over the past five years, we have been required to approach community-based midwifery with greater creativity, dynamism, compassion, and groundedness.

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