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.
