Giving circles are a simple but powerful community-building format. Groups of people get together to pool their money, then direct it towards issues they collectively care about–think Queer Youth Fund or the African American Giving Circle. Called “participatory philanthropy,” giving circles are our chance to invert the traditional philanthropic model, wherein a rich person with a famous name determines where huge funds go. Here, everyday people are researching, learning and deciding together to impact change. And often, groups that give together often end up forming their own little communities through their efforts. Today, we’ve put together an episode with two experts that will share what it takes to start and sustain a giving circle.
“This is about everyday people coming together with their friends, with their families, with their community, with their colleagues and saying that they have a voice and that they want to use it in a constructive and powerful way in their communities. It just happens to be that we're dealing in philanthropy.” - Joelle Berman
In this episode, we sit down with two bad**s women for a conversation on the joy and challenges of giving circles–how to get one started, how to reach a consensus as a group, and how to celebrate along the way.
In 2015, LiJia Gong attended marches and supported the #BlackLivesMatter movement. She felt inspired to do more. So she and three friends started gathering, exploring how they might use the bonds of their friendship and shared values to reduce inequality. Their giving circle "Radfund" was born from these conversations. The friends pledged to pool 1% of their annual income and 0.1% of their wealth annually to support organizers in NYC doing the work to challenge structural inequality and fight for racial and economic justice. In this episode, LiJia will share stories and insights she’s learned from building a "political home" for herself and her friends.
Joelle Berman was recently the founding Executive Director of Amplifier, a global network of 125+ giving circles inspired by Jewish values. From that position supporting so many different giving circles, she had a rare view of the ecosystem as a whole, and was able to pinpoint trends and best practices. (Shout out to Amplifier's founder, Felicia Herman, and Amplifier's current CEO, Liz Fisher, for their work continuing to spread the power of collective giving!)
From their respective experiences as giving circle practitioners and experts, Joelle and LiJia will share how to build a political home and community around the shared activity of giving. Hear more from other community leaders about stage 1 in getting your people together, 🔥sparking the flame by doing something together: https://gettogetherbook.com/resources#spark-the-flame
📙Grab your copy of GET TOGETHER—our handbook on community-building 🔥: bit.ly/gettogetherbook
👋Say hi and learn more about work we do with passionate, community-centered organizations, visit: http://people-and.com/
Welcome to the Get Together. It's our show about ordinary people building extraordinary communities. I'm your host Bailey Richardson. I'm a partner at people in company and a coauthor of get together how to build a community with your people.
00:18
Speaker 2: Hey, what's up? I'm Kevin Hyhn also a partner at people in company and Bailey's cohost for this episode.
00:24
Speaker 1: Woo. And each episode we interview everyday people who have built extraordinary communities about just how they did it. How did they get the first people to show up? How did they grow to hundreds, maybe thousands, more members. This episode is a little different than most. Instead of focusing on the life cycle of one community, we are going to go deep on a community format. The giving circle, we'll be talking to a giving circle, expert, Joelle Berman, alongside a giving circle practitioner, LiJia Gong. Our hope is that once you've heard this episode, you'll have all the tools and insights you'll need to start your own giving circle. Should you want to, now, if you haven't heard of a giving circle, we've got you we'll quickly explain what it is. Kevin. You want to take it from here? Yeah. Yeah. I got this.
01:11
Speaker 2: So giving circles are groups of people who get together to pool their money and direct it towards issues they collectively care about. So it could be a cause like an identity, like the queer youth fund or an African American giving circle. They could care about a place like the Q giving circle and Q, which is in Southwest London or a cause like social justice organizing. So giving circles are called participatory philanthropy by some, and it inverts the traditional philanthropic model of a rich person with a famous name, family office, picking where funds go here. Real people are deciding together. Often these groups who give together become their own little communities through their efforts, funding efforts that they care about.
01:52
Speaker 1: And before we dive in, I also want to tell you a little bit more about these two women that we're talking to. The LiJia gong is an old friend, both Kevin and mine. And she's also a cofounder and member of a remarkable giving circle here in New York city called rad fund, which was started about five years ago. And we've loved it because it's been super deliberate with each step and evolution outside of Radrund LiJia is about justice. She is an attorney who is currently making our justice system more just as a council over at the public rights project. Before that she was a senior legal analyst for Elizabeth Warren Senate reelection campaign. She was a clerk. She was a law fellow. She's a board member. She's also a great dancer. So Lydia brings a lot to the table. I also want to tell you a little bit about Joelle. Joelle was recently the founding executive director of amplifier, which is a global network of more than 125 giving circles all inspired by Jewish values. So from that position, supporting so many different giving circles, she had this rare view of the ecosystem as a whole and was able to pinpoint trends and practices from giving circles that you'll share with us today. So Kevin, what's one thing that you learned from our conversation today with Lydia and Joelle
03:07
Speaker 2: . So one can give a loan, right? But giving as part of a giving circle can make giving more meaningful or fun. That's one thing that stuck out to me from this interview in chapter two of our book, get together, the chapter is called, do something together. Talk about how all communities form around shared activities. Those types of shared activities are things that are kind of impossible to do alone or much better in a group. And I think a giving circle illustrates this really well. You know, you can give to a cause by yourself, but will you have as much fun doing it if you're only doing so by yourself? Or if you have the structure of other people where you're meeting and talking about what causes you care about having a meeting where you're doing it over wine or coffee or the people you care about that type of giving activity can be fun to share it. Activity that continues to propel a little micro-community.
03:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, sometimes we say that together, we are limited. And with others, we magnify our impact and you don't need like thousands of other people, you know, 10 people, 20 people pulling their money together, turn something that was a factor of one and two, a factor of many. And yeah, I think I want to start a giving circle after this episode. I don't know about you, Kevin, but that's on my to do list. Yeah. All right. Let's jump in Joelle. Logia where you at Joelle. And welcome to the podcast today. A very special podcast. We are going to go deep on giving circles and give people all that they need to know. We're stoked to have you and want to start out with geo with you. You have a giving circle that you call rad. Fund's been around for a long time. That's a big part of your life. And I'm curious about just how did you decide that you wanted to start?
04:45
Speaker 3: First of all, I'm so happy to be here. I love you. Bailey. And Kevin, I miss you guys a lot daily, Kevin and I used to work out at the same workspace and that's just not the same, not seeing them every day. And like not seeing anybody,
04:59
Speaker 1: Everybody, anytime ever I'm doing nothing. Yes. Yeah.
05:02
Speaker 3: That's not the best part of these days, but yeah, three friends and I started meeting in 2015, which ultimately led to the founding of rad funds, like giving circle. I'm a part of, but actually when we started, we didn't really know what a giving circle was. I think I'd probably heard of it somewhere, but my motivation and the motivation of four of us was a, we were feeling really inspired by the black lives matter movement at the time, which was super active around police violence, police killings of black folks, black men in particular, you know, obviously that's still a very live issue these days. And just feeling like we were going to the marches and we were supporting, but feeling like we should be doing more. And then some other folks in the group, you know, a lot of us had been organizers had been doing social justice work, but we're at a slightly different place in our lives and wanting to be engaging in a different way and also wanted to be engaging more with our communities in New York.
05:57
Speaker 3: And so we just started meeting together the four of us. And eventually we got to the point of deciding that we were going to be a giving circle. But at the beginning we didn't really know. We thought maybe we'll volunteer together. We weren't really sure what it was and when we first started, but it ultimately did become red fun. And you have a very rich background and experience in politics. Like whenever I have a political question or an activism question, I turn to logy as my source of truth, you grew up in DC, it's in your blood in many ways. What about a giving circle? Got you excited. Why did it feel like something you wanted to spend your time on? Well, I appreciate that, but I think the things about a giving circle that really spoke to me, one was for us, this giving circle is really fundamentally a group of friends, people who love to dance together to go out together.
06:44
Speaker 3: So I think finding a way through our friendships to do something that was trying to address some of the deep inequalities in our society was one of the motivating factors. And then just the act of collective giving is something that we thought was really meaningful that we can pressure each other kindly and gently and in a fun way to be doing more. How can we leverage the relationships that we already have in our leverage, other to be doing more for our communities? Wonderful Joelle. I'd also love to ask you, you headed up an organization called amplifier that actually supported hundreds of giving circle. So you've had a purview from the top, whereas logy is operating one day in and day out. You've looked at across giving circles. What can you tell us about the history of giving circles? What should people know who are new to the format?
07:33
Speaker 4: Yeah. Giving circles have a pretty inspiring story and that they are a collective story very much like they are made up of collective givers. Giving circles really have their roots. As far back as humans have been convening and sharing resources together. And in this country, the wisdom goes anyway. I should note that no comprehensive history has been written up giving circles, but those sociologists and academics who strive to understand this have actually contextualized it within mutual aid societies in the United States. And some of the earliest mutual aid societies in the early 20th century were all about supporting newly arrived groups of immigrants. There are groups of people who are already here who are helping new immigrants to adjust to American life, to get situated, to get their basic services and needs met. And this was the starting point for what I would call a closed model of the giving circle, where everybody was paying into the circle and supporting the people in the circle.
08:35
Speaker 4: And this actually became the prototype for insurance companies as we know them today. But it has a more interesting history when people started to pick up on this from a grassroots perspective and say, great, now that we are a generation forward, two generations forward, we've accumulated a certain amount of security, a certain amount of wealth. What can we now do to come together to turn outward and look at what's happening around us and give back to that? Cause we're all okay in it. So what you see now, what that's become is lots and lots of different groups of people who start very organically around their kitchen tables, in their living rooms, at bars and restaurants, having this conversation of, I don't really feel like I can make a difference on my own, but if all of us came together and pooled our resources, maybe we could actually make a dent in something that was meaningful to us. So you have all different kinds of people coming together, all different kinds of reasons. Some are motivated by their friendships. Some are motivated by a particular issue that they're super passionate about and want to change. Some are motivated by feeling really rooted in their geographical community that they're in summer rooted in the faith community that they are part of or the heritage that they are representing, whatever it might be. There's all kinds of really beautiful reasons that people come together for giving circles.
09:52
Speaker 2: You know, you're sharing the history, hit home a little bit as I think about my family and why I ended up in the U S my parents is Vietnamese refugees ended up sponsored by a church community in the middle of Texas that came together and decided to sponsor many different refugees coming into like Weatherford, Texas. And it was that idea of a small group of people coming together to pool resources and help another group of people.
10:17
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's an interesting segue too, for Joelle as well. I'm curious, Joel, a lot of your work has dealt with justice and activism and also an intersection of the Jewish faith. And that's part of what amplifier focuses on is an organization focused on giving circles really rooted in the Jewish faith. And I'm curious, why did you decide to go to amplifier? What drew you to the giving circles format? The reason that I came to amplifier is because all that I know of justice and bringing out people's humanity is what my Jewish tradition has taught me. I've always worked in the Jewish tradition and I often find that what your particular lens on the world is helps inform your universal lens of the world. And because I have all of these particular values and teachings and traditions and wisdom to draw on from the Jewish tradition, it really helps me come into conversation with a much broader group of people who are coming from their own traditions in particular background, because that's what we're all coming from.
11:18
Speaker 3: That really helps inform why I feel so personally connected and rooted in this and why I wanted to bring it into a conversation with not just people rooted in Jewish values, but people who are doing this for all kinds of reasons. So it helps me show up authentically and it draw on a life, lived with these teachings and this wisdom in mind, when I came to amplifier, I was actually quite new to philanthropy and I never set out to work in philanthropy that wasn't like the goal I came to amplifier because the woman, the founder, Felicia Herman, who hired me, pitched it as a community building opportunity. That
11:54
Speaker 4: Was the thing that really nailed it for me. Oh, this is not just about rich people giving away their money. This is actually about everyday people coming together with their friends, with their families, with their community, with their colleagues and saying that they have a voice and that they want to use it in a constructive and powerful way in their communities. That's what drew me to the work. It just happens to be that we're dealing in philanthropy, but it really could have been any asset that we were giving away. I love that. I want to ask one more stage setting question about giving circles before we get into some of the, you know,
12:26
Speaker 3: If I want to start a giving circle sort of nuts and bolts when I was researching and getting ready for this podcast, a lot of the recent press articles I could find were talking about this moment that giving circles are having like they're tripling in the number of giving circles in the last seven years. And I'm not sure how much of that reporting is because they're finally being measured. Or if there truly is a moment happening right now, where more and more people are forming giving circles. But I think for us in New York city, the discussion of mutual aid and giving circles in the last couple of years has certainly been feeling like it's in the air. So let's say that we do feel like this is happening and the number of giving circles is growing. Why do you think that is? I feel like Joelle is probably more poised to give this answer, but I think one way that I think about Redfin giving circle, that I'm a part of is really a political home for me.
13:16
Speaker 3: I think for other people, other giving circles, it might not be a political home, but it might be just, you know, a different kind of home I'm centered around as Joel was saying, whether it's your face or some other tradition, but I think people are looking for ways to connect to others and ways to engage with serious issues. And this is a way that you can do it, that feels productive. You're ultimately doing something that you couldn't be doing on your own. And for me, it feels like a really valuable way of just spend my time, because not only am I deepening relationships with the people in the group and challenging people that I love and being challenged by the people, I love to think harder about some of these issues. Our group gives organizations in New York city that are doing organizing work. So it also challenges us to connect with our city and understand the issues that people are facing. I'm just speaking for my particular experience, but I feel like other people probably want to have that experience of connection with each other and also a feeling of giving back or contributing to a movement or just doing something that feels productive to help further our society.
14:16
Speaker 4: Lydia points that are really interesting paradox, which is that despite the fact that we are more connected than ever both in our communities and across the world, we are also less connected than we've ever been in an authentic way. And if we're thinking about this kind of return to what village life is like, right? Like where, you know, your neighbors, where you are rooted proximately with people around you. I think that is one of the reasons why giving circles and mutual aid societies have increased in their appeal. And especially in a moment of global pandemic where so many of are really constrained to our most proximate locations. This is a moment where we're really starting to understand the importance of how we impact our neighbors, how their behavior impacts us, how we are actually all interconnected and interdependent in this very biological and fundamental way, but ideally in a much more human and soulful and emotional way.
15:14
Speaker 4: And I think that yearning to acknowledge that, to name that, to give voice to that, to feel that, to be part of that is especially ripe right now. Beautiful. I love talking to you guys. All right. So I just feel like giving circles are the best kept secret. That's like maybe no longer a secret so much. And so the reason why we're doing this podcast is because I basically worked out even now, let's all be doing this. It's just like giving circles, tell all it's all we want to like, make sure that we get into, okay, so
15:49
Speaker 3: Maybe some people are listening and they're like, that sounds great. I need my political home. I want my community. How do we help those people navigate this process? Let's go back with JIA. How did you get rad fund off the ground? Do you remember some of the very first steps or decisions that you guys had to make a lot of getting it off the ground was just a picking the people I got together with three of my friends. And then after we started, we actually in the beginning met so batch, we met twice a week for a long time, just to start talking about, I know it's crazy. We just started talking about what we were, what our intentions were. Cause we hadn't even gotten to a giving circle as the vehicle around which we were going to organize. That was the first thing that we did was gather people.
16:30
Speaker 3: And then we each invited another person. So slowly expanding to a group of a core group of people who shared similar values and wanted to continue having the conversation. And then the next big decisions that we had a where you had to decide between, where were you going to do your volunteering? Where are you going to try and volunteer your skills? Are we going to focus on pooling monetary resources? And we went through a lot of discussion about what was the most useful for organizations and people doing social justice work. One of the things that we felt was more useful was money oftentimes, and then also assessing our own amounts of time that we had to devote to the effort that was a big decision point and other big decision point was deciding what kind of groups we're going to give to. There's a geographical focus to our group.
17:13
Speaker 3: We give to organizations in New York city that work on addressing issues of income, inequality, and racial justice. And that was decided over many, many conversations. Lots of folks wanted to give internationally also, but we decided that we really want to feel a part of the community. That was really, really important. Another decision that I think for us. And I think as far as I know, Joel can tell me differently, but I think we're the only giving circle that has a percentage based model. We call it formula one, like the race track, a big decision for us was how much should everyone get? We're a group of friends or cross class. Everybody has different incomes and do it different types of work. So how much should we give? And we really felt it was important that everybody gave on a percentage based model. So we each commit to giving at least 1% of our annual income and 0.1% of our wealth annually, because we think everyone that way can contribute fairly in the giving circle while reflecting for us, that people who make more money, it should give more. Fortunately, actually the formula is been more complicated than that. It's like above a hundred thousand. You're supposed to give like 2%. So it's impressive than that. Yes.
18:23
Speaker 4: And it's all on the website. So I don't need to go into the formula for you guys. These are all great. So you talked about deciding who was going to come, who's invited and, and plus those, not with an understanding, cause in the beginning, nebulous of your values and now more codified, which I'm curious to ask about you decided what your focus was and all sort of how much everyone is giving Joelle, or is there anything else that you've seen groups make sure to establish early on that's worth noting or any insights that you'd like to share? I think those are absolutely the key questions. And I think that's enough for anybody who wants to get started with the giving circle. Those are the questions. Everything else will fall into place. Inevitably new questions will come up as you go, but it's an emergent process.
19:09
Speaker 4: I mean, you're going to learn it as you do it. It's so funny. This is such a tactical question, but it was one we got all the time at amplifier is where do we keep the money? And there's a lot of easy answers to this. And it just depends on how much money you're talking about and what the level of formality or comfort is. And trust is among the members of the giving circle. So if you're a group of friends like the GN, her friends, maybe you're just all contend to hang onto it, knowing that you're going to trust each other, to actually give it at the end, right? Maybe if you have a lot of money, you want to pull it in a donor advised fund together at your local community foundation. That way the money can grow while you are deciding where to put it.
19:49
Speaker 4: So that by the time you are ready to allocate it, you have even more to work with. And then there's other folks who will just PayPal or Venmo each other and do this in a super informal way. And then one person may be, gets a match through their company. So one person will be the donator and because they can match through their company, they'll take everybody in the giving circles, donations donated and make an even bigger impact through doing that super in the weeds and tactical. But it was a question we got all the time. So I felt like I needed to lift it up. Yeah, absolutely. Once you start reading about giving circles, you see that the formality level can scale up and down. Like you said, you can use PayPal, you can bring your personal checkbook to the meeting, or maybe that's old school.
20:30
Speaker 4: And also in terms of size, it might be five or six people, or it could be hundreds of people and a giving circle. And so depending on formality and the number of people, some of your systems may change. I want to say something about those personal checks, which I know is very analog and very old and very affiliated with a bank. So there's politics there too. But I want to say that if you're on the receiving end of giving circles gift, if you're an organization and particularly if you're a small organization, some of the most heartfelt and beautiful thank yous that we ever received were from organizations that we sent an envelope full of check with a letter that explained why there were multiple checks in that envelope and that we were a giving circle and that we had gone through this process. And here's where we landed.
21:16
Speaker 4: And we just want you to have all of this. This gives the organization an opportunity to add each of you as a donor so that they can stay in touch with each of you. And it also allows them to understand that this was a group process and not just this anonymous transfer that happened through a company or a bank. So if we're bringing it back down to the grassroots and feeling like you're in community, there's a lot of unsexy, but analog ways to do this, that helps the organization or the group that you're giving to really feel like a partner of yours that you can feel in relationship with, not just in transaction with,
21:51
Speaker 2: They couldn't expect some to what Joe was talking about with the purpose of starting rad fund. And one of those purposes being to connect more with organizations on a local level to form those relationships. And I love how there's that small difference between sending one check versus sending all the checks that reinforces one of the purposes that you have for organizing a giving circle.
22:14
Speaker 1: Also, I am bummed. I was hoping you were going somewhere and saying you would make a big check. I just feel like I want any chance received a big check, but this makes sense.
22:23
Speaker 2: I once made one, but it was totally fake.
22:25
Speaker 4: It's real in some larger giving circles, some giving circle network, do that big check presentation ceremony. That is still a real thing that happens.
22:36
Speaker 1: Tiny check, all knitted together to make one. Maybe we have all of our micro checks and it's a flip book that says, I think you were some formula to quarantine jokes. Let's do this. So you said you had a group of friends that was really group of friends with a hunch that who in our little community building language. And from that, it sounds like you were able to extract. We have a sense that we all have some common things we care about and common things we want reference mission came from the early people and what you guys cared about. And that's allowed you to then identify who should join you from that sharp perspective and purpose. Once you have it, is there any advice you can offer to anyone, small group, big group, and how to pin down a mission? What makes a good mission or purpose for a giving circle for the people in our group? Part of the mission was just to change your formulation a little bit. I think we did cocreate it, it was an initial group of people, but pretty soon thereafter, we had a larger core of eight or nine people.
23:46
Speaker 3: And those people I think are our giving circles 15 now, but everybody's still really involved. We really did create it together. And having discussions about core questions of how had you been giving before and how do you want to give, what purpose do you see this group serving? Where do you see problems in our community and who is solving them and just concretize the emission rating process, which can feel very much like we're just picking words out of the air and do they mean anything or do they not mean anything? We each came to the table with some research and we each came with a few groups that you would want to give to and extrapolating from that. Okay. Well this amazing group that works with Filipino, domestic workers in New York, trying to organize them around wage theft and trafficking issues. Like that type of group that's done my end, by the way, one of our first we started giving to them in 2015 and still continued to give to them. But you know, someone brought that to the dilemma, like, okay, thank you very much. Yeah. Barely bringing out new scales. I didn't even know there for three months.
24:51
Speaker 3: So that was one of the exercises we did was trying to get to a mission from some more concrete examples of who we wanted to give to and how we wanted to center ourselves around that work. But I think it really was. We came together and all decided on the mission together. We just did a bunch of exercises and conversations like that over time. And then it got to something that really felt right to everybody that we were really excited and felt like, okay, this is what we want to put out into the world. And if we wanted to bring other people in, they should want to buy in and be excited about this mission to all of that. So you guys were like, let's start in the real world in real world terms like who are people or groups that strike our fancy, that stoke our fire, that get us excited, who we want to help. And then back the mission out from those real world, examples, Joelle, anything else to add in terms of missions and things that you've seen across the board?
25:42
Speaker 4: A lot of the giving circles, we were working with an amplifier and beyond that, we actually start with values before we get to mission. And the idea is that similar to what Lydia saying about starting with a concrete sense of what was giving you energy and what was exciting you and what was good, beating your passion in the world, and then backing out from there. Similarly, there's a conversation that giving circles can start with, which is to think about your values individually and collectively as they relate to giving. So why do I give, what are the values in mind that I bring to the table when I give to, I care about legacy, do I care about opportunity? Do I care about justice? Do I care about security? There's an endless list of values that you might bring to the table, right? And then how do I want to give, do I want to give locally or globally, do I want to give to the arts or education or basic needs?
26:33
Speaker 4: You can start to very incrementally shape a mission by starting with some of the more elemental questions of what matters to the people in the group and the way you get to a mission seeing, okay, out of all the values that each of us individually just spoke about, here's where we're noticing the overlap. And then you try to find the areas with the most overlap. And that becomes the unique group identity that can animate the whole process moving forward. And I should say like giving circles have this freedom from being an institution. They can evolve over time. They can change, they can absorb new members. They can, you know, we change as human beings and the world changes around us simultaneously. And so giving circles have this constant opportunity to adapt to that and to realign where their giving goes and how they're thinking about those values as they go. So it really can just become an anchor, but it's only an anchor in so much as it, it allows the giving circle to root itself in meaning and purpose that may change over time. And I think that's an awesome opportunity of giving circles.
27:34
Speaker 2: I'd love to ask about mistakes. So legit Joelle do any common pitfalls, personal roadblocks speed bumps come to mind with the process of starting and growing the giving circle. If we were to give some advice to people just embarking on their giving circle, organizing journey, any mistakes to look out for
27:52
Speaker 3: As new, like a mistake that the rate a way that I would phrase it. But I would say obviously we've encountered many challenges in developing and growing a giving circle. One of the big tensions that I always see is like, are we moving too fast? Or are we moving too slow in the sense that, you know, I think in the beginning there was like periods where we were just talking and talking and talking and having all these meetings and talking about these abstract things of like, are we finally at our mission or do we need to talk about our theory of change? Do we need to talk about, you know, just so many things that we felt like we needed to decide before we could actually give our first check, but then for some of us that felt a little bit like, let's just make it happen.
28:30
Speaker 3: Let's just, you know, get the show on the road. I'm think I'm a little bit more of the, let's just do it. Let's take action. You know, but I also saw like, maybe this is a mistake is one thing that we do. That's also unique because it's a percentage based model formula one. Is that, yeah, just in case, just in case you missed that first mention everyone in the giving circle shares are in common wealth with each other, which is a big act of trust for a lot of people, we had brought in a new member who is a dear friend and someone we were really excited about. And he was really excited to be part of the group, but we realized after debriefing the sharing of the income at Wells, that it actually made him really uncomfortable. It's like I have done it so soon after he joined.
29:14
Speaker 3: If given the chance I would do it differently, I would have slowed that process down and done a little bit more prep. I mean, I think other members in the group, we'd had some conversations already about how do you talk about money? Did you grow up talking about money? And we had a little bit more preparatory conversation before leading into the here's the spreadsheet with what your salary is. So I think to me, one of the challenges is always navigating the tension of working with kind of consensus based model. So it's just everybody deciding together more or less. And that is both like, sometimes it feels too slow and it feels like this amazing movement and an opportunity to give and make a difference. And maybe we've missed that. And then there's other times where, Oh my God, are we moving too fast? So that not every person in the group feels totally comfortable. And that's what this group is, is it's based in trust. It's based in friendship. And it's really important that we're moving at the speed of trust, right? So that would just be something I would highlight in general about thinking about how to incorporate everyone and make sure that everybody feels comfortable with moving forward. But also at the same time, action oriented, the point of being in a giving circle is not just to sit around and talk about issues. It's also to give
30:18
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. I like that. It's almost like the art of a community is understanding exactly how fast or how slow to move with new people and with old people and understanding there's different vintages of rad fund for every person who started it from the very beginning to the latest member.
30:35
Speaker 4: Are you talking about wine again? And now we're taking it hard, right? Turn and talking about natural wine
30:42
Speaker 1: And Joelle. Anything else to toss out of common challenges that you see across
30:49
Speaker 4: The board with giving circles? Yeah. I think one common challenge is feeling like you've got to nail it and get it perfect the first time. And there is no perfect. There is no standard. There are many, many ways to do this. And I feel like some of that creative opportunity is intimidating to a lot of people getting off the ground. And so I would just say whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened and whoever showed up are the right people. This is classic facilitation advice, but I think that's one big piece of it. And the second piece is giving circles are not for everyone. Some people are very private and personal about the way that they want to give and have a very specific vision and idea of what that's going to be. And I think when people come into giving circles, what you're doing is you're really opening yourself up to be influenced by other people in terms of where you're going to give some of your most precious asset. And I think the people who have the hardest time in giving circles are people who come in with a very strong and unmovable idea of where they want it to go and where they want the group to go. Sometimes what that means is people opting out after a cycle or two and realizing it wasn't for them. But the idea that a giving circle will expand and contract the right time, the right people will self select into it because it is by nature, a group process with, yeah, I want to ask you
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Speaker 1: About the meetings themselves. When you come together to make a decision about where the money is going, how does that go? How do you structure that? One thing that comes to mind is you're dealing with some of the most painful and difficult conversations and issues that people in our country experience day in and day out do either of you all have any recommendations for how to run those conversations and the healthiest way possible
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Speaker 3: Or most productive way. That's a really rich and great question in advance. Having our giving conversations, where we decide where we give, we typically have a lot of meetings where we are oftentimes they're kind of informal trainings or ways of learning from each other. I remember pretty early on, we did a training conversation about intersectionality and how different types of oppression intersect and layer upon each other and how that's something we should consider when we're thinking about giving. And I think having some of those conversations in advance as a giving, so really aligning more on, not just like a mission statement, but I think mission and values and getting even a little bit deeper about what do we think are the most effective ways for people to make change in our societies. That's really important to us because as a giving circle, we give a lot to folks that do organizing that are pressuring the government, our society to change, and they're doing the activism.
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Speaker 3: So we have different competing views in our group about what people think might be the most effective ways to do that. And then having a lot of those discussions on the front end before we have named groups, helped us have more alignment before those conversations. So conversations are hard, but a, I think we're really lucky as a group because we have a lot of people who are trained facilitators organizers, so they can help guide those conversations. But another thing that's really special about the group is that we can come together. And if there's something really awful that has happened in the news, we can come together at a meeting and just share and just feel all of that collectively with each other. And then that might not lead to a certain funding decision, but that's, what's special about the group is that it's a space to feel the weight of the inequality, injustice in our society together with others.
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Speaker 3: There isn't always some magical facilitated outcome of that, but it is a space to share and be angry and to cry about those things. In addition to also sharing a lot of joy at other points in time. And then I would say the actual meetings, how we've done it as we usually have nominations process where everybody who's a member of the group does some research. And we typically reach out to folks who, you know, who are social justice organizers, some community funders like North star fund in New York. For example, we reached out to folks because we know they're who would recommend that groups. And then we put that all on a list. Everybody does a little research beforehand, and then it actually usually happens over the course of two or three meetings. It's hard to do all of the selection in one meeting, but we put all the groups up there we share and we talk about them. And then we do stickering exercises where we get initial vote. That ultimately it is consensus decision, but honestly we haven't had that much difficulty because we've spent so much time on the mission and values. It's pretty easy to get to consensus pretty quickly,
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Speaker 4: Joelle any other tips for making these decisions as a group and how to structure that. Sure. There's a consensus model, which Lydia is modeling beautifully and speaking about beautifully, which is the idea that the group is coming together and through the process of a conversation, trying to get as many people to come along and to consider the quote unquote viewpoints of the group and how to account for those in the group's final decisions. So that everyone at least feels like they can say yes to the final decision. Even if not everybody feels the equal amount of passion about it. That's the definition of consensus that everyone gets to come along at different levels, but there's also more traditional voting process that can happen, right? This especially is helpful in giving circles that are much larger in size, where you have potentially dozens or hundreds, even of people participating, there's lots of really unique voting processes.
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Speaker 4: And one of them that I've seen is that there's a rank choice voting and there's majority votes. And then there's a committee there's also as a small leadership team that can help drive the final decisions and give the finalists out to everybody. So as a result, you really have the opportunity to do this either by voting or by consensus and either is fine and either will work. Giving circles can have as many meetings as they feel like they need to have. Again, there's no standard, but you can probably do a minimum of three and get away with it. If all you have is time for three meetings over the course of three months, and you want to be able to make a giving decision. By the end of those three months, you can do it. If you want to have a more extended process where you want to meet much more frequently, because you guys really dig, hanging out with each other and want to hang out and enjoy some wine and food together, then yes, meet more frequently.
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Speaker 4: There's no limit to the amount of community you can be building through a giving circle. And that's also something that you can refine and get better at and see what works for your group over time. If I had shared one lesson for anybody who is thinking of starting a giving circle, is that you're entering an experiment and you're going to figure it out as you go. And luckily you're not alone. The whole point is that you're with other people and you're all gonna figure it out together and you're gonna build something pretty extraordinary in the process. So I hope that's exciting.
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Speaker 1: I want it to bend to the community element. Head-on because just reading about giving circles and talking to people who are a part of it, the fact that part of the value of doing a giving circle is community building. And that, that is explicitly called out. For instance, a woman named Holly Lee, founder of the Asian women, giving circle said, we go out, we drink, I don't think this group would have lasted this long if it wasn't fun. And that just strikes me in comparison to what I think about as normal philanthropy. Like you just send a check off to some people who, whose last name is also the name behind a giant corporation. And you just don't really feel connected, attached, social energy, social value from that. So what are some ways that you have creatively put some special sauce or seen people put special sauce into their giving circles that really helps build connective tissue between the members? Is there anything you can do outside of the basics of talking through giving? I just want to start by saying Holly Lee is one of my foremost teachers in the giving circle space, and I'm so glad you quoted her because at amplifier, we used to bring them
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Speaker 4: And to do trainings on how to build a sense of community and build a sense of fun into giving. We actually used to have retrain people on that, believe it or not Holly Lee, where you are awesome, very grateful for Holly Lee and very grateful for you lifting that up. Yeah, I think there's lots of things that give you, I mean, we're talking about real people, right? We're talking about groups of friends and people who know each other coming together and starting this. So anything from having like a dinner party where you can get together and start to dig into these questions together, there should always be food. There should always be drinking of some kind or non-alcoholic drinking of some kind, if that's more your bag, but, you know, I think that there should always be the festive atmosphere that you can bring to a giving circle meeting.
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Speaker 4: For sure. And I think celebrating is a really important aspect of what a giving circle is doing, celebrating what you're learning, what you're giving to the impact you're having. I've seen some giving circles do community celebrations will, they will invite the organizations they've given to and they'll invite some of the people who've trained them. And they'll be, they've gotten donations from to all come together and have a big party. So fun is a huge part of it. And giving circles to have some fun and quirky rituals. Sometimes they'll all open the meeting with the same ritual and close it with the same ritual. And I think the opportunity to invent traditions together like that is also really fun. Or maybe I'm just a huge nerd, but that stuff like really gets me going. No, I think you were a company of some huge nerds with the rituals and fun. What about you at rad fun? I mean, y'all are called rad fund. It better be fun over there. I mean, come on.
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Speaker 3: It is. Yeah. I feel like giving joyfully is obviously one of the key tenants of what we do twice a year. We do rad hangs, which are just, it's not a meeting. It's just, I mean, it is what it is. It's a hang, but just making space to spend time with each other. That's one specific thing that we do. We do a retreat every year and we get away, get out of the city. And that's a combination of thinking about the longterm visioning questions that we maybe don't get to in our ordinary meetings, but it's also time to just like be on a beach, take a hike with friends. So yeah, I think really making space to spend time with each other that doesn't feel like we're just ticking off things on a list feels really important. And I mean, I think uniquely about our group, we're already a group of friends, so it's rad fund is just something that both enriches our friendships and also layers on top of it. We see each other in lots of other contexts too. And some people in the group who maybe I wasn't as good friends with, like now I'll always invite them to any sort of thing. But I host this space of the meetings and the giving circles, not the only space or which I see these folks. There's many other points of connection too.
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Speaker 2: So, you know, looking forward where is red fund at right now? What has changed recently? What direction are you headed in? Like what are you thinking about for the future of red fund?
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Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if everybody knows, but Kevin has been coaching me a little bit on some of these questions about where, right.
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Speaker 2:
41:30
Speaker 3: So we'd be curious if you have thoughts too. I think we're rad fund is right now is, you know, we've been around for five years. I loved how Bailey said that we've existed for a long time because we still feel very much. Yeah. Maybe we're teenagers now that's maybe the right age going through adolescence,
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Speaker 1: Five years of anything staying around in this day and age. Just impressive. I heard someone say every three years, you've got to blow something up and start over again. So if you're past three years, you're doing really well.
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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's great. I feel really good about that. Yeah. Five years, I guess, is a long time, but we're at a place where we feel good about where our mission is and the type of giving that we do. And many of the core processes that we have, like here's how we set up meetings. The red hangs formula one, we have some core things that we feel really good about. I think the question is how do we grow our impact slash do we want to grow? Our impact has been, how do we continue to sustain? As folks lives, change as members have different circumstances, maybe they're growing, their families are moving away from New York. How does that change? Recently? We brought in our first new members not too long ago. So that's been a process of integrating them. There's two ways that we've been thinking about how we might want to grow.
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Speaker 3: If at all is one is just bringing more people into the group. And then the other is trying to help replicate and start new giving circles, which I know Joelle knows a lot about, but I thinking about what can rad fund brings specifically to that and what are the things that are special that are worth replicating for others? I think things that, you know, for your Willie important to us, a, obviously a formula one, which I know I've mentioned a billion times, but also be I think the particular kind of social justice giving that we do movement oriented giving to people who are organizing for big changes in our society. I think that's something that not many giving circles do and we want to get out there into the world. So we're trying to do a little bit of both at the same time. So we've expanded and we're working on a toolkit to help folks who might want to start other rad funds, whether in other places or just with their own group of friends.
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Speaker 3: So those are some pieces that we're, we're talking about. And I do want to mention that. I think one of the things that feels really special at rad fund is it is, but it's still fundamentally a group of friends. So I think there is some tension with wanting to grow and some people who feel like it's been great, we should just continue doing it just as it is. But I think we're trying to navigate that through consensus and having conversations about what are ways that we can keep the things that are special the same while also realizing that we have something that's special and maybe it's worth trying to get other people in on that and getting the groups that we love, who are doing incredible work and realizing that there's so much need for money to do this kind of work. How can we scale a little bit to get those people more money? Cause that's ultimately what we're trying to do. So we're both very cognizant of wanting to maintain intimacy and the specialness of the relationships, and also thinking about how do we get our groups more money and based on our model, it really is about getting more people involved, not necessarily, you know, I don't think we're all going to magically become like fundraisers. I certainly don't have any interest in calling up random people and asking them for money. I, for one really rad fund to
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Speaker 4: Teach the world its model, I think it's incredibly unique. What you've all built. You know, there's no comprehensive list of giving circles in the United States, but I have not ever seen another one that does your percentage based model. And I think it's really powerful. Your formula one is very powerful and I want there to be more people in the world who just probably would never occur to them to give in that way. And I think that's a really powerful lesson, especially if you're doing cross class giving. And especially if you're giving in a scenario where you want to have all different kinds of people in the room together for whom it feels equally meaningful. Something that's really interesting that the GEA just pointed out is this positive and healthy tension between wanting to preserve a group's intimacy and wanting to make a bigger impact and thinking about what the relationship between those two things are, and really just feeding off the insight and the energy of the group to help make that decision together, I think is really powerful. Great,
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Speaker 1: Beautiful. Any other final recommendations, Joelle, in terms of seeing a bunch of different giving circles go through their life cycle, how have you seen some groups handle that? Like we started, we gained momentum and now we're looking down the path. I was just wondering if there's any rubrics for how people should make those decisions about getting bigger impact or even just closing a group down. I would say there's a few different options.
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Speaker 4: So people have, you can join an existing giving circle. There are many out there and you can add your efforts to the collective. And there are some giving circles that are giving away $500 at a time. And there are some giving circles that are giving away millions, so you can find your place and you can add to your impact in an area that is meaningful to you. If you listened to this podcast and suddenly you find yourself that you are at a point where you need to have the conversation about growing or staying tight or whatever it is then amazing as people in my tradition would say, muzzle tub, like you've really arrived. Like that's like really? That's like exactly where we want people to be eventually. And I think the message I would just say is, you'll know what to do when you get there.
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Speaker 4: And for now I think the most important thing that I would love to emerge from people listening to this podcast is that you can do this. Anyone can do this. You just need to find a few people you like to hang out with and who you care about doing something good in the world. Then it will all come from that. And that's all you need to begin. And all the decisions and all of the branches of pathways that you're giving circle can take, will emerge naturally as you go. And you'll just follow it as it comes. And that's the coolest part of this is it just gets to emerge and it gets to evolve and it gets to change along with who you are and what's happening around you. So I would just say, go for it, just try it to see where it takes you.
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Speaker 1: Perfect. Can I add one more shout out? I just want to mention one of the ways they have fun together. We have a collaboration with a dance party called TFW, which needs to be an in person against party. And now it's a zoom with dance party, but you all be apart
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Speaker 3: Of rad fund. You just go to TFW to MYC and check out the next party. The funds we raise all go to groups that we give to and are doing this kind of incredible work in New York. So what kind of music can we expect at TFW what's the vibe it's, you know, it's house funk, but there's drew likes to mix it up. I think sometimes there's some hip hop in there. I mean, it's an eclectic dance party, but mostly I think what the best part of it is that I'm incredibly enthusiastic. I always get really dressed up and dance really hard. And the core people at TFW are dancing really hard. I organize an amazing group of chat MCs. I don't know if you knew what that is, but it's just now I do other people in the zoom chat. Look at Bailey. Look at her moves, look at her amazing outfit. So know that if you show up to the dance party, there's someone there who's specifically dedicated to make you feel good and highly likely you'll receive a compliment. If you just connect, just be true for all of life. Can we have chat MCs?
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Speaker 3: Yes. Sign me up. Well, I want to say legit, Joel, thank you so much for taking the time today. And also just for the work that you do with giving circles and beyond you guys are incredible people. The kind of people that make me happy to live in New York city. And I'm also just appreciative that we all did this interview on our memos, which now the listeners know. So we'll wrap it there. Thank you so much. Both of you were so eloquent and clear and energized as a wonderful interview. Yes, absolutely. Embody how you feel. All right, everybody.
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Speaker 2: One, two, three.
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Speaker 3: .
49:10
Speaker 2: If you want to connect with LiJia gong, you can find her on Twitter at L gong, L J G O N G, or visit rad fund nyc.com to learn more about Joelle, head to Joelle Asaro, berman.com. It's Joe L L E a S a R O B E R M a N.
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Speaker 1: Spelling it out. You can find out more about us. Kevin Chi Bailey the people behind the podcast@ourwebsitepeopleand.company. Also, our book is on amazon@gettogetherbook.com. It's full of stories and learnings from conversations with community leaders like this one with Joelle. And final, final thing. We'd love to ask you to please review us and or click subscribe when you do that, it helps get stories like with LiJia and Joelle's out to more and more people and help more folks get inspired by their giving circles. All right. Thank you. We'll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening. Bye