New Report Finds Giving Circles Are Moving Significant Money, a Hopeful Sign for Civil Society
When Inside Philanthropy last checked in with Philanthropy Together, the PSO
for giving circles was in the midst of conducting in-depth research into the
collective giving movement. Its new report dropped in early April and the
results are pretty eye-opening — both in terms of the sheer numbers involved and because of their implications for nonprofits, phlanthropy and civil society
as a whole.
The original 2017 research that led to the launch of Philanthropy Together revealed a collective giving movement that had already mobilized more than 150,000 individuals in roughly 1,600 groups to move approximately $1.29 billion. Since that time, the growth of giving circles has been nothing short of explosive.
According to the new report, titled “In Abundance: An Analysis of the Thriving Landscape of Collective Giving in the U.S.,” more than 370,000 individual philanthropists in nearly 4,000 separate groups moved over $3.1 billion to nonprofits between 2017 and 2023. The report estimates that these numbers are
all primed to double again in the next five years. Overall, Philanthropy Together’s findings are a hopeful touchpoint amid sector anxieties over the disappearing small donor, philanthropy’s increasing top heaviness, and the damage political polarization and social isolation are doing to the health of American democracy.
A joyous force
“My biggest hope with this report is that mainstream philanthropy now views collective giving not as a cute grassroots side movement, but really something
that needs to be reckoned with. We are a force, and a joyous force,” said Isis Krause, Philanthropy Together’s chief strategy officer.
“In Abundance” was funded by some pretty major players: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Lodestar Foundation, along with Fidelity Charitable’s Catalyst Fund. The report also notes the participation of 39 people from 19 organizations that Philanthropy Together calls its “network brain trust,” including The Awesome Foundation, The States Project and Together Women Rise.
A sampling of facts from the report illustrates the multifaceted benefits of collective giving. Sixty percent of collective giving group leaders report that
they intentionally embed racial and ethnic equity in their circles, and the vast majority (83%) of respondents said that their groups prioritize giving to marginalized communities. In addition, more than two-thirds reported that they provide general operating support to nonprofits, and well over half said that they give more than just money to the nonprofits their giving circles support. “In
Abundance” refers to this deep level of giving as the “5 T’s”: Time, Treasure, Talent, Time and Testimony.
Meanwhile, on the individual level, close to 80% of respondents reported that their participation in a collective giving group gave them “an increased belief in their social influence and feeling that their voices mattered on social issues,” and 91% said their giving circle participation had a “positive impact” on their sense of belonging in the community.
What the report found about the positive impact of collective giving on civic engagement is also worth noting. More than half of giving circle participants
said that being part of a collective giving effort had inspired them to advocate for issues that matter to them, and a quarter said that they had given more
often to political parties and campaigns. The report calls collective giving groups “schools of democracy,” in part because more than half of the
survey’s respondents said their giving circle participation had a positive impact on their ability to have discussions with people holding opposing views.
“Particularly in a time when people are feeling more disconnected and isolated, whether from political polarization or the sustained shift to remote work,
collective giving is showing up as an antidote to loneliness and despair,” said Jason Franklin, the cofounder of the donor consulting firm Ktisis Capital.
Franklin, one of the co-leaders of the original 2017 collective giving research, also noted that participants seem to stick with their giving circles, citing the
report’s figure that the average member remains in their group for seven and a half years.
People don’t necessarily join collective giving groups looking for friends, “but friendship and human connection is an important part of what they get out
of it,” said Michael D. Layton, one of the co-principal investigators and co-authors of the report, along with Adriana Loson-Ceballos. Layton is the
W.K. Kellogg Community Philanthropy Chair at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, while Loson-Ceballos is the cofounder of Colmena Consulting.
Billionaires aren’t going to save us
Based on this research, what are some things the philanthrosphere can learn from the phenomenon of collective giving?
Perhaps the most important is that in a country where other forms of civic engagement are struggling, the seemingly humble giving circle is acting as a
powerful force that brings people together, nurtures collective bonds and acts as an on-ramp to yet more action and connection — while simultaneously
moving significant amounts of charitable money. There are several ways that wealthy individuals and institutional funders can pitch in, including by joining
giving circles themselves, letting local giving circles and similar groups act as the due-diligence agents for choosing grantees or gift recipients, and funding the movement’s support infrastructure.
Philanthropy’s trend toward top heaviness has been escalating for a while now, a damaging development for a social sector that thrives on diverse, widespread
support and participation. Collective giving may well prove to be one of the antidotes. “Billionaires aren’t going to save us,” Loson-Ceballos said. “I love them, I know a couple of them, they're great. But they're not gonna save us at all."
On the other hand, she said, the community engagement that collective giving foments and sustains, and the rebuilding of social capital it makes possible, is essential. Perhaps funders that want to protect democracy by promoting civic engagement don’t need to reinvent any wheels. The collective giving movement is already well on its way down the road; all it needs is more fuel.
This Michigan-Based Donor Advisor is Building a Firm Foundation for the Progressive Movement
There’s a nice anecdote behind how Ktisis Capital came by its name, which sheds some light on the way the advisory firm’s founder, Jason Franklin, approaches the work of guiding progressive donors and foundations. When Franklin was living in New York City in the mid-2000s, he made a habit of stopping by the Met on his way to Sunday brunches with his then-boyfriend. It was during those visits that he was drawn to one of the last existing mosaics of the unique Byzantine goddess, Ktisis — the simultaneous personification of generosity, the importance of planning, and the foundation of a building or city.
When Franklin moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2015 to become the inaugural W.K. Kellogg Community Philanthropy Chair at the Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University, he decided to create his own advising firm as a side project. The former Bolder Giving executive director and Solidaire Network cofounder didn’t want to name the company after himself because one of his goals was to build an organization that made space for others to step into leadership. He ultimately chose to honor the Byzantine goddess, Franklin said, because he liked the goddess’ attributes combining generosity with the importance of planning and lasting foundations.
“You cannot create long-term change without a really stable base — without a foundation that's been put in place, whether that’s analysis or organization or both,” he said.
This year, the Michigan-based Ktisis Capital will assist high-net-worth individual and family donors in moving as much as $35 million, while also influencing the direction of between $500 million and $700 million in foundation funds. The majority of the firm’s clients are in the U.S., but Ktisis is international in scope, with clients in Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The three Ktisis clients I contacted at random for input all praised the firm, Franklin, or both, for their work, ranging from advising Panta Rhea Foundation’s democracy portfolio during the 2016 elections to the “deep dive” the Ktisis team has engaged in with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Racial Equity and Community Engagement grant portfolio.
“Ktisis has been really instrumental in helping us map a way forward with overall strategy and where we really need to center our time and energy going forward,” said Vicky Stott, Kellogg’s senior program officer for racial equity and community engagement.
IP recently spoke with Franklin over two wide- ranging conversations that touched on issues including the history and growth of his firm, American vs. international philanthropy, and whether or not progressives give too much credit to right- wing funders and organizers.
“I committed academic heresy”
Franklin hadn’t had much time to settle into his “dream job” at Grand Valley State before Donald Trump became president in 2016. Despite Franklin’s continued service to progressive philanthropy as a volunteer, “I couldn’t stay in the academy while the world was burning,” he said, “and so I committed academic heresy and left an endowed professorship to become a consultant — the most-secure to the least-secure role you can take on.”
Franklin may blame Trump for his decision to make Ktisis a full-time job, but the move has paid off. Ktisis has a staff of eight, including Franklin, and is also an umbrella for nine affiliate consultants (one of whom is in Australia) and two fellows. Franklin explained that the fellowship program is designed to diversify the field of philanthropic consulting.
“Historically, one of the things we know is that privilege influences who ends up in advising,” he said, “and diversity matters for many reasons. Among them, who's in the room impacts which conversations get had and what lived experience those people bring into the conversations.”
Franklin said his firm has extended the term of its two current fellows and plans to add two more in 2024. The fellowships are part-time positions that are paid at an hourly rate comparable to Ktisis’ full-time associates.
Ktisis doesn’t provide fiduciary services or host DAFs, but it does provide most of the services that progressive donors may need to conduct their giving. The firm’s offerings include advising on grantmaking, strategy and program design; program and operational support; and research, learning opportunities and governance advice for funders.
The bottom line is that Ktisis isn’t a hot-take, trend- chasing outfit. Like the company’s namesake, it’s a place to go to build a firm foundation. It’s also an organization with its own point of view. “We are explicitly committed to racial, social, economic and environmental justice,” Franklin said. “There are many brilliant, amazing individual philanthropic advisors and donor organizers who share those values, but most of the institutions are more values- neutral,” even if the people working there are more progressive. Ktisis is willing to meet clients where they are, Franklin said, but has also decided a client wasn’t the right fit if the person pushed back too hard on issues like tax and philanthropic reform.
“It’s not because we’re better”
Asked the difference between American and international philanthropy and what one side might learn from the other, Franklin said the main thing is a matter of scale.
“There are no parallels for the scale of U.S. philanthropy and the U.S. nonprofit sector in any other country in the world,” he said. The downside, of course, is that the U.S.’s vast economic inequality, regressive taxation, and weak social safety net combine to make the philanthropies possible and the nonprofits essential. In Stockholm a few years ago, a European lamented to Franklin about the ways their nonprofit sector was behind that of the U.S.
“I said, ‘It's important to understand, I have spent my entire career trying to organize and harness the power of philanthropy to support movements that are fighting for a government system closer to what you already have,’” Franklin recalled.
On the other hand, the comparative scale of US philanthropy provides a lot more data from which organizations in other countries can learn. Citing the U.S.’s large population, which includes tens of thousands of major donors, over 100,000 foundations and donor advised funds, and roughly 1.8 million nonprofits, Franklin noted that we can learn from patterns visible at that scale and share that information with international counterparts.
“The conversations are just as sophisticated in Australia as they are in the U.S.,” Franklin said, “but the examples are fewer. And so the range of experiments are fewer, because there are simply fewer people.” At the same time, he said, the U.S. can serve as both a warning to other countries about the dangers of letting economic inequality become out of control, and insights about what people can do to address creeping wealth consolidation in their own countries.
Franklin also offered a caution for other philanthropic advisors who may want to expand internationally. Too often, he said, American advisors tend to offer their recommendations with a healthy dose of American exceptionalism.
In contrast, Franklin takes the approach that he has knowledge and Americans have experiences to share because of the scale of our philanthropic sector and the structures that this scale makes possible. “But it's not because we're better. It's simply because there's a difference, and there's things to learn from difference.”
“We give too much credit to the organization of the right”
A lot has been written, including here at IP, about the long-term tenacity and success of conservative philanthropy and organizing in attacking reproductive, voting and other individual rights. For Franklin, the situation is much more nuanced.
“I actually think that on the left, we sometimes give too much credit to the organization of the right,” he said. On the right, “the Powell memo always gets held up as an example, but there are also dozens and dozens of memos that were written that were not followed, and that we don't hear about because they didn't work out.”
Meanwhile, Franklin believes that progressives tend to downplay both their successes and the ways that the right tries to copy those successes. The Tea Party, Franklin said, was a “mimic reaction to the movement success of the left,” while the Koch network was in some ways a reaction to the perceived success of the Democracy Alliance. At the same time, progressives have also won victories through sustained, disciplined effort — most recently, the legal recognition of same-sex couples’ right to marry. Even progressive movements that haven’t yet won what we might consider decisive victories have changed the narrative landscape. The Occupy movement created public consciousness of wealth inequality through its focus on the 1%, “and the Movement for Black Lives, for all of its fracturing and challenges, galvanized and changed the way we talk about civil rights and racial justice in the modern era.”
One big challenge facing any successful movement, Franklin said, is the difficulty of taking an initiative “the one last step.” Take, for example, Roe v. Wade, “a landmark decision that never translated into final legislative action, and so the right to choose was always a judicially determined right rather than a legislated right. But, as we've seen since Dobbs, abortion is as powerful a motivating force on the left as it is the right — it’s always easier to fight back versus doing the one last step. It's why I can never get from a 36 to a 34 waist.”
"Next-Gen” Philanthropists Are Coming Into Their Own. Here’s How They Approach Giving
There is a massive intergenerational handoff of wealth underway in the U.S., and it will impact philanthropy for decades to come.
The consulting firm Accenture estimates that today’s boomer and Silent Generation wealth-holders will gift their heirs up to $30 trillion by 2030, and a large proportion of that wealth will be concentrated in a small upper class. Today’s wealthy heirs are richer than ever, and are more likely to be billionaires than ever (according to Forbes, between March 2020 and April 2021, a new billionaire was minted every 17 hours).
This means that what some are calling “next-gen” philanthropists, heirs of mega-wealthy donors, are coming into money at an earlier age, and are more likely to inherit very large sums. New philanthropic heirs often come into vast wealth in their 40s, 30s, or even younger, and in many cases, become active in philanthropy right away. They also tend to approach philanthropy differently than their parents did.
This growing wave of young philanthropists has caught our eye at Inside Philanthropy over the past few years, as we’ve increasingly been studying how intergenerational wealth is unfolding across the sector. Back in 2020, we compiled our first list of philanthropic heirs, and soon after, realized that there was a lot more ground to cover. The result is a brand new list of the most powerful heirs in philanthropy, an expansive survey covering everything from sprawling old-money families to young activist-philanthropists.
While the list includes heirs of all ages, we felt the younger representatives required a closer look. Some are giving wealth away at a fast pace while experimenting with newer giving vehicles like impact investing, or moving large sums out the door via DAFs. They often favor networked or collaborative giving, and back more progressive causes than older donors. With this tendency for speedy and variegated giving, it’s important to recognize the rapidly growing impact and power of this new generation of philanthropists.
To get a better sense of giving patterns among next-gen donors, we spoke with Jason Franklin, the former executive director of Bolder Giving and the founder of Ktisis Capital, as well as Nicholas Tedesco, president and CEO at the National Center for Family Philanthropy. Tedesco and Franklin work closely with this younger set of philanthropic heirs and have their finger on the pulse of giving trends and tendencies within this group.
According to Franklin, the simple fact that next-gen donors tend to inherit at a younger age impacts the direction they take with their philanthropy. “Many are coming into wealth 10 or 20 years earlier than their parents,” says Franklin. “The accelerated wealth through tech—early inheritance and early accumulation—is putting hundreds of millions and billions into the hands of young people. The result for philanthropy is, you see more of a willingness to take a risk. You see more learning while doing: take a risk; if it doesn’t work out, go on to something else. Whereas there used to be a predisposition to incrementalism or funding the big, tested organizations.”
Franklin says this growing cohort of super-wealthy, younger donors will impact philanthropy in myriad ways, some of which we’re just beginning to understand. Philanthropic heirs tend to be more collaborative and more willing to blur the boundaries between politics and charity. Compared to their parents or grandparents, who often funneled money into existing family institutions, younger heirs are more likely to create their own foundation or experiment with giving via DAFs, private investments, LLCs, 501(c)(4)s, or large, anonymous contributions. While these offer flexibility and more opportunities for impact, they are less transparent, which can be concerning, especially when such large sums are involved.
“Culturally, we have not caught up yet to the scale of wealth in philanthropy today,” says Franklin. “When did $1 million stop being a transformational gift? What is it now? Is it 50? 500?”
The growing size of these mega-donations is testament to the rapid wealth generation of billionaires. As Inside Philanthropy writer Philip Rojc recently explored, the Giving Pledge, which once seemed so revolutionary, has been largely unsuccessful in prompting its signatories to give away most of their wealth before their death. The problem is part stinginess, part lack of true intent, and part scale: Many of today’s fortunes are so large that billionaire givers struggle to shed them quickly enough. The 2020 Gilded Giving report found that the wealth of the original 62 billionaire signatories of the Giving Pledge has doubled since 2010.
The skyrocketing rate of top-level wealth accumulation has corresponded to a shrinking middle class with less spending power. For philanthropy, this translates into a situation where total gross giving has increased, but the proportion of people who give has shrunk: As of 2016, the percentage of U.S. households making charitable donations had dropped to 53%. According to recent Giving USA data, increases in total year-over-year philanthropic giving are not attributable to more people giving, but to mega-donations topping $300 million.
With the rate of wealth accumulation accelerating, the bounties inherited by top heirs are larger. This makes the rate of giving an interesting challenge for the new generation of wealthy philanthropists, and one encouraging trend is that these heirs—at least the philanthropically minded ones—seem to recognize the importance of giving a lot, giving now, and experimenting with how to give faster and with greater impact.
According to Tedesco at the National Center for Family Philanthropy, the COVID-19 pandemic has further energized young, wealthy philanthropists, many of whom were already donating their money rapidly and with intent.
“It has galvanized a new generation of philanthropic leaders and families across the world,” says Tedesco. “There is a new generation who feel compelled to act, to do more, to contribute, and there is a shift in the pace, practice and purpose among next-generation philanthropists. There is an impatience for social change. They want to see solutions now, and are willing to invest accordingly.”
According to both Franklin and Tedesco, the next-gen heirs active in philanthropy are also more attuned to how networking and collaboration can increase the impact of their giving. It’s therefore not just raw wealth, but also influence that’s an important factor in this world. A younger heir like Lukas Walton inherited billions in his mid-30s, and is already influential and involved in philanthropy, while others, like Justin Rockefeller or Liesel Pritzker Simmons, have less wealth by today’s standards but an outsized influence among their peers.
In other words, the younger set of mega-wealthy philanthropists recognize that collaborative giving—where knowledge and strategies are shared and coordinated via networks, pooled funds and philanthropy-serving infrastructures—are more likely to create impact and success. The enthusiasm for networking among younger philanthropists tracks with the move to collaboration overall as a trend in philanthropy across age groups.
“The earliest donor networks were around 40 years ago, so their parents could not have given this way, because it did not exist,” says Franklin. “Now there is such a range of donor networks and communities… there is an entire donor support infrastructure.” Franklin adds that these networks are a good sign for philanthropy. “These communities and networks are providing a space for inheritors to grapple with questions of equity and justice through conversations with their peers,” he says. The networks are also necessary to solve the incredibly complicated challenges of today’s world. “The idea that you will solve the climate crisis or democracy crisis by yourself is just ludicrous.”
Tedesco adds that while next-gen philanthropists tend to be attuned to the potentials of partnership and collaboration, the “how” of building these networks can be challenging. “So we must ask ourselves, as a sector, how to promote greater partnership, and how we provide the infrastructure to promote relationships and networks.”
Donor networks and giving communities that are popular among heirs in philanthropy include Solidaire, Threshold Foundation, Co-Impact, the Next Gen Giving Pledge and the Maverick Collective. Particular pooled funds—such as the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, the Equality Fund and the Movement Voter Fund—have become popular locations for progressive heirs to move large gifts.
In the book “Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors are Revolutionizing Giving,” authors Sharna Goldseker and Michael Moody argue that strategic collaborative giving is one of the defining features of next-gen philanthropists. “For Gen Xers and millennials, peers influence not just where they give or how much, but also how and how effectively,” Goldseker and Moody wrote. “Peers are a primary source of learning, inspiration and strategic advice, and some donors prefer to give with their peers rather than alone.”
Younger heirs also tend to lean more progressive than their boomer parents. Goldseker and Moody polled a cohort of younger donors and found that compared to their parents, younger donors were more likely to give to environmental concerns, animal-related causes, civil rights and advocacy. They were less likely to give to religion and faith-based issues, education, and arts and culture. This tracks with research showing that millennials in general, at least in some regards, are more progressive.
Whether donating to a pooled fund, moving millions via a DAF, or coordinating socially conscious investments with other wealthy donors, the wealthiest next-gen donors are dynamic and strategic with their philanthropy.
At the same time, often through no fault of their own, they are emblematic of some of the thorniest questions and concerns about big philanthropy and its top-heavy concentration of money and influence. There is something about dynastic wealth in particular that feels in conflict with the health of democratic institutions, and it gets even stickier when many heirs are channeling funds toward urgent topics like climate change and the integrity of democracy itself. As this next generation’s philanthropy accelerates, so will renewed questions about the problematic power of the mega-wealthy, even in well-intentioned hands.
Why the Richest Americans Can’t Give Money Away Fast Enough
Billionaires’ personal fortunes are rising faster than their pace of donations. Does that mean they need to step it up?
America’s wealthiest have been getting a lot of unsolicited advice lately about their philanthropy, especially since the pandemic inflated the fortunes of the top 0.1% while devastating the broader economy.
Their critics’ loudest complaint: You should be giving your money away much faster.
Since splitting from the world’s richest man in 2019, MacKenzie Scott has shown how it might be done. The ex-wife of Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos has donated $8.5 billion in about 12 months, distributing the cash among hundreds of small organizations typically overlooked by big donors.
“It’s really kind of stunning what’s she’s done and how different an approach she’s taken,” said John Arnold, a billionaire hedge fund manager who retired in 2012 to devote himself full-time to philanthropy. “I’m hopeful that more people will follow that model.”
Scott’s strategy -- probably the fastest philanthropic spree in history -- is still no match against the forces lifting billionaire wealth, particularly the rapid ascent of tech valuations. In 2019, she joined the Giving Pledge -- a promise by very wealthy people, not legally binding, to give away the majority of their fortunes in their lifetimes. Since then, the rising price of Amazon stock means Scott’s net worth has jumped from about $37 billion to $62 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Warren Buffett, who helped create the Giving Pledge and has promised to give away almost all his wealth to charity, offers an even starker example. Over 16 years, despite giving up half his stake in Berkshire Hathaway Inc., his wealth has more than doubled to $104 billion.
“We’re living in the second golden age of philanthropy because we’re living in the second golden age of inequality,” said Jason Franklin, principal of Ktisis Capital, a boutique philanthropic advisory firm based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Buffett responded to the raging debate on Wednesday. In a statement that also announced his resignation as a trustee for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s eighth-richest man offered a partial defense of the go-it-slow approach to giving.
Buffett’s first wife, Susan, had argued for “giving away large sums when we were young -- when our net worth was a tiny fraction of its eventual size,” he wrote. “I held out for later, remaining charmed by the results of compounding.”
In 2006, a couple of years after his wife died, Buffett, then 75, “stepped on the accelerator” in his giving.
The value of the shares he’s given away -- $41 billion -- would be worth $100 billion to the recipient foundations if he’d waited until now.
“Would society ultimately have benefitted more if I had waited longer to distribute the shares?” he asked.
Trillions of dollars depend on how the members of the 0.1% answer this question. Many of the very richest Americans have also signed onto the Giving Pledge. This includes Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
There are now 222 signatories globally, but only a small fraction of the money has actually gone to charity, and many of today’s newly minted billionaires can expect to live for decades longer.
Mark Zuckerberg, the 37-year-old co-founder of Facebook Inc., signed the pledge along with his wife, Priscilla Chan, in 2015, when he was worth $45 billion. And, while the couple’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative says it gave $2.7 billion in grants from 2015 to October 2020, Zuckerberg today is worth $126.8 billion.
The argument for giving more now, rather than later, is that while wealth can compound over time, so can the problems that philanthropy tries to address. In the fight against climate change, a cause embraced by both Bezos and Bill Gates, time is of the essence. Education now pays big dividends over the lifetime of a child, while curing a disease could save millions of lives.
“There are investment returns to philanthropy as well,” Arnold said. Failure to address issues like intergenerational poverty today, for example, “leads to a bigger problem tomorrow.”
The debate over giving has been around for decades. But last year inspired a flurry of initiatives designed to encourage foundations and rich donors to be more generous, more quickly. Some of their creators were frustrated by the pace of wealthy Americans’ giving even as government stimulus and record-low interest rates helped boost the assets of the very rich.
Too many wealthy Americans are “hoarding” their fortunes, said Alan Davis, who runs a $150-million family foundation inherited from his parents. MacKenzie Scott “has raised the bar -- I’m not sure there are that many billionaires who are willing to jump over it.”
That sentiment also inspired calls to change U.S. laws governing charitable giving, by, for example, limiting tax breaks for money that doesn’t reach the needy quickly enough. Davis started the Crisis Charitable Commitment, a campaign to boost the minimum contributions coming from foundations and the wealthy.
“Procrastination is an all-too-common problem for charitable giving as well as everything else,” said Boston College law professor Ray Madoff, who argues the U.S. needs “reasonable guardrails in place to ensure that charitable tax benefits benefit the public and not just wealthy donors and money managers.”
Madoff worked with Arnold and several other billionaires to start the Initiative to Accelerate Charitable Giving last year. Their ideas became the basis for a bill proposed this month by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican, and Maine Senator Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, called the “Accelerating Charitable Efforts Act.” The bill would create new time limits on donor-advised funds, or DAFs, which are increasingly popular vehicles that offer an upfront charitable tax deduction but place no deadlines on when money actually reaches working charities.
The Philanthropy Roundtable, an organization representing foundations and wealthy individuals, opposes the bill. “More mandates and regulations on giving will make it harder for all Americans to support the causes they care about,” Elise Westhoff, president and CEO of the group, said in a statement this month.
The efforts coincide with those by President Joe Biden to raise taxes on the wealthy, measures that could also indirectly boost incentives for philanthropy. Buffett has long supported higher taxes on people like him, a sentiment shared by many other voices cheerleading for faster charitable giving.
“It’s a broken system,” said Jennifer Risher, who with her husband, David -- a former Microsoft Corp. and Amazon executive -- last year started the #HalfMyDAF project to voluntarily encourage more giving. Rising fortunes at the top “speaks to structural and systemic problems in our whole system,” she said. “We should pay more taxes. The minimum wage needs to be higher.”
Some believe the changes to the philanthropic world could end up being significant.
“We’re at a dramatic inflection point,” said Michael Moody, Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University. “The previous Gilded Age” ultimately led to many of the rules and structures that govern giving now, he said, but now “we’re seeing a lot of innovation and change in how people go about deploying that wealth.”
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New Effort Seeks to Get 500 Wealthy Americans to Give at Least 1% of Net Worth to Charities That Strengthen Democracy
A new effort is underway to persuade 500 of the nation’s wealthiest to dedicate at least 1 percent of their net worth to charities and advocacy groups focused on strengthening democracy by protecting voter rights and other activities. Since the start of the year, 85 wealthy people have committed $89 million, putting the effort on pace to raise at least $360 million by 2024.
Among those who have committed funds: Craig Newmark, the technology entrepreneur valued at $1.3 billion in 2020, who estimates he is giving at least 30 percent of his net worth to “projects that help American democracy,” and the billionaire investor Michael Novogratz.
The campaign to attract 500 donors builds on work started during the 2020 election to focus on the challenges posed by the pandemic and efforts to disenfranchise donors.
Jason Franklin, interim co-director of One for Democracy, the group organizing the fundraising drive, said philanthropic funding last year demonstrated the ability of nonprofits to make a difference.
“We came out the other side. We saved our democracy by the barest of threads,” said Franklin. “But the work isn’t over — from the ongoing voter suppression at the state level to debates over the For the People Act to just the ongoing work needed to strengthen our democracy.” The For the People Act, a sweeping election measure, is now being debated by the Senate after passing the House.
Franklin said he hopes in 2021 and beyond that donors will direct their money to groups working to improve American democratic structures, protect elections, increase civic and political engagement, and shift “narratives and strengthening the media.”
“Whatever issue you care about, whether it’s climate change or criminal justice or education, if we don’t have a functioning democracy, we’re not going to make forward momentum on any of those issues,” said Franklin. “The people with wealth need to step up and give bigger to support our democracy long term.”
By creating a long-term pot of money dedicated to these issues, One for Democracy hopes to cut against the election-yoked on-off cycle of fundraising for groups that focus on voting rights and related issues. It also hopes to direct the funds equitably, with an emphasis on funding groups that work in rural areas and seek to aid voters of color.
Craig Newmark said he hopes more wealthy people will commit to giving to charities focused on democracy because “people of good conscience need to support the defenders of American democracy, and that support requires influence in all its forms, including financial.” He added: “I figure that patriots with a little extra cash might invest that in the U.S.A.”
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Correction (May 13, 2021, 2:34 p.m.): This article has been revised to clarify that 85 people have agreed to provide at least 1 percent of their net worth to democracy-related groups, putting the One for Democracy campaign on pace to raise at least $360 million by 2024.
How a Study on Giving Circles Led to the Launch of Philanthropy Together
The idea of a giving circle is as simple as it is powerful: a group of individuals pool their resources and decide how to channel their generosity collectively.
Too often, when people think of philanthropists, they picture a group that is primarily rich, primarily white, primarily men, and primarily American. However, giving circles, one form of collective giving, bring together a widely diverse group of individuals coming together to support the causes and communities they care about. In short, giving circles help people engage in philanthropy, together.
The giving circle movement has been recognized as a growing trend since 2007 when initial research was done on its popularity. As the movement continued to shift the narrative of who engages in philanthropy, the Collective Giving Research Group (CGRG) conducted a landscape study to capture data and gain a deeper understanding of their tremendous growth. It was a pivotal move that not only gave the field a roadmap to amplify and empower giving circles and networks — it sparked the genesis of the infrastructure organization, Philanthropy Together.
Conducted in 2016, The Landscape of Giving Circles/Collective Giving Groups in the U.S. – 2016 came together under the leadership, guidance, and hard work of these exceptional professionals within the field:
Jason Franklin, Ph.D., the inaugural holder of the W.K. Kellogg Community Philanthropy Chair and now founder and principal, Ktisis Capital
Jessica Bearman, Bearman Consulting
Julia L. Carboni, Ph.D., Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
Angela Eikenberry, Ph.D., School of Public Administration, University of Nebraska at Omaha
This research was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, via the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, who recognized the importance of advancing knowledge in order to advance the field.
The study’s findings were exciting: the researchers identified more than 1,600 giving circles around the U.S. that had engaged at least 150,000 people in all 50 states and given as much as $1.29 billion since their inception. This research gave the leaders of giving circles and collective giving groups a strong call-to-action moment by providing a comprehensive look at the needs, challenges, and successes of the giving circle movement.
CGRG has since released three additional rounds of research, digging further into the state of giving circles both nationally and internationally.
As giving circles were on the rise, giving circle networks simultaneously increased. Spearheaded by Amplifier@JFNA, a network of Jewish-values-based giving circles, more than 20 of these networks came together to envision the future of giving circles and to discuss how they could continue to scale and strengthen this explosive field’s impact with a sustainable plan.
During two days of discussions and planning in November 2017 at the Johnson Center, 50 network leaders produced hundreds of post-its, newfound friends, and lots of ideas. But one critical missing link became evident: beyond the bells and whistles of a communications campaign blitz, annual conventions, and webinars, this field needed infrastructure to scale and strengthen this movement over the long term.
“During two days of discussions and planning…50 network leaders produced hundreds of post-its, newfound friends, and lots of ideas.”
CGRG’s research showed that giving circles were clearly here to stay and had the potential for massive growth to support local causes and initiatives globally. Yet these groups lacked an adequate infrastructure to accelerate and scale their growth. Just as the Council on Foundations, the United Philanthropy Forum, or the Association for Regional Grantmakers existed to support and serve grantmaking foundations and various philanthropic entities, giving circles needed a similar infrastructure organization.
With a seed grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, five diverse giving circle networks and leaders embarked on a 12-month co-design process, led by consultant Isis Krause, to bring this work forward. Along with more than a hundred additional voices across the field (funders, individual giving circles, consultants, researchers), the “Core Co-Design” team included:
Felicia Herman and Liz Fisher of Amplifier@JFNA
Paula Liang of Philanos – a network of women’s giving circles
Hali Lee of Asian Women Giving Circle – an AAPI giving circle in NYC
Marsha Morgan of Community Investment Network – a Black and people of color focused giving circle network
Jacqueline Garcel, Masha Chernyak, and Sara Lomelin of Latino Community Foundation – a Latino giving circle network in CA
And from that humble seed planted in late 2017, the idea to amplify and empower giving circles and networks revealed itself in full bloom as Philanthropy Together in April 2020 through a launch investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and with Sara Lomelin — one of the leaders from the co-design team — as founding executive director.
The Philanthropy Together mission has remained, almost word for word, as it was co-designed to be that first day in 2017: to diversify and democratize philanthropy by connecting and catalyzing the field of giving circles.
“The Philanthropy Together mission has remained, almost word for word, as it was co-designed to be that first day in 2017: to diversify and democratize philanthropy by connecting and catalyzing the field of giving circles.”
From the beginning, Philanthropy Together’s work has been grounded in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Philanthropy Together understands the urgency of bringing diverse voices to the table and strives to uplift the many cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs that fuel this global movement.
Launching during a time when support and community are needed more than ever, Philanthropy Together has moved swiftly to deliver initiatives for the field-at-large, aligned with four strategic goals:
Showcase: To expand awareness of giving circles by highlighting the vast and growing field of giving circles through press and video, and developing WhatIsAGivingCircle.com, a simple way of explaining and sharing this people-powered philanthropic approach.
Scale: To directly seed the start of hundreds of new giving circles and reach 3,000 giving circles by 2025. Philanthropy Together offers its Launchpad program multiple times per year to train leaders and host organizations from around the world in how to successfully start and run their own giving circle.
Strengthen: To support hundreds of existing giving circles with useful resources and programming, including Communities of Practice focused on Racial Equity, Storytelling, and more. In collaboration with more than a dozen giving circle networks, the We Give Summit will be held in May 2021 to build relationships, share new ideas, and strengthen the field.
Sustain: To build infrastructure and develop stronger relationships across the field for increased sustainability, partnership, and capacity, especially among the many giving circle networks and hosts. This year, Philanthropy Together will launch the first-ever Global Giving Circle Directory in partnership with Grapevine.
Research is critical to Philanthropy Together’s Sustain strategy. The latest study on the global growth of giving circles mirrors Philanthropy Together’s expansion globally: what started as a national initiative soon turned global, as COVID brought out more opportunities for virtual learning and connection.
Further, CGRG’s findings that giving circle membership has become more diverse in the last five years also matches Philanthropy Together’s participation rates from people of color. Philanthropy Together’s incubator for new giving circles, Launchpad For You, is a prime example of research in practice: more than 120 leaders were trained in 2020 to launch their own giving circle from across eight countries, including 60% of participants who identify as people of color.
Beyond making grants, what is the contribution of giving circles to philanthropy? Giving circles are multi-dimensional vehicles that create community, bridge divides, promote viewpoint diversity, and create opportunities for civic engagement. Given their scale and their emphasis on engaging individuals, they provide a means for people to connect with each other and with their communities, in a manner that is uniquely democratic, emphasizing their agency within their communities.
There is still much to learn from this burgeoning movement, and there is great research still to do. Those two pillars remain at the heart of Philanthropy Together’s work. Powered by the gracious support, extensive data, and generous resources of the Johnson Center and the Collective Giving Research Group, Philanthropy Together will continue to drive its mission forward while bridging the gap for future philanthropists all around the world.
Join the growing global collective giving movement! Sign up for email updates from Philanthropy Together and stay connected to the latest happenings in the giving circle field.
Giving circles gain diversity as their ranks continue to grow, report finds
The increasing diversity within giving circles is broadening the scope of causes they support and better reflecting the nation’s changing demographics.
A report released this month by the Collective Giving Research Group finds that established giving circle members — those who have been members for more than one year — tend to be older, white, higher income, female, and married, which reflects the more traditional profile found in earlier research. More than half of giving circles include only women members, while three-quarters of their memberships are at least half female, according to the group.
“In contrast, new members are more diverse, ranging more broadly in terms of age, income, gender, and race,” according to the report, which notes that new giving circle members are more likely to be Latinos.
The Latino Giving Circles Network run by the Latino Community Foundation in California has made a more concerted effort to start the program in the Latino community, said Jason Franklin, who holds the W.K. Kellogg Community Philanthropy Chair at Grand Valley State University’s Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy.
Franklin, also a member of the Collective Giving Research Group, thinks the efforts have inspired Latinos in other parts of the country to get involved.
“We’re seeing a slow, but steady rise in Latino donors,” Franklin said, noting that more community members are “in professional careers and are willing to give at higher levels and connect with others.”
ver the course of the last decade, the Grand Rapids Community Foundation also has been holding conversations with the Latino community about what philanthropy might look like for them.
“We haven’t landed on exact ways for Latinos in giving,” said Jenine Torres, development officer with the GRCF. “We’re exploring what opportunities we have to bring on new friends to the foundation by using giving circles as a model.”
Giving circles remain attractive to women who feel that they are not seen as valued donors in a male-dominated society, similar to how donors of color often feel overlooked in a white-dominated society.
“We’re still seeing that women make up the vast majority of giving circles and we know that newer giving circles are increasingly diverse,” Franklin said. “They look to ask for advice on giving from friends or a group that looks like them.”
A strategy for foundations?
The giving circles concept has risen in popularity in recent years as a way to donate funds to nonprofits working on community issues. The Collective Giving Research Group found that the number of giving circles has tripled over the last decade. Since first launching, the groups have given $1.29 billion to charitable causes.
The ongoing research on the key role giving circles play in philanthropy has not gone unnoticed by community foundations, who have increasingly been supporting their formation as a way to connect with new donors.
“The primary reasons that foundations and organizations are encouraging giving circles is to build a culture of philanthropy and reach a new and more diverse donor base than they’ve ever been able to reach,” Franklin said. “Giving circles emerged as a growth strategy for foundations, rather than a protection strategy.”
The biggest challenge for foundations that support giving circles is the staff time involved in assisting these groups. Franklin said many community foundations have underwritten the cost because they want to invest in an effort to engage more donors.
The GRCF was an early leader in the area of giving circles when it began a program called Social Venture Investors in 2004. By today’s definition, the program could be called a classic example of a giving circle because members were required to contribute $2,000 annually, said Marilyn Zack, vice president of development for the GRCF.
“We would gather that group together a couple of times a year and they would make funding decisions based on the pool of money they had collectively created,” Zack said. “We ran that program for about five years and decided to stop the program because it was not a sustainable way for us to raise money at that time.”
More involved
While giving circles contributed only 13 percent, or $30 million, to the $390 billion donated to charity in 2016, research from Franklin’s group in 2017 found that people in giving circles contributed an average of about $11,000 more and volunteered an average of 67.4 more hours than other donors.
“We are seeing people coming together for a common cause and because they want to give together,” said Kyle Caldwell, president and CEO of the Grand Haven-based Council of Michigan Foundations. “They are coming together to give to a cause they care most about.”
The Our LGBT Fund through the Grand Rapids Community Foundation is an example of donors coming together to support a specific cause, Caldwell said. The fund provides sponsorship and corporate leadership and goes to create a regional approach to issues the LGBT community faces in Allegan, Kent and Ottawa counties.
Carol Sarosik and Shelley Padnos founded the Our LGBT Fund with $100,000 in November 2014. The fund has grown since then and is now valued at $520,000.
“I think as a sector we are learning and discovering more about how to work with engaged donors in new and different ways, and this definition of giving circles is not a strict one,” Zack said.
Zack considers the Our LGBT Fund to be a giving circle because it allows people to give in support of a specific cause and a population that’s important to them.
“I would also consider our African American Heritage Fund a giving circle because it’s also allowing people to give in support of a specific issue that’s important to them and the decisions are being made by group of people for whom that’s important to them,” Zack said.
Structure varies
Both Torres and Zack refer to these funds as “identity funds” because members identify with other members in these groups. They also consider service clubs such as the Lions Club or Rotary Club to be a form of giving circles because they are focused on specific causes.
“The Lions Club has a fund at the Community Foundation that we call a nonprofit fund and the Lions Club membership gives collectively to that fund to grow it and provide support,” Zack said. “They provide eyeglasses and other sorts of vision support to people all across the world. That’s a traditional way of giving that groups like the Lions Club have been doing for a long time.”
Overall, giving circles have a wide range of structures, Franklin said.
“About 40 percent operate independently or have their own 501(c)(3) structure and about 55 to 60 percent are hosted by foundations, women’s funds, or entities such as the Jewish Federation,” he said. “We’re seeing the trend to slightly more structure and more formality.”
Many giving circles provide learning opportunities that members won’t find elsewhere, which is part of the attraction, Franklin said.
“There’s a slow but steady of rise of best practices because the model is spreading and growing,” he said.
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When It’s Time for Giving, Some People Circle Around
On election night, Amy Rowland and 250 others gathered to wait for results at Dumbo Loft, an old industrial building-turned-event space in Brooklyn. While some were focused on Senate and House races, Ms. Rowland was nervously awaiting numbers from Michigan’s state election.
Since February, she had been part of a group of 210 who were raising money to get enough Democrats elected to tip the balance of power in that state’s legislature. States are most directly responsible for education, health care and many other issues that affect people’s daily lives, so getting preferred candidates into local legislatures is critical, she said.
It was a mixed night for Ms. Rowland. To attain a Democratic majority in Michigan’s House of Representatives, her group needed nine seats to flip. Only six did, but she said that the hard work and the $230,000 she helped raise were worth it.
Ms. Rowland, a New York lawyer, had contributed to political campaigns before, usually by writing a check. But this year, when politics had energized the country, she formed a giving circle that chose to focus on Michigan, where it felt Democrats were underrepresented.
While similar to crowdfunding, in which hundreds or thousands of people come together to donate to a cause, giving circles allow dozens to pool dollars to donate to charities, nonprofits and political campaigns agreed on by the group.
Ms. Rowland’s giving circle, One State at a Time, is part of Future Now Fund, a political action committee (PAC) that wants to bring about change at the state level, and has helped organize 25 giving circles across the country.
“Giving circles bring people together,” Ms. Rowland said. “And we’re working for change.”
Giving circles, most of which donate to community-focused nonprofits, have been around for years, but they have grown in popularity over the last decade. According to 2016 data from the Collective Giving Research Group, at least 1,600 giving circles were operating in the United States that year, triple the number in 2007; they have collectively given an estimated $1.29 billion in the years they have existed. (The oldest circle in the sample dates to 1982; the youngest started in 2016.)
Jason Franklin, who holds the W. K. Kellogg Community Philanthropy Chair at Grand Valley State University in Western Michigan and is a member of the Collective Giving Research Group, attributes the rise to people’s desire to feel closer to their communities. “We live in the most digitally connected moment ever,” he said, “and people report feeling more disconnected and isolated than ever.”
It is also easier to feel as if you were making a difference around big issues like climate change and women’s rights if your group is giving $100,000, versus an individual donation of perhaps $100, Mr. Franklin said.
Giving circles account for only a tiny fraction of the money donated to charity in any given year. In 2016, that total was $390 billion, while giving circles contributed only $30 million, according to the research group.
But the method has benefits. According to a new survey from the group, in 2017, people in giving circles contributed an average of about $11,000 more — a total that reflects both their giving circle contributions and other donations — and volunteered an average of 67.5 more hours than other donors.
About 56 percent of circles are composed entirely of women, while 76 percent are at least 50 percent female, according to the research group. “They want to find and build community with others and solve problems together,” Mr. Franklin said, “patterns consistent with other research around gender norms in U.S. giving.”
In 2014, Eliza Rossman started the all-female AllInBklyn giving circle, focused on the needs of Brooklyn. Her 60-person group, which requires each member to donate at least $5,000 annually, gives about $300,000 a year to organizations like the Alex House Project, which supports pregnant women and young parents who live in poverty, and the Kings County Tennis League, which refurbishes tennis courts in public housing developments.
Each giving circle operates somewhat differently, but all follow a basic procedure: People come together, share ideas about which groups to support and then vote on who should receive the funds.
Ms. Rossman’s circle has an initial meeting in October, when about 40 people gather to hear a speaker discuss a community-related topic. Members have until mid-November to suggest recipients. Ms. Rossman asks each of those organizations to submit a request outlining the funding it would like to receive.
In January, everyone gathers to hear members give a brief presentation on each group. A list of around 30 is pared down by about half, and then circle members are assigned to visit the nonprofits that have made that cut.
At the end of April, all 60 members take a final vote on funding those organizations, and in May, AllInBklyn gives a party where the circle and its grantees celebrate.
The Asian Women Giving Circle, founded by Hali Lee in 2005 to support arts and cultural projects led by Asian-American women, takes a different approach. This 25-member group has a minimum $2,500 annual contribution; each member can raise those funds or donate them herself.
While the members help Ms. Lee and the group’s steering committee whittle down about 75 funding applications to around a dozen finalists, all who gave money to help members reach their donation goals get a final vote. This year, the circle raised $89,000 for eight charities.
The gatherings aim to create bonds among members and help develop deeper community connections. Many in Ms. Rossman’s circle sit on the boards of the nonprofits they have funded, and some have made lifelong friends.
“These women have become part of my New York City family,” Ms. Lee said. “We half joke that we should find an apartment building in Queens and move in together.”
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GV appoints nation’s first community philanthropy chair
The Grand Valley State University Johnson Center for Philanthropy and a national committee have chosen Jason Franklin as America’s first endowed W.K. Kellogg chair for community philanthropy.
Franklin said he has had many experiences in the community philanthropy field that make him qualified for the new position. In addition to having a Ph.D. from New York University, Franklin has served as the director of Bolder Giving, an organization that promotes philanthropy, and has been a board member for 21 Century School Fund, which supports education and communities.
Although he does not begin his work as the new chair until June, Franklin expressed his excitement to get started – especially the opportunity to move to Grand Rapids after being in New York for 14 years.
“I have loved working at Bolder Giving, but I am ready for a change of pace and the chance to have the time and space to spend on research and reflection,” Franklin said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
As the Kellogg chair, Franklin plans to focus on “how we give collectively to the community we care about” while in his role as adviser, speaker and researcher at GVSU.
“It’s really a new opportunity to craft a community research agenda,” he said. “It’s not just community foundation, but community philanthropy more broadly.”
GVSU President Thomas Haas said he was pleased to announce Franklin’s appointment.
“I am honored and appreciate that the Kellogg Foundation created and invested in the chair,” Haas said. “We wanted to ensure we could get the best individual who could continue as chair. To get an individual at the stature of Dr. Franklin shows the stature of the university overall.”
He added that he thinks Franklin will be a good fit because he will “help the community be the best place it can be.”
Beverly Grant, associate director at the Johnson Center, was a member of the committee that reviewed and interviewed Franklin and the other candidates. Grant said they were looking for someone who has a Ph.D. or equivalent experience, five or more years in the nonprofit zone, scholarship or reflection in the field and outstanding research and teaching.
“Jason’s experience, knowledge and relations within the field of community philanthropy made him stand out,” she said.
The position was created at GVSU to increase understanding of philanthropy, and it shows GVSU’s commitment to community at a local and state level, Grant said.
“We are setting the pace for community philanthropy from an academic institution,” Grant said. “This position will evolve into a national thought leader in communities. It encompasses not just a foundation but community-based organizations and different groups it has an influence in.”
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Johnson Center for Philanthropy names new W.K. Kellogg chair
Grand Valley State University President Thomas J. Haas announced the appointment of Jason Franklin as the first W.K. Kellogg Community Philanthropy Chair at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy. Franklin will assume the nation’s first endowed chair focused on community philanthropy June 1.
As the Kellogg chair, Franklin will help philanthropic leaders explore how to best mobilize donors to give together in a community and to specific communities amid the shifting economic, social, political and philanthropic patterns that are reshaping philanthropy. He will partner with community and public foundations, giving circles, donor networks, crowdfunding platforms and others who are building and adapting vehicles for collective giving to move the field of community philanthropy forward. Franklin will also work with community leaders – both communities of place (cities, states, countries) and communities of identity (race, gender, sexuality, age, etc.) – to deepen and strengthen the connections and relationships that inspire donors to give to communities they care about. In the coming years, Franklin will establish a comprehensive program of applied research, teaching, professional development, public service and thought leadership, all designed to explore and advance the field of community philanthropy, nationally and internationally.
“The field of philanthropy is rapidly evolving with new priorities, players and giving vehicles changing the giving landscape more rapidly than any time in the past century,” Franklin said. “I’m excited to be joining the Johnson Center as the first W.K. Kellogg chair to explore the opportunities and challenges facing our field today. Ultimately, my aim is to inspire and encourage the most effective and powerful giving possible to the causes and communities donors care about.”
The Johnson Center is proud to establish this new endowed chair as another step forward in its efforts to put philanthropic research to work in the field, supporting effective philanthropy, strong nonprofits and informed community change. Building on the outstanding success of the Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy established in 2010, this new faculty chair honors the legacy of philanthropy and civic investment of W.K. Kellogg, founder of the Kellogg Company and W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek. The chair was established with a $1.5 million gift from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Kellogg Company 25-Year Employees’ Fund.
“The Johnson Center helps nonprofits, foundations and donors seeking to transform their communities for the public good,” said Beverly Grant, the Johnson Center’s interim executive director. “We’re excited to have Dr. Franklin join us as a national leader helping the Johnson Center pursue this mission.”
Prior to his appointment as the Kellogg chair, Franklin served as executive director of Bolder Giving, which he led through five years of major growth after Melinda Gates credited them as an inspiration for the billionaire Giving Pledge. During his tenure, he helped Bolder Giving refine its focus on promoting philanthropy for social, racial, economic and environmental justice and dramatically expanded its reach including launching its first programming outside the U.S. He delivered more than 150 workshops and speeches about philanthropy, generosity and social change and oversaw the launch of new efforts to inspire and support donors to give including GivingCommunities.org (a new online portal connecting individual donors to peer networks around the globe) and Give OUT Day (national day of giving for the LGBTQ community).
Franklin received his doctorate in public administration from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, where he also served for almost a decade as an award-winning adjunct professor. Franklin has held previous positions at the 21st Century School Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership Network housed at NYU’s Research Center for Leadership in Action, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, White House Office of National AIDS Policy and the Oregon Commission on Children and Families.
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The Young and The Restless: The Top 20 Philanthropists Under 40
We’re No. 38! A recent analysis of IRS data from 2006 to 2012 by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that New Yorkers gave 2.6 percent of our income to charity, an 8.8 percent decline during the six-year period. So many lesser cities — 37, to be exact — gave so much more. Salt Lake City, great skiing, sure, but Salt Lake City? Its residents top the generosity index, giving 5.4 percent (more than double the rate of New Yorkers) and increased their donations during the span studied, which included some economically depressing years. Memphis followed close behind with a giving rate of 5.1 percent; it’s enough to make New Yorkers sing the blues.
The study also examined donor incomes. The wealthy, defined as those earning $200,000 or more (we know 200K might go a long way in Utah, but Manhattan?) reduced charitable giving by 4.6 percent. During the same time, Americans earning less than $100,000 spent 4.5 percent more of their incomes on philanthropy.
The data should be a taken as a challenge rather than a rebuke. For further inspiration, meet 20 of our generous neighbors under 40 years of age who are profiled here. Some, like our cover philanthropists, designer Zac Posen, actress Olivia Wilde, the Giants’ Eli Manning and the Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony, are familiar faces who leverage their fame to benefit society; others, such as Jason Franklin and Alexandre Mars, work behind the scenes to make it easier for philanthropists to give away more. For Michael Quattrone, John D. Rockefeller’s progeny, supporting charity is an old family tradition; while Michelle Javian conceived her innovative nonprofit to comfort the families of cardiac patients after witnessing her father’s ultimately fatal battle with heart disease.
Whatever the motive, there’s another compelling reason to open your checkbook often: Self-interest. As an article on the Cleveland Clinic’s website points out, giving is “good for the giver.” The story cites a 2006 National Institute of Health study that monitored the brains of the charitable with MRI’s. Giving apparently “stimulates the mesolimbic pathway, which is the reward center in the brain, releasing endorphins and creating what is known as the ‘helper’s high.’ ” So consider your next donation philanthropic Prozac. And we trust the stories that follow prompt you to refill your prescription. — David Wallis
OLIVIA WILDE AND BARBARA BURCHFIELD
The daughter of two journalists and the niece of the late leftist writer Alexander Cockburn, actress Olivia Wilde recalls growing up in a “very socially conscious” family. She attended political protests as a child and at 18 organized a large benefit for Doctors Without Borders. The event raised $50,000, “which was incredible,” recounted Ms. Wilde by email. “But we probably spent $10,000 on overhead. That was my first lesson in the frustrating reality of fundraising.”
As she achieved notoriety because of The O.C. and then House, Ms. Wilde, 31, adopted several causes, including PETA and Water.org. But the act of fundraising remained a burden. “The begging becomes monotonous,” admits Ms. Wilde, who “hated planning parties and courting celebrities to show up.”
‘We aim to Provide Consumers with more information and therefore power to participate in the global movement to stop humans from being such assholes to each other.’ – Olivia Wilde
Inspired by the success of TOMS, which donates one product for each one it sells, Ms. Wilde and her close friend Barbara Burchfield (who she calls “Babs”), a former film production coordinator, launched their own social venture, Conscious Commerce, in 2013. When she noticed coverage of TOMS in Vogue, Ms. Wilde says, “I knew the products-for-a-purpose trend was legitimized by the high fashion industry, and therefore would become a major movement.”
The nonprofit, according to its website, selects “the purposeful products that we think you’d buy anyway (this is not your source for recycled gum tampons) and organizes them for your perusing pleasure” and donates the profits to various causes.
Conscious Commerce, for instance, struck a deal with Anthropologie to market a “New Light” dress. The fashion brand agreed to donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the first 1,000 dresses sold to New Light India, which needed the funds to build a “shelter to take girls out of the sex trade in Calcutta,” explains Ms. Burchfield, 33. Sales of the dress, which Ms. Wilde often wore in public, were brisk and the shelter is currently being constructed.
While Ms. Burchfield works full-time operating Conscious Commerce, Ms. Wilde is much more than the organization’s public face. “We happen to be best friends so we often say that we’re running a family-run business,” Ms. Buchfield says. “So I would say she is highly involved.”
Ms. Wilde estimates that she and Ms. Burchfield “spend half our time on logistics and half on dreaming up bigger ideas for the future.”
And the pair has ambitious plans. “We aim to be a parent company to several ethically run businesses. To provide consumers with more information and therefore power to participate in the global movement to stop humans from being such assholes to each other,” Ms. Wilde says.
Asked whether she would run a nonprofit in her Sliding Doors’ alternate universe rather than act, Ms. Wilde expresses some reservations: “I’m not nearly as organized and meticulous as executive directors of nonprofits have to be. I would run the organization deep into the ground by ordering too many bobble-heads for the office.” – David Wallis
ZAC POSEN
Designing wunderkind and native New Yorker Zac Posen, 34, supports a slew of local charities, including Teachers Count, which, according to its website, aims to “raise the status” of educators. But lately, Mr. Posen has been taking his show on the road. “I do fashion shows around the country, and last year we raised over $2 million,” Mr. Posen said last month backstage at Grand Central Terminal, before the Fall 2015 runway show for his eponymous line (he doubles as Brooks Brothers’ creative director). In Boca Raton, Fla., for instance, he staged a benefit for Shuzz, which provides free shoes to needy children. In Toronto, he aided a pediatric hospital. “I wish that more designers would do it,” he said. “It becomes fashion-tainment, and there is a good use for that besides building your brand.” – Zachary Weiss
ELI MANNING
When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Eli Manning, like so many Americans, watched helplessly — but not for long. The New Orleans-native “wanted to help out but there was so much uncertainty,” he recalled during a recent phone interview. “I talked to [my brother] Peyton a bunch about what was the best thing to do in a timely fashion and the Red Cross, who we’d worked with before, told us to get supplies down to Baton Rouge. So we filled up a big airplane with all the things the Red Cross suggested … [I] wanted to do as much as possible to bring back the city where we grew up.”
Mr. Manning, 34, reflected on the events of nearly a decade ago on a recent morning while en route to Jackson, Miss., home of the Blair E. Batson Hospital for Children, the only hospital in the state devoted to pediatrics. In 2007, Mr. Manning undertook a campaign to raise $2.5 million to construct the Eli Manning Children’s Clinic, which offers outpatient services as well as acute care to more than 75,000 children in Mississippi each year. He ran up the score, exceeding his goal by $400,000.
The charitable impulse runs in the Manning family: The Giants’ star recalls that while he was growing up, his father, Archie, who quarterbacked the New Orleans Saints, “didn’t talk a whole lot about it, but he did a golf outing for cystic fibrosis for a long time. We saw the effect that it had on people, and the joy he got out of doing it.”
‘Know what you want to attack. Who do you want to help? Don’t just do it for the sake of starting a foundation.’ – Eli Manning’s advice for rookie philanthropists
The New York Giants’ quarterback likens successful philanthropists to successful athletes: Both are focused, laser-beamlike, on their passions. “The best football players are passionate about what they’re doing. They’re passionate about their jobs: Eating right, watching film, practicing,” he notes. “That’s what makes them good at what they do; it’s what makes them successful.” It’s a message the veteran delivers to rookies who are eager to give back to their communities. “When we get new guys in [to the Giants], some guys want to start their own foundation. I’d say, ‘Know what you want to attack. Who do you want to help? Don’t just do it for the sake of starting a foundation.’ ”
For Mr. Manning, his philanthropic focus remains focused like a tight spiral on helping children. “Sometimes you get a child who’s very excited; sometimes you get one who doesn’t feel like talking, who’s very sick,” he says. He’s experienced enough to know that sometimes, just being there can help. And, sometimes, there are the concrete results. “When [I] get a notice in the mail or a message from a family who used to have to go hundreds of miles to be treated, and now they can find the right treatment closer [to home, at the Manning Clinic], that’s when you see the impact. There’s great joy in knowing how many families and children you’ve helped.” – Lorraine Cademartori
CARMELO ANTHONY
Though an injured left knee prematurely ended New York Knicks star forward Carmelo Anthony’s basketball season, he moved around ABC Kitchen fluidly while schmoozing with donors at a recent $1,000-a-plate brunch to benefit his eponymous foundation. The event also raised funds for Seed Project, a nonprofit that established a tuition-free boarding school for student-athletes in Senegal. Held before this year’s All-Star game, the fundraiser attracted a remarkably tall crowd; many guests had to duck to avoid bumping into the restaurant’s many hanging light fixtures.
Mr. Anthony’s nonprofit, according to its website, strives to improve the “lives of those living in under-served communities through three key focus areas — education, recreation and community outreach.” Asani Swann, executive director of the Carmelo Anthony Foundation, says it looks for grantees that it can support long-term. “We’re a small team,” she said. “One of the things we wanted to do was create events that our communities look forward to every year … We were not going to do a one-off and say, ‘Hey it was great to do this one thing and you’ll never hear from us.’ ”
For instance, Mr. Anthony, 30, runs an annual 3 on 3 tournament at the East Baltimore Recreation Center bearing his name. The center “will forever stay with me and stay with that community,” said Mr. Anthony, a hard player with a soft voice. Though Mr. Anthony feels at times as if he’s “throwing a rock in the ocean” given his old neighborhood’s many challenges, he understands the importance of the gym, as well as his regular visits to the community. “When I was growing up,” he said, “nobody really … cared about my neighborhood. … We needed people to come back and believe in us,” he went on. “We never had anyone come out and encourage us.” – David Wallis
HELENA DURST
For Helena Durst, philanthropy — and business — is a family affair.
“My great grandmother had instilled in her children the importance of giving,” said Ms. Durst, 38, a vice president and a fourth-generation family member of one of the city’s oldest family-run real estate firms.
Aside from helping manage her family’s foundation, which has given grants to local organizations including the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, Ms. Durst advises several nonprofits. She sits on the board of directors of the Lower East Side Ecology center, which provides community-based recycling and composting programs, and counsels Just Food, which helps community leaders in underserved neighborhoods increase access to locally grown food.
Ms. Durst’s emphasis on food isn’t surprising considering she grew up working on McEnroe Organic Farm, which her parents founded in 1985 in Millerton, N.Y. She’s performed every job on the farm but driving a tractor. “If you understand where your food is coming from,” she said, “it’s really empowering for people on the grassroots level.” – Lauren Elkies Schram
MICHELLE JAVIAN
Imagine the sensory overload new arrivals experience during their first days in New York City. Now, imagine that same overload for those checking a loved one into a hospital for urgent cardiac care. Michelle Javian, 31, witnessed the dizzying effects firsthand when her father was in New York-Presbyterian for a 2008 heart transplant. “I met so many families from all over the world who had no place to stay, no place to shower, and weren’t eating well,” she recalls, noting that her own family was lucky enough to have a Manhattan apartment during her father’s hospital stay. After consulting with doctors on how she might give back, Ms. Javian co-founded Harboring Hearts, a nonprofit that provides cardiac patients and their families with housing, meals, transportation and emotional support.
MAYA NUSSBAUM
With women holding less than 20 percent of elected positions, winning less than 12 percent of Nobel Prizes in Literature, and directing just 5 percent of major U.S. films, it seems obvious that their voices aren’t being heard. Maya Nussbaum, 39, is determined to change those numbers through her nonprofit, Girls Write Now. She started the organization in college, “at the age of most of the girls we serve now.” A mentoring program is “the heart” of the organization, says Ms. Nussbaum. The nonprofit pairs high-school girls from underserved neighborhoods in New York with successful women such as Emma Straub, author of The Vacationers for weekly meetings, as well as access to a panel of therapists. Girls Write Now also stages readings by prominent guest speakers such as Gayle Forman (If I Stay series) and Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist), an annually published anthology, as well as free college preparation classes. The organization boasts impressive results with a 100 percent college acceptance rate for participants, one of the reasons the organization was recently nominated for the prestigious Diane von Furstenburg “People’s Voice Award.” – Molly Shilo
ZACH COOPERSMITH
Zach Coopersmith, 30, a founding partner of Leading Ridge Capital, a private equity firm, moonlights as head of Make-A-Wish Foundation’s 40-and-under board. He has helped to raise more than $1 million for local chapters of the organization, which works to grant wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses. And Mr. Coopersmith has been involved with a number of wishes himself, most of which, he said, cost him about $8,500 — “a very measurable and manageable number as far as personal fundraising goals go,” he said. He has arranged a rendezvous with Elmo of Sesame Street, trips to Disney World and safaris. New computers are a common request from children. Recently, he helped get a 3-year-old boy a blue computer. It had to be blue, Mr. Coopersmith recalled, including the desktop. And witnessing the delight such a gift brought to the boy was profound, Mr. Coopersmith said: “It hits you on so many levels.” – Matthew Kassel
ELIZABETH KURPIS
“It’s probably more of an art than a science,” Elizabeth Kurpis, 32, says of orchestrating a successful benefit, while at one of her many charity events she attends. This time it’s at David Yurman’s Soho store opening, benefitting New Yorkers for Children. The corporate attorney devotes much of her time as an event organizer to a few charities, including the Frick (“where I’m still lobbying to be a resident”), the New York Botanical Garden (“I’m a sucker for flowers like any girl”), and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (“which is close to my heart. It’s where my mother fought, but ultimately lost, her battle with Leukemia”). But she attends many, many charity galas and has tips for party organizers. “The chairs should be drama free, and have the right connections … Egos and attitudes have to be left at the door. The sponsor is the most underrated piece of the puzzle. The right sponsors don’t just bring the cash; they also bring in a certain level of glamour, including the guests they wrangle and press attention they bring, to the charity. If no one reads about your event, did it really happen? You also need to do everyone a favor and keep the speeches short.” – Zachary Weiss
SPENCER ACKER
The 24-year-old Spencer Acker is a third-generation heir to the Sleepy’s mattress fortune. But he’s not resting on his laurels. Aside from working as a marketing manager for the company his grandfather started in 1957 — “I like to think of myself as a Sleepy’s brand ambassador,” he says — he’s the youngest board member of Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. Founded in 1908, the agency specializes in the adoption of older children, sibling groups and children with special needs. “I wanted to join an organization that … really touches my heartstrings,” said Mr. Acker, who turned to Morgan Stanley’s Philanthropy Group to find a nonprofit that matched his interests.
Though a relatively new board member, he’s already making his presence felt at the agency. “My personality, whether at work or at Spence-Chapin, is I’m never one to sit quiet and take notes,” he said. “A meeting never goes by without me saying something.” – Brianna McGurran
LIANA M. DOUILLET GUZMAN
In 2007, Liana M. Douillet Guzmán, her roommate and a friend whose mothers both suffered breast cancer, banded together to battle the disease. But the trio found few philanthropic organizations catering to younger people. “Most seek contributions from wealthy donors or offer opportunities like breast cancer walks,” said Ms. Douillet Guzmán, 32, who thought about what she and her friends liked to do at night — “go out … and have drinks!” She realized carousing could support breast cancer research and launched The Pink Agenda, organizing its first fundraising bash at the Princeton Club. The nonprofit has grown “organically” since, noted its co-founder, expanding to three cities; and hosting more splashy events that have attracted Lauren Bush, Nick Loeb and various Kardashians. All volunteer from the start, more than 90 cents of every dollar TPA raises funds breast cancer care and research programs. Though Ms. Guzmán, who works in the legal world, stepped away from her co-president role last year, she still sits on TPA’s Founders Board, a role she enjoys. “Fun,” she says, “and philanthropy are not mutually exclusive.” – Neal Santelmann
MICHAEL QUATTRONE
Michael Quattrone, 38,may have one of the most demanding jobs in philanthropy; he manages the personal charity budget of his extended family, which happens to be the Rockefellers.Tough crowd. The David Rockefeller Fund, named for Mr. Quattrone’s grandfather, donates about $1.5 million annually to nonprofits involved in the arts, the environment and criminal justice.
“We try to be nimble and responsive, first movers and talent scouts,” said Mr. Quattrone. Even a modest grant, he suggests, can have an “outsized” impact on a nonprofit, which can then leverage an association with the Rockefeller brand to attract larger gifts. Mr. Quattrone describes the fund as unifying: “I am not experiencing this stereotype of the Thanksgiving table, where there is a big conflict.”
In Mr. Quattrone’s spare time, he and his wife run their own nonprofit, Hearthfire — “a mom-and-pop shop” providing artists and actors with an expense-paid retreats in nature. Mr. Quatttrone believes his great, great grandfather, the oil baron John D. Rockefeller, would approve. “The impulse to give back,” he mused, “is really in our DNA.” – David Wallis
JASON FRANKLIN
Self-described “certified philanthropy geek” Jason Franklin, 35, serves as executive director of Bolder Giving, a nonprofit with a mission, according to its website to push people out of their “uninspired giving rut” and increase charitable donations; currently Americans give just between 2 and 3 percent of their income to charity. Bolder Giving compiled an online archive where readers can learn about “extraordinary givers,” who devote up to 90 percent of their income to philanthropy. Arguably, Mr. Franklin’s greatest coup was, as Melinda Gates has pointed out, inspiring the Giving Pledge, the high-profile campaign to convince the world’s wealthiest people to donate the majority of their fortunes. “I spend all of my time — daytime, evening and weekends — thinking about how we can move more money for social change,” Mr. Franklin said. — Sage Lazzaro
ERIC TRUMP
Sitting behind his desk in Trump Tower, Eric Trump, 31, bears a strong resemblance to his father in looks but not in tone. He speaks in a calm, almost sober voice. But when the topic turns to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, his favorite charity, Mr. Trump’s eyes widen, he leans forward in his chair and sounds like an excited kid. “These guys are, they are the most brilliant doctors, researchers, scientists, computational biologists, in the world,” says Mr. Trump, whose personal foundation recently committed $20 million to establish a surgery and ICU center at St. Jude. “They’re super-geniuses. Their IQs are off the charts.”
Mr. Trump, who estimates that he devotes 95 percent of his foundation’s resources to support the Memphis hospital, which specializes in pediatric cancer care and famously treats all patients for free, offers free advice to nonprofits and benefactors alike: “Three words: Focus on expenses.” He frets that some philanthropists prefer glitz to good deeds. “Some … have started to do charity for the purpose of holding a party, and being seen,” he says. “If people are raising a hundred thousand dollars but ninety thousand dollars is going to the event planners, that’s not philanthropy.”
To avoid telling a charity, you’re fired, Mr. Trump implores potential donors to personally conduct due diligence, which, for him, meant multiple trips around the country before writing a check. “I went to a lot of the different hospitals,” he recalls. “When I got down [to St. Jude], I just saw something very different. … You walk into the lobby, you see a fish tank, you’re in a children’s hospital, a children’s hospital shouldn’t [have] vanilla walls with beige floors.” Patient rooms, he continued, include a large window and a connecting room for parents “so the kid never loses sight of the family, yet the family can still be productive … It’s not like they’re going four blocks to the Marriott while their kid has a bunch of IV’s stuck in them.”
Mr. Trump, who comfortably chats about the power of proton beams to destroy tumors, admits that had he not entered the family business — “We’re building the greatest projects in the world,” he says, momentarily sounding Trump-ian — he would have enjoyed practicing surgery. “In a certain way, it’s kind of building, right?” he says. “At its core, it’s carpentry.” – David Wallis
ALEXANDRE MARS
‘There are many powerful people with money who have a hard time giving it away because they have no trust, no time, and don’t know where to start.’ — Alexandre Mars, Epic Foundation
Philanthropists want to know their donations are going to good use, but they do not always have the time or resources to verify it. Enter Alexandre Mars. A French-born entrepreneur who has started and sold communications and social media companies, Mr. Mars recently traveled the world — “Vietnam, Russia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Thailand, Peru” — to search for solutions to improve philanthropy. Along the way he had a revelation: “There are many powerful people with money who have a hard time giving it away because they have no trust, no time, and don’t know where to start.”
Tapping the can-do, tech-savvy spirit of the age, Mr. Mars, 39, recently launched Epic Foundation to “disrupt the philanthropic industry” by “developing new tools that will enhance how donors select, monitor and experience their impact.” Epic’s approach involves soliciting applications from NGOs and social enterprises throughout the world and recommending 20 to its clients, tracking where donations go and making it easier for clients to see their money in action. Epic has already attracted 1,400 applications, which its team is busy vetting. Cost for the service? “We charge nothing, so 100 percent of what you give will go directly to the organization,” says Mr. Mars. And how is Mr. Mars paying Epic’s staff of 15? “I’m self-funding everything,” he says. “That was the point of making a lot of money before I got into philanthropy.” – Neal Santelmann
MELISSA BOLONA
Melissa Boloña is a model philanthropist. The actress and fashion plate, who is 25, has been involved in charitable endeavors since high school, when, she said, she’d go door to door in her hometown of Rumson, N.J., fundraising for the American Heart Association. Since then, Ms. Boloña has amped up her charitable involvement considerably. In 2013, for instance, she became the charity ambassador for the menswear line Gents, raising money for the James Blake Foundation, which funds cancer research. For the past two years, she has supported the J/P Haitian Relief Organization founded by Sean Penn (Ms. Boloña’s childhood friend was in Haiti during the devastating 2010 earthquake). Earlier this year, Ms. Boloña helped raise $200,000 for a charity poker tournament sponsored by the Clinton Foundation. “I would like to point out,” Ms. Boloña said jokingly, “that I did come in ninth place … I do have good poker skills.” She hopes to soon open her own charity to help pet owners pay for surgery for their sick companion animals. Ms. Boloña said she has four dogs, one of which is blind. “I feel so bad for her,” she said. — Matthew Kassel
CHRISTINA LEWIS HALPERN
A month before his untimely death from brain cancer in 1993 at age 50, financier Reginald F. Lewis appointed his 12-year-old-daughter Christina to the board of their family’s foundation. This decision by Lewis, one of the most successful American businessmen of his era and one of the wealthiest black men in history, profoundly influenced his daughter, now 35. “It was one of the last memories I have [of my father],” said Christina Lewis Halpern. “I grew up thinking about grantmaking.”
Ms. Lewis Halpern, who began her career as a journalist and worked at The Wall Street Journal, has since embarked on a quest to address the lack of diversity in the tech industry. In 2013, she founded All Star Code, a New York-based nonprofit that prepares young men of color for careers within the tech sector. Its flagship program, a six-week summer intensive course, expects 40 students (double the number from last year) and incorporates a computer science curriculum while fostering management skills. “Tech today is like Wall Street in the 1960s,” Ms. Lewis Halpern said. “It’s a relatively closed, clubby, insider-y world.” But she envisions a more inclusive future: “In 10 years, I’d like to say that All Star Code has transformed the tech landscape,” she said. “I’d like to say that we created the new generation of diverse tech entrepreneurs who are bringing new ideas and new innovation to our country that will make a more equal place for all of us.” – Danielle Schlanger
TODD LAWTON AND JEFF LEBLANC
Todd Lawton and Jeff LeBlanc, co-founders of Out of Print Clothing, were born 12 hours apart. “Since early on in our lives, we’ve been fortunate enough to be around family and people who cherish books, and that rubbed off,” said Mr. Lawton, who, like Mr. LeBlanc, is 38. So, in 2009, the childhood friends started the Manhattan-based company that sells T-shirts, tote bags and other accessories featuring classic book covers to sow awareness of an enthusiasm for books. Mr. Lawton and Mr. LeBlanc have shipped products to more than 80 countries, and for every item sold, they donate one book to Books for Africa. According to Messrs. Lawton and LeBlanc, they have given away more than 1.3 million books — ranging from resource textbooks to the Merck Manual of Medical Information — to organizations in more than 20 African countries. “There are millions of people who have no access to books, and for us that was a call out to make a difference,” said Mr. LeBlanc. The social entrepreneurs have also gotten into charitable endeavors closer to home. Last year, they helped raise money to create a scanning system for a library in a public school in Queens. “Ultimately,” Mr. LeBlanc said, “our belief is that books change lives.” – Matthew Kassel
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Chicago-based companies get in on the business of online giving
At her 2013 gala fundraising event, which included a silent auction, Jayne Drew noticed people checking their phones as they sat down to dinner.
Rudeness? Certainly not to Drew, who couldn’t have been happier.
“They were getting alerts that they’d been outbid, and entering new bids,” said Drew, development director for GiGi’s Playhouse, a Hoffman Estates-based organization that supports educational programs for people with Down syndrome.
GiGi’s Playhouse is a client of AuctionsByCellular, a Chicago-based startup that’s among local companies working in the emerging space of online philanthropy.
Chicago-based startups such as GiveCentral, Zealous Good and GiveForward are among other companies that are innovating the way in which people give. That’s happening as charitable giving, particularly online giving, continues to grow and as more givers are making their contributions on mobile devices.
Launched in 2011, AuctionsByCellular won a Chicago Innovation Award this year, and it has helped raise more than $140 million for non-profit customers, CEO and founder Jim Alvarez said.
“We bring the silent auction onto your mobile device,” Alvarez said. “We try to make the donor experience more liberating.”
Attendees at a charity event using the system get a text message after they sign in. That leads them to their personal bidding page, loaded with items for sale. They also receive instant notifications when they’ve been outbid, and they can place a new bid directly from their phone.
Drew said she considers this the key to boosting donations for her organization.
“In the past people would make a bid, then move on,” she said. “Unless you really competed for one particular item, you kind of forgot about it.”
Other companies have built online fundraising platforms. GiveForward, launched in Chicago in 2008, lets users raise money for themselves or for people in need.
GiveCentral puts an array of functions including collection, fundraising and communications online. CEO Patrick Coleman, said digital tools aim to promote flexibility.
“It’s an ‘and’ world, not an ‘or’ world,” Coleman said. “Some people prefer email (requests from charities to donors). Others prefer a phone call or a letter.”
Coleman emphasized that platforms like his give users access to their “donor portal” when it’s convenient to them.
“People are doing a lot of activity when they have a few moments to relax,” he said.
Steve MacLaughlin, director of product management for Blackbaud, a South Carolina-based fundraising consultant, said online giving remains a small percentage of overall donations — about 10 percent — but that it’s growing quickly. Charitable giving over the last 12 months was up by about 4 percent, but online grew at almost 13 percent, he said. MacLaughlin attributed the surge primarily to the growing use of mobile devices.
MacLaughlin said he sees online charitable giving growth as more evolutionary than revolutionary, meaning successful companies take proven ideas and make them work better with technology.
Jason Franklin, executive director of Bolder Giving, who also teaches philanthropy at New York University, said the broad array of online communications channels presents a challenge to fundraisers. He spoke from the perspective of a charity, saying: “The challenge is: How do I share the right information and tell my story and generate excitement, when you hear from me so much more often?”
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Can This Crew of Aspen Institute Big Shots Show the Way on Philanthropy?
The legalization of pot is said to be bringing all manner of out-of-state visitors to Colorado, but it's hard to imagine the Aspen Institute getting much of a boost, since it draws the kind of "influencers" who have future confirmation hearings to worry about.
Anyway, Aspen has never had much difficulty rounding up high-level folks for its working groups, and the 2014 roster of the Aspen Philanthropy Group, which just met last week, is a case in point. It includes the chiefs of the following foundations: Carnegie, Gates, Goldman Sachs, Heron, Hewlett, Intel, Irvine, Kaufmann, MacArthur, MasterCard, Margaret Cargill Philanthropies, New Orleans Foundation, Packard, OSF, Rockefeller, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
A few non-foundation folks are also in the mix, representing Bridgespan, the Foundation Center, FSG, and the Philanthropy Roundtable.
So: Who's missing from this group, which bills itself as "a small gathering of leaders in philanthropy and civil society who are at the cutting edge of social change?"
I guess the answer depends on how you define "cutting edge." But it seems that nearly any definition would encompass a range of players in philanthropy who aren't part of the Aspen group.
Here at IP, we write all the time about the good and interesting things that established foundations are doing. But when I think of the sweeping changes happening in philanthropy, my attention usually focuses elsewhere.
I think of the big new money coming on the scene, particularly from tech and finance winners, and just how differently some of these funders operate than the legacy foundations. Take, for example, a place like the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which has moved $261 million out the door since 2011 with only skeletal staff -- often in the form of multi-million dollar grants in service of disrupting ideas (like making college textbooks free.)
The new money is pretty mind-boggling in scope, and it's upending the old philanthropic pecking order faster than most people realize. We recently noted that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are now sitting on a philanthropic fund larger than the Carnegie Corporation, and are ramping up major education giving.
Another Facebook billionaire, Dustin Moskovitz, has a fortune larger than the endowments of all but seven foundations, and he and his wife, Cari Tuna, are busy scaling up their own new giving outfit, Good Ventures. Meanwhile, fortysomething hedge fund guys that most philanthropoids have never heard of, like Bill Ackman, are charging into one issue area after the other with new ideas and large pots of grantmaking money -- often doled out as general operating support without micromanaging by program officers who need to justify their existence.
This is the kind of stuff I think about when contemplating what's cutting edge in philanthropy.
I also think of second generation philanthropists who are assuming control of multi-billion dollar fortunes and embracing new ways to give -- for instance, a person like Dave Peery, an heir to a $2.2 billion Silicon Valley real estate pile who's revamped the family foundation, turning it into "an energetic operation with a sophisticated methodology and a portfolio of local, regional, and global grants that address issues of poverty," as we wrote recently.
Or I think of the master networkers who are changing philanthropy, many of whom are high-powered women. And how we live in an era where the ability to mobilize armies of like-minded donors can be more important than direct control of large pots of money. As Jacki Zehner, the CEO of Women Moving Millions told me, philanthropy is in the midst of "a shift to networking, knowledge sharing, and collaborating... No one person can solve problems."
Related, of course, I think of the profound effects of crowdfunding, driving by the idea that everyone can be a philanthropist if we empower them with the right tools and information. Given that foundations account for just a sixth of the philanthropic dollars spent annually, how can you have a discussion about what's cutting edge in philanthropy without looking at the new push to mobilize individual donors?
Another frontier I think about are efforts to radically change our ideas about generosity. I think about Bolder Giving, led by Jason Franklin, which is pushing wealthy people to not just give away some of their money; but to give away most of it. Or Resource Generation, which pushes young people of inherited wealth to ask deep questions about where their money came from and where it should go.
Mind you, this is just my pet list of what's most fascinating right now in philanthropy. Other people reading this will have their own ideas about what's "cutting edge" -- particularly when it comes to new strategies for impact or grantmaking that truly empowers people (as opposed to infantalizing them, which is how many grantseekers feel the moment they walk through the doors of a major foundation).
One thing is clear: The frontiers of philanthropy are changing fast, and while places like Rockefeller, MacArthur, and Carnegie still command vast resources and do great work, you don't pull together the leaders of these institutions exclusively if you want to figure out where philanthropy is headed.
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The Bold, New Face of Philanthropy: Jason Franklin's Plan for Better Living through Bigger Giving
Jason Franklin is not necessarily who one might picture when envisioning a philanthropic heavy hitter. Bearing no resemblance to any staunch, moneyed stereotype, the thirty-something Franklin is a freshly minted PhD with an air of approachability; a guy who wears his charming allure as easily as he does a ready, boyish grin. In his lofty position as CEO & Executive Director of New York’s Bolder Giving, Franklin is at the helm of a nonprofit focused on providing high-level givers the inspiration and support needed to reach their ceding goals and sail to soaring, altruistic heights.
A community activist and self-professed “policy geek”, Franklin cut his teeth in the world of philanthropy by following in the footsteps of his family’s foundation work. After receiving an inheritance of his own, he had the means to support his heady passion for human rights, economic justice and social change and started on his chosen path to more prominent giving.
“I was a kid when I made my debut as a community organizer, ” Franklin reminisced. “ I was enraged – in the way only an indignant fourteen year old can be - by proposed budget cuts to the public education system in my home state of Oregon. I felt I needed to do something and so I co-founded a student group that worked to help save our schools. That group grew from being a handful of kids to an organization of ten thousand students within six months. I was hooked. I had just experienced, firsthand, how powerful involvement could be.”
From that point on, Franklin was stalwartly dedicated to his philanthropic endeavors and set off in a direction that placed him - academically, professionally, and personally – squarely in a position where he would be able to best serve the causes he supports.
Beginning as an aide in the Clinton White House, Franklin went on to work with various groups including the 21st Century School Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Next Generation Leadership Network, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the White House Office of National AIDS Policy and the Oregon Commission on Children and Families. Putting his time and effort, not to mention money, where his mouth is; Franklin currently serves on the boards of Resource Generation, Proteus Fund, North Star Fund, and Social Justice Philanthropy Collaborative and sits on the advisory board of Wealth for the Common Good - all in addition to his positions as an NYU Adjunct Professor of Philanthropy and CEO & Executive Director of Bolder Giving.
It was as a bold giver that Franklin first came to know, and admired the work done by the organization he would ultimately lead. His involvement with the group grew exponentially from that first exposure, eventually landing him a seat on the Board of Directors under the organizations founders, Christopher and Anne Ellinger, and ultimately ending with his appointment as Executive Director and CEO.
“I was already familiar with their work, but sitting on the Bolder board of directors reinforced to me just how inspiring the stories of these givers were,” says Franklin. “Here’s this group of people all wanting to give, all looking to make positive change and most pledging to give at least 50% of their income, assets or business profits to make it happen. It’s a moving, amazing experience to see outrageous generosity at work and to see the huge impact these bold gifts make. It is easy to just give, but Bolder Giving teaches people how to give well. We ask, ‘what would make you dance with joy if it happened due to your giving?’ and when the answers begin to flow, it’s a transformative moment”.
The impact of the organization proved impressive enough to attract the attention of perhaps the boldest of all givers, Bill and Melinda Gates. The Gates, crediting Bolder Giving with helping to provide the inspiration leading to the billionaire’s Giving Pledge they created in collaboration with Warren Buffett, offered the organization a three-year challenge grant.
The grant allowed Bolder Giving to expand their reach, the organization’s resources grew 700% over a four-year period and a philanthropic star was born.
So how, exactly, does Bolder Giving support and inspire their bold givers?
“We help people imagine their giving. We connect with them to help define and share their stories,” explains Franklin. “We show our givers just how transformational it can be when you add yet another zero to your pledge. And we show them that you don’t have to be a billionaire in order to give big”.
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Giving Pledge Signers Gave Big in 2013 but No Much for Today's Needs
More than 120 of the world’s billionaires have committed publicly to giving at least half their wealth to charity, including 19 on this year’s Philanthropy 50 list.
But while the number of people who have signed the Giving Pledge, unveiled nearly four years ago by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett, has been growing, so too are concerns about whether the effort is channeling enough new money to urgent causes today and whether some people are motivated to join for public-relations purposes.
At the heart of the criticism is a concern that too many of the billionaires are putting their money into foundations that may not dole out grants for many years.
For example, nine of the Giving Pledge signers on the Philanthropy 50 list—including Paul Allen, John and Laura Arnold, and Eli and Edythe Broad—made their largest gift to their own philanthropies.
Reasons for Joining
It’s not just charity observers who voice such concerns but some billionaires that the Gateses tried to recruit to join their effort.
After the hedge-fund founder Robert Wilson died in December, the website BuzzFeed published a letter from Mr. Wilson to Mr. Gates saying he wouldn’t join because the pledge didn’t rule out the idea of giving to family foundations, which he called “bureaucracy-ridden sluggards.”
Such criticisms are shortsighted, say the pledge’s founders.
“The long-term impact will ultimately be assessed by future generations,” wrote Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in an email to The Chronicle.
“But in the meantime, we have heard from pledgers that they have been inspired to start giving away more, earlier in their lives, while others have been able to identify new issues and build relationships with those focused on similar causes,” she writes.
“The opportunity to learn from one another’s successes and failures is helping us become better philanthropists and maximizing the impact of our giving.”
Still, the math suggests that so far only a small slice of the world’s wealthiest people are publicly committing to giving.
The 122 individuals and families on the list represent less than a tenth of the world’s billionaires, who number 1,426, according to Forbes.
A glance though the letters posted on the Giving Pledge website by its members, announcing their commitment, reveals that while some are in the early stages of their giving, many of the pledge signers do not offer new sources of money for charities.
The list includes dozens of philanthropists who have been giving for years, if not decades. They have joined the pledge to inspire their peers to give, or to gain access to a community of other big donors, or to swap ideas about improving the impact of their gifts.
In a few cases, the philanthropists may already be tapped out. For example, David Gelbaum, a former hedge fund manager, and his wife, Monica, stated in a letter on the Giving Pledge website that they have donated in excess of $1-billion and are not in a position to give more. “We are taking the Giving Pledge after the fact,” they write.
Who Benefits
Some nonprofit experts say the real measure of the giving pledge is whether philanthropists have been more effective, not how much has been donated.
“All the focus is how much people are giving, not to what causes or what social good they are creating in the world with their gifts,” says Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. “What kind of community benefit are we seeing?”
But answering that question can be tough: The Giving Pledge does not track where its members donate, reveal how much they give, or provide information about their philanthropic interests, beyond the published statements.
“If someone signed up and said, 'Hey, I am going to give half my fortune to the devil,’ that seems to be OK,” says Pablo Eisenberg, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership. “The pledge doesn’t give any indication of the substance of their future grants.”
More information about how much people who sign the pledge are giving and to which causes would be “enormously helpful to charitable organizations,” wrote Cynthia Gibson, a nonprofit and philanthropic consultant, in an email to The Chronicle.
It would also, she wrote, “deflect skeptic’s questions about the pledge, including loopholes that allow money directed into family-controlled foundations to be counted as part of the commitment and the perception that it’s more public relations than action that’s led to demonstrable impact.”
Resources on Giving
But the pledge’s founders are clear that the effort was never intended to direct where or how donors plan to give away their wealth. Rather, they say, the group was created to form a community of people with great resources who want to spur philanthropy while learning from one another’s experiences.
The Giving Pledge is still in its “early days” and constantly evolving, says Olivia Leland, director of the Giving Pledge.
Last year, the group introduced learning sessions—meetings hosted by one of the pledge signers on a topic of interest to them, and open not only to pledgers but also to their staff members, advisers, and experts.
Last year four sessions were held. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, talked about impact investing while Steve Case, founder of AOL, and his wife, Jean, discussed how social media can promote good causes.
Meanwhile, Bill and Melinda Gates discussed how technology can change elementary and secondary education, and George Kaiser, chairman of BOK Financial Corporation, showcased efforts he and others have supported in Tulsa, Okla., to improve education and decrease poverty.
“The ultimate goal is that through this learning and conversations, being part of the pledge can give a head start on more effective giving,” says Ms. Leland.
Bill Cummings, who joined the Giving Pledge with his wife, Joyce, says they joined the group not to motivate them to give—they were already doing that, through their foundation—but to gain access to a group of peers who could help them decide how best to shape their philanthropy.
The couple, who made their fortune in commercial real estate, don’t usually socialize with a lot of other people who can make million-dollar gifts.
“We don’t get a lot of ideas from our friends as to how we can be more effective,” Mr. Cummings says. “The Giving Pledge gave us the opportunity to do that.”
The Cummingses support causes in their native eastern Massachusetts and in Africa. At a recent Giving Pledge meeting, Mr. Cummings sought advice from Bill Gates about plans to expand the Cummings foundation’s efforts in Rwanda.
Since then, the couple has worked with Partners in Health, a global medical charity, to build a clinic for cancer patients in the African nation, and are considering support for a new teaching hospital and medical school.
Talking with Mr. Gates “on an informal basis moved us in the right direction,” says Mr. Cummings.
Tracking Participants
With its fifth anniversary approaching next year, the Giving Pledge is considering steps to make its donors’ impact more transparent.
In the meantime, the Foundation Center has begun tracking the pledge participants. In 2012, it started “Eye on the Giving Pledge.” The effort, part of the Glasspockets program, which encourages transparency in philanthropy, has created online snapshot profiles of each person or family that has signed, including their ages, location, charitable interests, the source of their wealth, and details about their foundations.
Janet Camarena, director of the Foundation Center’s San Francisco office, says it’s no surprise the Giving Pledge does not publish this level of detail about its members.
“They are in a tricky position,” she says. “They are trying to recruit private citizens to make a very public declaration. They might feel the more onerous this seems in terms of data it would dampen people signing on to the pledge.”
Overseas Donors
Last year, the Giving Pledge began an effort to recruit philanthropists from outside the United States. Of the 29 people in 2013 who signed, 17 came from overseas.
While American charities may be disappointed that more U.S. donors haven’t joined the list, inspiring global philanthropy may be the pledge’s greatest contribution, says Joel Fleishman, a law professor and director of the Heyman Center on Ethics, Public Policy and the Professions at Duke University.
“The coming together of some of America’s wealthiest and most philanthropically inclined has stimulated giving by persons abroad who had not really thought about doing it,” he says.
Inspiring Others
Regardless of how many billionaires it attracts, the Giving Pledge has also benefited charities by promoting philanthropy in general, says Jason Franklin, head of Bolder Giving, a group aimed at encouraging people to give more.
“It has popularized and made permissible a public conversation about how much people with wealth should be giving and can give,” he says. “It created a sense of, 'Everybody else is doing this, what about you?’”
As part of the pledge’s creation four years ago, Bolder Giving was among three groups that received grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote philanthropy among a wide group of donors. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and the Bridgespan Group also received funds to develop donor guides, a website, videos, and other materials.
However, now that the initial swirl of excitement about the pledge has calmed, Mr. Franklin and other giving experts would like to see the people who have committed to donating much of their wealth do more to share what makes philanthropy effective.
“It would be sad if this is all it was, just people signing up and people not hearing more about what they are doing,” says Ellen Remmer, senior partner at the Philanthropic Initiative, a nonprofit that advises individuals, foundations, and companies on their giving. “It’s important for them to talk about how it goes beyond the money.”
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West Village Resident Spearheads A Bolder Way to Give Back
This holiday season, many people plan to give donations to their favorite charities: $20, $100, maybe even more — after all, the average level of giving in the U.S. is 2-3 percent of annual income. But some are giving away 50 to 90 percent of their entire income or net worth, with the help of an organization called Bolder Giving.
The idea behind Bolder: inspire people to build giving into their lives in a big way, and on a consistent basis. Many people need individual support and advice to figure out how to give in a meaningful way, so Bolder offers peer support and resources to help people get connected. The non-profit gathers the stories of incredibly generous givers and publicizes them through presentations, publications, partnerships with other organizations, and the web.
Their executive director, Jason Franklin, 32, lives in the West Village and teaches Philanthropy, Social Change and American Government at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. After studying politics and nonprofit management in college, he continued to organize around issues of public education and HIV/AIDS prevention, and went on to work for non-profits like the 21st Century School Fund and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Franklin, who always grabs his morning coffee at Jack’s on West 10th Street, enjoys wandering amid Chelsea’s many art galleries, and eating at Risoterria on Bleecker Street. “I often meet my students at Think Coffee on Mercer Street, but I love it best in the summer when there’s fewer NYU students there and I can actually hear myself talk,” he said.
His own personal journey of social justice started at age 14, when his Oregon high school found itself facing a 25 percent budget cut — along with all of the other public schools in the state. He was so outraged that he started a group called Oregon Students Supporting Education.
“I was convinced that if everyone heard about it, they would be just as angry as I was,” he said. “In six months, 10,000 students across the state, along with teachers and parents, joined the movement, and the proposed public school budget cuts were nixed. I saw at an early age that you could change the world, because I had changed mine.”
According to Franklin, what makes Bolder unique are the stories; stories of givers like Allen Andersson, the serial entrepreneur and investor worth over $300 million who gave away over 90 percent of his fortune to bring prosperity to Central America, home to some of the poorest people in the western hemisphere. There’s also Abigail Disney (yep, that Disney), who gives away 50 percent of her net worth. At BolderGiving.org, you can find these stories and others, including those from people with modest to average incomes who have signed up to give away 25 to 50 percent of what they make each year.
As you get ready to give this year, his advice is to pick one group instead of many. “Instead of writing $20 checks to five different places, write a $100 check to a group you really care about. You’ll get a thank you letter, be able to read the materials they send you, and stay engaged with the group you care about,” he says.
Founded in 2007 by Christopher and Anne Ellinger, Bolder started off slow, building from stories and contacts, but a grant from the Gates foundation in 2010 helped them get the jump-start they needed.
“Anyone can be bolder,” says Franklin. “Wherever you’re at, whatever you’re doing, you can make one change and affect the world differently.”
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