Read on….

For You: Today’s Main Course

OK, yes.

That is a controversial title.

And yes, I partly used it because of the dang attention economy we’re all living within, where getting humans to actually commit to reading something — let alone even notice it amidst endless scrolling and ubiquitous interruptions — is quite the feat.

Scroll-stopping headlines at least get readers in the door.

And now, I aim to inspire you to stay here with my more nuanced take.

The more professionalized the work of fundraising and philanthropy have become, over the years, the further they’ve gotten from the whole reason nonprofits exist in the first place: a community noticing it has a need that isn’t being met, organizing itself to meet that need, and then organizing itself to resource meeting that need.

Almost every nonprofit started from a very pure place.

One person, or a family, or a group of community members rallied others together to achieve a mission that they all agreed was necessary for their collective well-being.

The community worked cooperatively.

Everyone gave whatever they could to help it thrive — whether their time, or their skills, or their introductions to important community players, or their testimony about the need for the mission with others who could also help, or financial resources they had the power to direct towards the work.

Everyone was invested in the mission’s success.

Everyone actively contributed, however they could.

A sense of solidarity and collective care prevailed.

And then, somehow, over time, the community around the mission became more and more remote — likely as the Industrial Revolution meant more and more people needed to earn a wage to survive… which meant people spending many hours on the mission would need to get paid… which meant there started being a clear demarcation between those who were “staff” and those who were not… which meant those who weren’t staff started feeling a lot less personally invested and backed away, so that the “professionals” could do their “jobs.”

And what hadn’t been a “job” at all…

… became one.

And then, as time passed, these jobs became more and more professionalized, into whole career paths — with professional certifications, academic degrees, progressive responsibilities and leadership, 401ks, insurance, and PTO.

Many of you reading this have this career path.

I certainly do.

So yes, I understand that this whole line of thinking can feel very threatening… because it reeks of not being able to survive, since the world as we’ve made it requires almost all of us to earn a wage to survive.

I’m not coming for your job.

Because as I said, our modern-day world requires us to earn money for the labor of our days, in order to eat and have shelter and clothe ourselves and maybe even enjoy life a little bit too… and the work of nonprofits is still essential for the communities we live in, just as has been true since nonprofits began… so those who dedicate their days to making that work possible will still need to have those jobs, earn those wages and benefits, and hopefully make a darn good living while they’re at it (because wouldn’t we want to indicate, with the highest compensation possible for these workers, how profoundly valuable their work is for our communities?).

What I am coming for is the strict demarcations we’ve created…

… between fundraiser… and donor…

… between staff… and volunteer…

… between the board… and the community served…

… between the board… and staff…

… between volunteers… and donors…

… between the community served… and fundraisers.

Y’all.

These demarcations are made up.

We made them up.

Or to be a bit more precise, people long-ago made them up… and we’ve just kept mindlessly re-enacting these scripts of the power dynamics and priorities and value judgements and character arcs — like actors in some long-ago-memorized play that we decided was the play-to-end-all-plays.

We don’t need to keep doing this.

This script is old.

And it’s tired.

And plenty of people have been telling us for years how harmful this script can be to many different people in our communities.

So what are we waiting for?

Now’s the time for new scripts.

A New Script: Collective Giving

As I mentioned last week in The Future of Fundraising Is Here:

We struggle to trust.

Anything.

Everything.

In an era when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bursting onto the scene and taking over everything from our customer service calls to our medical diagnoses, all while producing increasingly more of the content (often slop) we see everywhere online, we’re craving real humanity and human connection more than ever.

When we read a good piece of writing, we want to know that it actually came from the experience and creativity of a human being like us, or it somehow cheapens it… right?

When we receive a communication like an email, we want to know that we’re not just some faceless “contact” sorted into a “segment” by a bot that wrote a message trying to sound as familiar as possible… yes?

We want to know that we matter.

That real people care about us.

That we belong to something bigger than ourselves — something with the kind of meaning that human beings are made to make… while machines can only attempt some facsimile of what that might look like from the outside.

Machines don’t crave meaning.

Machines don’t get meaning.

Machines can’t make meaning.

But humans do all of those things.

And all of those things are essential reasons why humans have been drawn into philanthropy (root meaning: love of humanity) for generations.

The new script we need to follow is actually an old script.

Communities have been organizing themselves into collective giving circles for generations — since the beginning of humanity, I can say with almost no doubt, even though I definitely wasn’t there then.

This is how we’re wired.

And communities of color have stayed connected to this essential thread of our shared humanity a lot longer than the rest of us have, that’s for sure. Go into just about any community of color, and you will find vital, active, long-standing cultural practices of collective giving.

They’re still doing it, as they always have… but on the margins. Because the version we’ve collectively shoved on to center stage, in our dominant culture… is… not that. And of course, that dominant, center-stage version has been scripted… and packaged… and regurgitated as “best practices” for a long time now.

I figure that, having practiced that version for nearly two decades… having collaboratively raised hundreds of millions of dollars already… having earned my Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) designation… and, overall, having fully proved how much I understand the “best practices” and can succeed at them…

… I’m plenty qualified to point the way to something better.

I’ve earned the right to speak on this.

And isn’t it interesting, that the “better” I’m pointing to for our future…

… is actually from our past?

Our dominant culture doesn’t value ancient, timeless wisdom enough.

But I do.

And part of what we’re doing here at For the Love of Humanity is shouting that honoring from the rooftops, so that more of us learn to embody it.

I’m also speaking from experience, re: collective giving.

Let me tell you some stories.

My Experiences With Collective Giving

I know that not all of us even know what we’re talking about, when I refer to “collective giving.” So let me share some of my experiences with you.

➡️ Dining for Women:

I was a baby fundraiser, fresh out of grad school with my Master’s in Social Work, in my first full-time development/fundraising job. I had a colleagued who I adored (she’s a Subscriber here; hi, Ann! 👋🏻).

She was a good decade-plus older than me, and she was so badass. Not only was she a lawyer (no small feat), working at a nonprofit to help people (a rarity for lawyers, unfortunately)… but, not long after I started, she began the intensive training needed to become a certified yoga teacher. She had a super-interesting life, full of fascinating friends and travel and engagement with a big wide world that I was only starting to experience, as a younger adult. In short, I wanted to be her when I grew up.

At some point, she invited me to come to her house. The pitch was something like this: every month, a bunch of us women gather together and put into a pot what we would have spent if we had gone out to eat together, while we eat a potluck that we all contribute to, and we learn about organizations supporting women all around the world… and then we give the money we collected to them.

For real? Sign me up!

I don’t remember how long I participated, but it was a good long while. Month after month, I’d get to bask in the presence of this amazing, multi-generational group of strong women. I got to eat food from cultures around the world (Dining for Women would provide recipes we could use from the culture we were supporting each month, and our group was pretty dedicated to doing that). I got to learn about an inspiring group of women doing something profoundly powerful somewhere in the world. And I got to actively support them.

I loved every minute of it all, for so many reasons… and I’m so very grateful to Ann for this experience.

Note: Dining for Women has, in the years since my experiences, re-branded. Look for them as Together Women Rise now, if you’re interested!

➡️ Fourth Generation Fund:

When I moved to Minnesota and was first living and working in the Twin Cities, I felt extremely discombobulated. I had started my career and grown into an adult in a whole different city, and I had long ago learned how ecosystemic this work was. To pluck myself up from my existing ecosystem… and plop myself down into a whole new one… left me not knowing what end was up.

In one of my very first networking coffees, someone told me about the Fourth Generation Fund at the Minneapolis Foundation.

I was immediately intrigued.

This was an opportunity to experience grant-making within a foundation, something that of course would draw me in as, by this point, I had many years seeking grants under my belt. This program was the foundation’s way of bringing in the next generation of donors, us younger folks, I was told. Also, I could see that this would be a great way to learn about all of the many kinds of good work, the many people, the many organizations within my new community. I signed up pretty quickly.

In this experience, all participants committed to giving an amount that was doable and meaningful for us, in order to create our pot of grant dollars. In addition, we raised more funds by putting on an event and inviting a wider community in to provide their support, and the foundation chipped in some funds too.

We collectively chose a giving area that the group wanted to explore. Then, we spent time teaching each other and learning about this area. (My first year — of two years that I participated — was focused on aging, for example.) Then, we did an environmental scan of our community to find organizations who were working in this area, and we invited them to apply for funding with proposals.

Imagine how powerful it was for me to read grant proposals, after having written and submitted them for many years.

After our group had read the proposals, we got together to discuss them and decide how we would allocate our funds. These conversations and decisions were very hard, which you might imagine!

But in the end, we gave out tens of thousands to, learned about, and got to start relationships with many essential organizations in our community. We got to grow relationships with each other within the group — people from all different parts of our community coming together for this philanthropic work. And we got to experience a whole new kind of giving as a collective.

➡️ The Giving Project:

A much more recent experience I’ve had is participating in The Giving Project at Headwaters Foundation for Justice. And wow, was this experience powerful.

I’ll let Headwaters describe this profound experience to you:

Giving Projects are cross-class, multi-racial, multi-generational cohorts that come together over the course of six months to move money to grassroots, community-based organizations across Minnesota led by and for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) that use community organizing as a core strategy to advance equity and justice.

Through political education, community-building, grassroots fundraising and donor organizing, coaching, and collective grantmaking, Giving Project participants develop a shared understanding of race, class, and power as resource mobilizers in the social movement ecosystem.

The program is powerful, challenging, and fun. It is a hands-on experience that will shift your thinking about money and give you tangible ways to act for social change.

Unlike my other two experiences above, I had to apply to join this one, and Headwaters intentionally created a cohort of twenty of us to represent diversity in class, race and ethnicity, and generation. We also had to demonstrate a commitment to justice, as that was what we’d be working toward together, and we weren’t taking any time to convince anyone that greater justice in our world was necessary.

This program was also much more time-intensive than the other two. Not only did we have regular meetings where we were growing community within our cohort, we also had regular learning and education to understand the issues of injustice that our potential grantees would be working on.

Even more, Headwaters staff trained us in donor organizing, and then each of us set about doing just that, having many 1:1 meetings with people in our circles to raise the funds we needed for our granting effort.

In the end, the money we raised (well over $200K) was supplemented by funds from Headwaters, and we were able to invest over half a million in organizations building power through Minnesota.

This was again an experience of reading through grant proposals submitted by many organizations… and collectively deciding how to allocate our funds as a group (again, not an easy process at all).

One especially cool feature of this one is that the grants are all two-year grants and are designated for general operating funds — both of which are ridiculously uncommon for grants for nonprofits, who need both reliable, sustained multi-year funding and general operating funds more than any other kind of support.

We Can Do It So Many Ways

I offer these examples to give you an idea of what collective giving can look like. But you can see, even among these three experiences that I — just one human being — have had, there are many differences.

At the Minneapolis Foundation’s Nobody Saves the World Alone event celebrating collective giving last week, Hali Lee mentioned that people so often come to her, very interested in collective giving but stalled, feeling like they don’t know how to start.

This is another feature of our dominant culture that I’d like to give the boot. We all seem to be so worried about doing things wrong all the time. I’ve experienced this vibe especially around fundraising, over the years.

People are always so quick to dismiss their own experiences and perspective and creativity — disavowing them and stuffing them down while they ask around for “best practices,” with a desire to find out what everyone else is doing so that they can do those same things too.

Can we stop doing that?

So-called “best practices” can never be best for everyone, because every person and every organization have different personalities, souls, interests, tendencies, and more.

What is right for one will very likely not be right for another. How could one thing be the right thing for everyone?! I mean, really.

How about, instead of creating some monolithic canon of “best practices” that everyone is “supposed” to follow, we allow people and orgs to use their creativity, to design experiences for their communities… that are actually responsive to and fitting for their communities?

For what it’s worth, that’s exactly how my fundraising practice will look, going forward (give me a shout, if you’d like to see how I might be able to help you/your organization!) — and it is also why I’m excited to have started the Philanthropy Of The People section here in this publication, where we will continue to explore and discuss this work of collective giving and donor organizing.

I encourage you to join me, in experimenting with and practicing this new mode of giving… and in being a part of the ongoing conversation here!

Conversation: Your Real Real

I really want to know your more detailed and nuanced thoughts, too. Let’s start a conversation on this topic. Visit the comments section!

Leave a comment

Practice: Make It Yours

I encourage you to get — and read — the book The Big We, by Hali Lee. You can purchase it, or you can find it at your library (ask for it, if they don’t already have it!).

Note: I’m also doing a giveaway of the book on last week’s post! Join the conversation in the comments to be entered.

This will help you start to wrap your mind around collective giving… and even imagine how you might practice it yourself!

A Gift for You: Something to Sit With

Collective giving shifts who gives, how we give, and ultimately what gets funded. This practice strengthens community ties, provides the space to practice democracy, and increases civic engagement.

Together, these are crucial to building a thriving multiracial democracy that underpins all the other issues of building an equitable world.

- Philanthropy Together

Read on….

For You: Today’s Main Course

We struggle to trust.

Anything.

Everything.

In an era when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bursting onto the scene and taking over everything from our customer service calls to our medical diagnoses, all while producing increasingly more of the content (often slop) we see everywhere online, we’re craving real humanity and human connection more than ever.

When we read a good piece of writing, we want to know that it actually came from the experience and creativity of a human being like us, or it somehow cheapens it… right?

When we receive a communication like an email, we want to know that we’re not just some faceless “contact” sorted into a “segment” by a bot that wrote a message trying to sound as familiar as possible… yes?

We want to know that we matter.

That real people care about us.

That we belong to something bigger than ourselves — something with the kind of meaning that human beings are made to make… while machines can only attempt some facsimile of what that might look like from the outside.

Machines don’t crave meaning.

Machines don’t get meaning.

Machines can’t make meaning.

But humans do all of those things.

And all of those things are essential reasons why humans have been drawn into philanthropy (root meaning: love of humanity) for generations.

Yet…

In the nearly two decades I’ve been a professional fundraiser, the “best practices” I’ve been taught and adopted are not actually focused on what makes us most human.

Rather, they’re quite literally adapted (and only lightly adapted, at that) marketing and sales tactics from the corporate world — which were, by design, created to compel humans to spend money on widgets that they may or may not need.

Corporate marketing and sales are adapting AI with abandon.

Being able to reach more people, more efficiently, with fewer paid humans involved in the process? We love to see that ROI, they’re thinking!

And because nonprofits are situated within a capitalistic culture that prioritizes and values this sort of thinking above all else, nonprofits tend to think this way too.

Better ROI for our fundraising with AI?

Sign me up!

Right?

But here’s the problem with that thinking.

The more we mechanize our fundraising…

… the less human it becomes.

And the less human it becomes…

… the less successful it will be.

You don’t need a research study to prove this to you.

You feel this in your bones, right?

Do you feel passionate about work that supports your community… if it feels like you are just one name on a spreadsheet somewhere, just a mail-merged data point on a multi-channel appeal that comes to both your email and home mailbox, in addition to showing up on your social feeds, with everything being perfectly coordinated in its implementation and consistent in its design (a.k.a. good marketing 101)?

Does that really inspire you to ignite your love for humanity?

My guess is no.

That’s certainly my answer, if I’m talking as an honest human and not a professional fundraiser trained in these tactics.

And at this point in my career, nearly two decades in?

I’m done.

I’m done with ranking donors according to their “lifetime value”… with referring to only certain humans as “high net-worth”… with mechanizing communication with donors… with calling some donors “major,” which inevitably intimates that other donors are “minor”… with referring to philanthropic giving as “charity”… with telling the public only the shiniest, most spiffed-up stories about the mission and the work… with running fundraisers into the ground while they try to singlehandedly manage hundreds-to-thousands of relationships at once… with treating the money like it matters the most, far surpassing the many many humans involved in the process of the work… with thinking about donors as though they’re “ours” and acting possessive of them, especially around other nonprofits… with calling human beings “prospects”… and doing “prospect research” on donors to learn things about them they never intended for us to know, instead of just asking them to tell us themselves… with leaving power dynamics with donors unexamined and undiscussed… with not having real, honest, mutualistic relationships with donors… and more.

All of the above realities — well-represented within the field of nonprofit fundraising — show how far we’ve gotten from the essence of true philanthropy, of every part of this work being centered on a love for our fellow humans.

AI certainly doesn’t fix this — it can only make it worse.

What do we need instead?

We need community.

Collective Giving Will Be the Future of Fundraising

I’ve had multiple collective giving experiences in my life.

Tune in next week, and I’ll tell you about them.

But ultimately, a combination of these experiences… and my experiences as a professional fundraiser… and with how much dissonance I felt between the two… and of how much I knew in my bones that there was a better way to do fundraising… gradually led me to be convinced that collective giving was the way forward for our field of nonprofit fundraising.

So imagine my thrill when Hali Lee wrote a whole book about it, which was just released last year!

And then, imagine my exponentially greater thrill… when, over the past two weeks, both of our major community foundations in the Twin Cities — The Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation… and The Minneapolis Foundation — held events welcoming Hali to town to discuss her book and its ideas.

I wasn’t just thrilled to meet Hali.

I wasn’t just thrilled to see my communities discussing collective giving.

I wasn’t just thrilled to see two of the stalwarts of institutional philanthropy in our area clearly throwing their significant weight behind the prospect of collective giving.

I was especially thrilled to see the vibrant, diverse, engaged, curious crowds that came to both events… and seemingly left ready to dig in and really get going with collective giving!

Something is brewing here.

I can feel it.

And I couldn’t be happier about it.

Again: tune in next week, when I will tell stories about my collective giving experiences, so you can start to get a sense of what this looks like in practice — and how you might be able to try it yourself.

Conversation: Your Real Real

I really want to know your more detailed and nuanced thoughts, too. Let’s start a conversation on this topic. Visit the comments section!

Leave a comment

Practice: Make It Yours

I’m giving away a copy of The Big We: How Giving Circles Unlock Generosity, Strengthen Community, and Make Change.

How can you put your name in the hat to win the book?

Reflect about your experiences with philanthropic giving.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What have been your less-than-ideal experiences as a donor?

• What have been your best experiences as a donor?

• What are the questions you have about collective giving?

Write your answers in the comments section on this post, and I will draw a winner from the commenters to send the book to.

Leave a comment

I can’t wait for you to read it!

A Gift to Take With You: Something to Sit With

Giving circles are not the only way to build belonging, but they’re a really good way, and something any of us can do. You don’t need to be wealthy to practice generosity (and building community) in this manner. Giving circles bring philanthropic practitioners closer to their communities and the people who inhabit them. Giving circles encourage the type of connection and closeness that Big Phil seems to try to keep at a remove. And giving circles can help knit us back together again.

- Hali Lee

Read on….

For You: Today’s Main Course

Did you know that you’re a philanthropist?

Well, hold up.

You’re not a philanthropist if you don’t care about other people and try to help them whenever you can.

But I’m pretttttty sure that no one here in the For the Love of Humanity community fits that description.

So yes: you are a philanthropist!

Do you usually think of yourself that way?

I’m betting no.

Because the meanings of words like “philanthropy” and “philanthropist” have completely morphed, in a modern age where the rich keep getting richer… and everyone else worries about how to put food on the table, amidst ever-rising inflation and seemingly ever-shrinking jobs and adequate compensation for a day’s work.

Like many things in a world of widening economic inequality like this, “philanthropy” has started to revolve around money — and those who are considered the most important and valid and laudable participants are those who have, and give, the most financially.

Our Language Needs to Change

Look at how we talk about this stuff.

“High Net-Worth Individual.” This one has always bothered me. How can we use this language to refer to one individual, just because they control an outsize amount of financial wealth? If you ask me, every single human being on this planet has high net-worth. And I would never, ever rank one’s worth over another’s. Honestly, how could there be a “high net-worth individual”… if all human beings are high net-worth?

“Major Gifts.” Fundraisers have gotten so used to this term — used to refer to donors who give the largest gifts — that we don’t even stop to think about it anymore. But let’s. The connotations of the word “major” (according to Merriam-Webster) are that it bestows greater dignity, rank, importance, or interest on whatever it describes. So in essence, fundraisers are creating a world where the ones who give the most money are given greater dignity, rank, importance, or interest. And often, we do this while working to provide band-aids that help people without the ability to give such gifts… to merely survive. Do you see that juxtaposition? While some of our fellow human beings — folks who have just as much inherent worth as all other human beings — struggle to merely survive, we’re falling over ourselves to shower extra attention and praise on others who are perfectly comfortable already. I’m not OK with that. Are you?

“Our Most Generous Donors.” In fundraiser-speak, this almost always refers to folks who have given the most dollars. What a misnomer, though! Think about it. If someone has access to a million dollars and they give $100,000… are they more generous than someone who is earning minimum wage… and gives $25? I say no way. I don’t even really want to rank peoples’ generosity… but still, I’d say that someone giving from their funds needed for survival — vs. someone giving from resources far-in-excess of what they actually need to meet their needs — is showing greater generosity. Why don’t we recognize this reality more, as fundraisers?

Our language really needs to change.

Especially if we want the way things are to change….

Giving USA 2026 Report

Every year around this time, Giving USA releases their report on the previous calendar year’s state of philanthropic giving, and everyone involved in fundraising for nonprofits rushes to digest it and understand what it means for their work.

My buddy Nate recently posted on LinkedIn: “Happy Giving USA Hot-Takes Season to all who celebrate.” Ha! Indeed.

I’m not really a hot-taker.

But I will say this.

I’ve been a professional fundraiser for nearly two decades already. So I’ve seen a lot of these reports come and go. And almost without fail, giving increases every year.

I think that’s pretty much to be expected, in a country so driven by capitalism that growth is considered the only way to success.

Add to that that there’s a whole financial services industry dedicated to helping those who are collecting wealth to hang onto it and grow it even more, and you’ve got growth in philanthropic giving.

The progression looks something like this….

Corporate profits grow.

Those invested in the market grow their wealth.

Financial advisors recommend philanthropic giving as a way to divest of their clients’ monetary gains — usually as a means to avoid taxation, which is another problem to discuss on another day, I must add.

And nonprofits end up benefitting.

But that’s the problem.

Growth in financial giving, for many years now, has been a function of growing wealth in the top echelons of our economy.

The headline from Giving USA this year is that charitable giving grew to $617.20 billion in 2025, surpassing the $600 billion mark for the first time, and growing 3% annually when adjusted for inflation.

And that is what everyone hears.

And people cheer, thinking things are moving in the right direction. And then, they go back to doing whatever they were doing.

Look at the way that Giving USA presents its results, and you only see reference to the dollars increasing.

You’d think things sound pretty hunky-dory.

But that’s not the whole picture.

In order to even see the bigger picture, you have to dig for certain “hot-takes” that mention a concerning problem. Only some do.

I appreciated the way Marts&Lundy laid it out: “The most important insight is not simply that giving is growing. It is how that growth is occurring. Philanthropy is becoming increasingly concentrated.”

They went on to say this:

Total charitable giving increased across all major sources in 2025, supported by strong financial markets and continued asset growth. Individual giving remained the largest source of philanthropy at $394.2 billion, while foundations, corporations, and bequests all posted gains as well.

At the same time, a familiar trend continued: “donors down, dollars up.” Fewer individuals are giving, while larger gifts account for a growing share of philanthropic revenue.

What is becoming clearer is that this is not simply a cyclical shift. It reflects a more structural change in how philanthropy is distributed, with growth becoming more concentrated among higher-capacity donors and certain giving vehicles.

OK. Got it.

So what does that mean for us?

One of their recommendations to nonprofit leaders is to “rebalance [their] portfolio strategy to account for concentration.”

<insert GIF of someone looking confused and skeptical>

I’m not OK with just fatalistically accepting this state of affairs — one that has been continuously developing over a period of years now, mind you — by simply figuring out how the nonprofits I support can adjust their portfolios to best take advantage of this mega-wealthy, increasingly concentrated money train.

No way.

I want to be a part of flipping that reality on its head.

Because I don’t believe concentrated philanthropy is where it’s at.

I don’t want to continue to see “donors down, dollars up.”

I want to see the number of donors increasing, above all else.

I think philanthropy…

… belongs to all of us.

Philanthropy Of The People

I’m calling it now.

The future of philanthropy is collective giving.

We can’t keep advancing on the path we’re on right now and expect that our communities will solve any of their problems — let alone thrive.

I can see it so clearly: the path we’re on just leads to greater inequity… deeper suffering in our communities… and further alienation from each other.

Not. Good.

We need the antidote to this poisonous path.

All thriving is mutual.

And our path to thriving must be mutual, too.

“Philanthropy” means love of humanity.

All of us who love our fellow humans are philanthropists.

And “philanthropy” needs to start including all of us again.

This is exactly why I birthed a new section of this publication last month: Philanthropy Of The People.

From the launch post:

How do we recover the purity of neighbors simply helping neighbors — without any middlemen or overly complex processes?

How do we counter-act current trends causing ballooning monetary wealth in the top 5% of the population, accompanied by ever-increasing poverty for the majority of the population… which, in our current model of “philanthropy” means that there will be fewer and fewer able to give.. and more and more in need?

How do we seed and grow more of the the powerful mutual aid networks that rose up in Minneapolis earlier this year… and inspired the world?

How do we humanize donors… fundraisers… and whole communities who are being de-humanized by our current processes?

I got you.

This is not as big and hard as we might make it.

We know the way.

Our ancestors have been there.

All we have to do is remember… and return.

Philanthropy Of The People — a new section of this Substack publication launching today — will focus on the process of getting where we need to go.

Together.

➡️ From narrow, hierarchical giving… to collective giving.

➡️ From mechanization… to humanization.

➡️ From corporate… to community-centric.

➡️ From professionalization… to democratization.

➡️ From fewer and fewer participating… to more and more participants.

The heart and soul of Philanthropy Of The People will be talking about, providing inspiration for, and giving practical support for Collective Giving.

Giving Circles.

Collaborative Funds.

Crowdfunding.

Mutual Aid.

Giving Projects.

Donor Organizing.

… and more.

I can’t wait to see all of this unfold.

Because we clearly need it — so badly.

So… whadaya say?!

Are you with me?

Conversation: Your Real Real

I really want to know your more detailed and nuanced thoughts, too. Let’s start a conversation on this topic. Visit the comments section!

Leave a comment

Practice: Make It Yours

For real, now.

Do you consider yourself a philanthropist?

Why or why not?

Spend some time in reflection, pondering and answering these questions:

• What might be stopping me from embodying philanthropy more?

• How might I start embodying philanthropy more?

• How can I encourage/inspire others to do the same?

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A Gift to Take With You: Something to Sit With

Every time I hear Sara Lomelin speak, I fall a little more in love with her. She is a powerhouse, a delight, and a widely recognized leader in moving philanthropy towards collective giving: a member of the inaugural TIME100 Philanthropy List in 2025, as well as the 2024 NonProfit Times Power & Influence Top 50 and the 2023 Forbes’ 50 Over 50: Impact List.

She’s a badass. She’s on fire. She’s an inspiration. AND she’s someone you just want to hang out with. Do that here for about twenty minutes!

Read on to find out….

For You: Today’s Main Course

I love humans.

I especially love humans in community.

I love the magic that happens when people gather together, and care about each other, and work together to help each other and be helped, and prioritize their collective well-being.

There is nothing else quite as lovely as the experience of being in community — feeling your heart, mind, and whole being tune into the joy of connection and care within a group, a sense that is as much about receiving as it is about giving.

This is philanthropy.

The roots of the word philanthropy are Greek: philos, meaning love (think Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love”), and anthropos, meaning humanity (think anthropology, or the scientific study of humanity).

Yet, in the many years that I’ve worked in the field of professionalized philanthropy, I’ve observed that there is very little love, or humanity, in the prevailing practice of “philanthropy” today.

We’ve come to think of “philanthropy” as big money given in “charity” — and “fundraising” as the way we attract and direct that big money to specific “nonprofit” organizations. And this whole process has morphed — as it’s been professionalized and scaled up exponentially — in ways our ancestors wouldn’t recognize.

Donors are feeling like ATMs…

… fundraisers are feeling like cogs in a machine….

… communities are being commodified….

… which means everyone is feeling de-humanized.

And all the work we’ve been doing in this field — over many decades — hasn’t really changed many of the problems we’re addressing.

So what are we really doing here?

I think it’s time to return…

… to where philanthropy started.

Before foundations… or corporate giving programs… or donor-advised funds (DAFs)… or “major gifts”… or “annual giving”… or “planned giving”… or donor acquisition mailings… or “appeal” letters… or CRMs… or galas… or “donor lifetime value” (DLV)… or Return on Investment (ROI)… or endowments… or stock gifts… and certainly before AI and crypto, the most recent trends on the scene…

… “philanthropy” was just neighbors helping neighbors, in solidarity.

Everyone came together and helped, if someone needed to raise a barn, or if someone’s house was on fire. If people noticed someone in their community was hungry, they’d feed them. Or if someone needed a place to stay, they’d be invited into others’ homes.

And in the earliest days of humanity, “philanthropy” would have likely been even more natural and daily:

Think about a time, very long ago, before they started building buildings like we have today. They would have lived in close relationship with the natural world. (That would have been the only option!) The natural world would have been their “floor,” their “ceiling,” and the “walls” around them.

Beyond their connection to the natural world, there are likely many more things we can assume about our ancestors who lived in such a time.

We can assume that they would have known exactly where their food came from, as they would have been directly involved in every stage of its path to their mouths. Or that they would have gone to bed with the sunset… and awoken with the sunrise, as there were no lights to turn on, to illuminate the night, or shades to draw down, to allow for morning snoozes amidst the sunshine.

Given how closely people would have lived together in a time like that, and how precarious survival would have been, people would likely have understood how much supporting and caring for each other was essential to human life.

Yes?

Surviving without that sense of mutual care and responsibility for each other would have been next-to-impossible, I imagine.

How do we recover the purity of neighbors simply helping neighbors — without any middlemen or overly complex processes?

How do we counter-act current trends causing ballooning monetary wealth in the top 5% of the population, accompanied by ever-increasing poverty for the majority of the population… which, in our current model of “philanthropy” means that there will be fewer and fewer able to give.. and more and more in need?

How do we seed and grow more of the the powerful mutual aid networks that rose up in Minneapolis earlier this year… and inspired the world?

How do we humanize donors… fundraisers… and whole communities who are being de-humanized by our current processes?

I got you.

This is not as big and hard as we might make it.

We know the way.

Our ancestors have been there.

All we have to do is remember… and return.

Philanthropy Of The People — a new section of this Substack publication launching today — will focus on the process of getting where we need to go.

Together.

➡️ From narrow, hierarchical giving… to collective giving.

➡️ From mechanization… to humanization.

➡️ From corporate… to community-centric.

➡️ From professionalization… to democratization.

➡️ From fewer and fewer participating… to more and more participants.

The heart and soul of Philanthropy Of The People will be talking about, providing inspiration for, and giving practical support for Collective Giving.

Giving Circles.

Collaborative Funds.

Crowdfunding.

Mutual Aid.

Giving Projects.

Donor Organizing.

… and more.

I lean heavily on the expertise and passion of the good folks at Philanthropy Together in generating this list, and I encourage you to plug into their great programming and educational offerings too.

Because we need all the help we can get…

… to turn the Titanic.

Collective Giving is not the model that the massive, worldwide nonprofit and philanthropic industrial complex has predominantly been using… right?

Our current world of philanthropy, fundraising, and nonprofits is quite siloed, hierarchical, corporatized, individualized, professionalized, and — all these things considered — broadly de-humanizing.

Moving to a model of Collective Giving is the antidote to all of these toxins, and I truly believe that this is the future of fundraising and philanthropy.

To that end, when I work 1:1 with organizations going forward, I will be prioritizing helping them develop Collective Giving as their model for mobilizing all the resources they need.

I can’t wait to really dig into this!

As I talk about it, this is the process of transforming fundraising…

… into philanthropy.

Think about it.

If you could shift your focus from “raising money”…

… to mobilizing collective resources out of love for humanity…

… wouldn’t you want to?

I sure would.

So I’m going to.

Will you join me?

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Conversation: Your Real Real

I really want to know your more detailed and nuanced thoughts, too. Let’s start a conversation on this topic. Visit the comments section!

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Practice: Make It Yours

Find a quiet place where you can be alone for a few minutes.

First, take some deep breaths, to settle your nervous system…

… and then, reflect on this question:

If I could personally start a collective giving circle… who would I invite? And who do I believe we would most likely give to?

Write down your answers.

And let yourself start to dream about how you might actually do it!

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Inspiration: Something to Sit With

Giving circles are a great way for people to use all of their five T’s [time, talent, treasure, ties, testimony] in order to make their communities more free, more fair, more joyful, more opportunity-equal for all.

Do we want to move all of our five T’s towards our communities… or do we want to move [them] towards these three billionaires who are currently running amok through our federal public goods and services in order to enrich themselves and their billionaire friends?

- Hali Lee, author of The Big We: How Giving Circles Unlock Generosity, Strengthen Community, and Make Change

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