COLLECTIVE GIVING & PHILANTHROPIC TOOLS
As we look at the nature of people’s lives of balancing family and work, there is increasing disconnect of people to one another. In communities today, neighbors don’t know each other much less engage with each other. Unless some crisis occurs, individuals in communities don’t appear to see the value of coming together to discuss how to make the space, communities, neighborhoods, regions, states, and ultimately the world they live in better than when they came into them. Crisis still becomes the one thing that brings folks together within and outside communities.
This spirit of self-sufficiency and independence that is prevalent in our culture is moving people way from civic engagement, giving, philanthropy, and interdependence. A sense of entitlement is beginning to erode our connection to one another. It is amazing to us the brevity of our cultural memories of how folks took care of each other and currently take care of each other. The mighty legacy that African Americans and other ethnic and racial groups inherited is quickly being forgotten and devalued. We appear to be so busy trying to build up our store houses and get our forty acres that we are forgetting the very essence of living which is giving. The quest for material possessions has begun to erode the very nature of self-help, mutual aid, and stewardship. It appears to many of us are about the business of building a surplus than living a life of “substance”.
Conversation Guide for Organizing a Giving Circle
African American Giving: From the Individual to the Collective (DVD)
Choosing A Host Matrix: Who will hold the Giving Circle’s funds?
The Treasure: Strategic Grantmaking and Giving
Demystifying Philanthropy: Philanthropy Word Walk