Giving Locally

Nine philanthropic organizations, including Plan International and Comic Relief, make up the With and For Girls Collective, which asks teenage girls worldwide to select girl-led initiatives to fund, a process known as participatory philanthropy. Since 2014, the collective has funded 60 organizations across 41 countries for nearly $3 million.

Food and common passions are bringing people together for solutions-oriented conversations about the communities they live in. The Knight Foundation’s “On the Table” series started in Chicago and has now expanded to 30 cities. It’s an all-day event to encourage civic dialogue.

A new coalition of nonprofits is working to change the way corporations and philanthropists think about disaster assistance. Most efforts and money funnel to communities in the early days and weeks after a disaster, while very little goes toward long term recovery efforts. The coalition has created a framework to guide more effective assistance to minimize waste and get appropriate resources to communities when they need them.

Padua Project is an innovative program that has a goal of getting poor people out of poverty in three years with a job, three months’ savings and off government assistance. Its unusual success involved a collaboration with other social services organizations. Overcoming the big challenge of this collaboration is an important learning tool to scale similar initiatives.

Twenty high school students enrolled in Territory, an urban design nonprofit, produced a zine and their own quality of life report for West Austin, where many of the students live. The students conducted interviews, surveys, and gathered community input to create the report. It includes sections on public safety, youth empowerment, and mental health.

Evaluating evidence of an organization’s impact informs charitable giving. Ratings organizations like ImpactMatters and Charity Navigator provide transparency to donors by reporting on the effectiveness of charities and social programs. The organizations make comparisons by analyzing the tax forms of nonprofits. Some, like GiveWell conduct further investigations and provide in-depth evaluations.

Shortly following the 2018 Midterm elections in the U.S. House of Representatives, a group of legislators known as the Problem Solvers Caucus used their numbers to change House rules easing the passage of bipartisan legislation. After working to build consensus on issues like health care, infrastructure, gun control, and immigration since 2013, the congressional membership organization noticed that their bipartisan bills often did not receive a fair chance due to the significant power that Speaker and committee chairs held in deciding which bills advanced. Their "Break the Gridlock" reforms changed that.

A new charity app called Millie builds upon tested app dynamics like online payment services, gamification, and social networks to encourage millennials to give to charities and organizations of their choosing. Rather than the more typical one-off, peer-to-peer, reactive giving, Millie adds an element of matchmaking to philanthropy, similar to dating apps.

A grantmaking organization known as The Solutions Project seeks to diversify the traditional white male-dominated world of philanthropy by pledging to invest 95% of its resources in renewable energy projects led by people of color, and 80% to organizations led by women. Recognizing that these populations are often the most affected by dirty energy and climate change, The Solutions Project is building on past investment successes, like a project that turned an old school into solar-powered housing for seniors.

New grassroots efforts often struggle to get off the ground due to lack of funding. In Baltimore, a group called CLLCTIVLY aims to fix this problem for black-led non-profit organizations by offering a $1,000 prize every month for a year through its Black Futures Micro-Grant program. CLLCTIVLY has also launched an asset map to connect these smaller efforts to each other.