Going Deeper: How an Initiative to Grow Giving Circles Is Evolving

A lot has happened with Philanthropy Together since we first covered it in 2021. The organization, which seeks to “democratize and diversify philanthropy through the power of giving circles,” has attracted international attention and expanded its reach into countries like Mexico, Germany and China, while growing its online database of giving circles, training 600 new giving circle leaders and offering support to existing groups.

Now in its fourth year, Philanthropy Together is gearing up for its next We Give Summit in early May and plans to expand its scope beyond giving circles to collective giving overall. Its leaders say they have reason to believe that the giving circle movement is both growing and becoming increasingly dynamic.

But right now, one of the organization’s main priorities is the 2023 U.S. Collective Giving Landscape Research Survey, which Philanthropy Together is conducting in partnership with researchers from the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University. According to Philanthropy Together and researchers working on the survey, this year’s effort is the most thorough one to date. For one thing, there are actually two surveys: one for giving circle leaders to answer on behalf of their groups, and another first-ever survey of individual giving circle members. Philanthropy Together and the researchers hope to learn a lot more about how giving circles operate and quantify some hunches they have about how they may be changing.

One thing the team hopes to be able to demonstrate through the data is just how diverse, and how active, the giving circle movement really is.

“What I have seen time and time again is that collective giving is global, it’s organic, it’s pre-colonial. It happens on the margins of society, and it maintains the dignity of the receiver and giver as it comes from a place of collective responsibility for all members of a community,” said Dr. Adriana Loson-Ceballos, co-founder of Colmena Consulting and one of the co-lead researchers on the project.

Nevertheless, Loson-Ceballos said, “I found that in the U.S., it was not until wealthy white women started to employ a form of this model of collective giving that it got any visibility by the larger community. This visibility, this effort to open the door to reimagine giving, is due in large part to these women, but the radical roots of the movement, the spaces where it has thrived for centuries (including among groups of escaped enslaved people and Indigenous and cross-border communities), has been ignored.”

Because of Philanthropy Together’s work, said CEO Sara Lomelin, “We know the anecdotes, we have all the stories” about the diversity of membership and growing scope of work that increasingly defines giving circles today. “We need the data.”

“We want to go a lot deeper”

In addition to being able to quantify the diversity that they believe exists among giving circles, the team also wants to get a closer look at how they operate — and the impact that giving circle membership has on the individuals that join them. “We want to go a lot deeper, not only in the issues that giving circles focus on but in the ways that they give,” Lomelin said. That includes the extent to which giving circles are providing multi-year general operating support, supporting racial justice, and possibly becoming more civically engaged. When it comes to individuals, the team wants to learn how being part of a giving circle may change both their personal lives and how they engage with the community.

“This time around, we want to explore more deeply the impact that participation has on members in terms of their philanthropic and civic engagement, as well as their wellbeing,” including members’ health, said Dr. Michael Dennis Layton, the Johnson Center’s W.K. Kellogg Community Philanthropy Chair and the other co-lead researcher on the project.

Thanks to the addition of the second survey, “we’re able to go more deeply into how being a part of a collective giving group or a giving circle actually changes you as a person,” said Philanthropy Together Chief Strategy Officer Isis Krause.

Of course, designing a meticulous survey is one thing, but getting people to respond is quite another. Fortunately, Philanthropy Together has spent the past three years developing contacts throughout the world of giving circles via the creation of its extensive database of giving circles and its work helping people form new circles and support existing ones. Layton said that the team is off to a “good start” in terms of participation in the survey, which ends on May 31.

The team believes that the better the response, the more the numbers will demonstrate the diversity of the giving circle movement — and the growing breadth of giving circles’ work.

“I hope this research changes [the perception that giving circles are just for white women] by making their roots visible, by intentionally seeking out these groups so that they see themselves in the numbers,” Loson-Ceballos said.

Getting ready to grow

Philanthropy Together has already accomplished an impressive amount for such a young organization. Thanks to early support from traditional funders like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, it’s been everywhere from a 2022 TED Talk to a giving circle press conference in Shanghai, China, raising public and media awareness of both the giving circle movement and its own work.

Given those successes, not to mention its mission “to democratize and diversify philanthropy,” perhaps it’s not surprising that Philanthropy Together is moving into its fourth year with plans to expand its work “across the entire landscape of collective giving,” including entities like flow funding circles, collaborative funds and women’s collective giving groups. With initial support from the Gates Foundation, Philanthropy Together plans to replicate the kind of support and community-building it has provided to giving circles — which will remain a prominent focus of its work.

According to Philanthropy Together’s recent announcement about the planned expansion, “Currently, hundreds of collaborative funds are working mostly in parallel, each experimenting with different governing structures without the benefit of the hard-earned intelligence of fellow travelers in the space. The joyful triumphs of successful strategies and deep impact are not being amplified in deliberate and concerted ways so the field can learn from one another’s successes and failures.” With any luck, Philanthropy Together will change that.

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