Dads and Daughters is more than simply a feel-good group that teaches men how to understand their daughters and girls how to understand their dads.

Meet Joe Kelly and Nancy Gruver. This Duluth husband and wife team helped create the nonprofit group Dads and Daughters more than five years ago with a much deeper plan than simply addressing the father-daughter relationship within a family. Their goal was-and is-to address the forces in our culture that seek to devalue women and girls.

"Doing the right thing at home in raising your children is absolutely necessary as a father, but it's not sufficient," says Kelly, Dads and Daughters' president. "Our kids are being profoundly influenced by the culture outside and particularly by marketing and media."

Recent activism

Most of Dads and Daughters' activism focuses on marketing, advertising and other powerful media outlets. The group also works on public policy issues; they enlist their supporters to write members of Congress in support of, or in opposition to, legislation affecting girls.

There are many instances in which Dads and Daughters rallies its supporters around a particular issue or cause. In August, for example, the group initiated a grassroots email campaign to get apparel manufacturer Self-Esteem Clothing to stop selling a T-shirt to preteen girls that said: "Property of the Boys' Locker Room."

"We mobilized our members and friends to write letters and several hundred of them did," Kelly says. "The president of the company contacted us and said they've discontinued the shirt."

Self-Esteem Clothing is just one of the most recent victories for Dads and Daughters. The list of actions the group is involved in is long and varied; including work on preventing suicide and anorexia and bulimia, protecting children's privacy, and ending violence against women.

"The most significant thing we can do is to help people's thinking change," says Gruver, Dads and Daughters' executive director. "I think we're having a fantastic effect."

Not too shabby for a nonprofit with only four full-time employees and total net assets in 2003 of $359,752.

From the beginning

Before Dads and Daughters, Gruver and Kelly raised twin daughters (now 24 years old) with the same values and opinions they now bring to the organization. But Dads and Daughters wasn't their brain-child. The idea came from Michael Kieschnick, a San Francisco father with a daughter and son. He continues to serve on the Dads and Daughters board of directors.

"[Kieschnick] was really concerned about the things he saw happening [in our culture] that were affecting daughters. The marketing messages and cultural messages were undermining what he and his wife were doing at home," Kelly says. "He went around looking for an organization that addressed itself to the father-daughter relationship since he could see in his own family how powerful that relationship is."

Unable to find such an organization, Kieschnick contacted Kelly, who, at the time, was working for Gruver, the owner and publisher of New Moon magazine. Kieschnick's daughter was a subscriber to New Moon, a for-profit magazine written for and by preteen and teen girls. "I'd never heard of him," says Kelly, who is also a former reporter for Minnesota Public Radio. "I called him up and asked if I could be on the board of directors. He said, 'No, I think we'd like to hire you to run it.' So that's what he did. That was in April 1999."

Though Kelly prefers to talk about "partners" and "participants," rather than "members," there are some quantifiable numbers supporting the efforts of Dads and Daughters: Nearly 6,000 people receive monthly email correspondences, calls to action and email updates. In addition, Kelly has sold more than 45,000 copies of a book he wrote entitled, Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand, and Support Your Daughter When She's Growing Up So Fast, and more than 30,000 people subscribe to the organization's monthly print newsletter, Daughters: For Parents of Girls.

A woman's role

Daughters newsletter is written for both fathers and mothers, illustrating the belief Gruver and Kelly have that both parents play important roles in raising girls. According to Gruver, mothers can help facilitate communication and understanding on both sides of the father-daughter relationship. "Women help fathers gain perspective," she says. "The best person for a father to talk to is an adult woman. She's been there. She's a daughter. She knows what a woman needs."

Though a female perspective is helpful, Gruver says, an organization focusing specifically on the needs of men and their daughters can make a huge impact. "It's still a very male world in our culture," she says. "Fathers talking to other fathers is very powerful."

Kelly agrees. "One of the things that fathers do the least of that we ought to be doing the most of is simply talking to other fathers and drawing on one another's wisdom and experience."

Dads and Daughters provides support for fathers and daughters of all ages. Some of the men are expectant fathers, others have grown daughters. Adult daughters also become involved in an effort to improve their relationships with their fathers.