Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about trying to get more alignment between our values, the type of world we want, and then what we end up doing with our money on a daily basis. I’m talking about how we shop, where we bank, how we invest. And yes of course, where we give our money, where we donate.

I was listening to an interview with a researcher who first really brought this realization of the loneliness epidemic to nonacademic audiences. His name is Robert Putnam and he first identified that something was shifting 25 years ago. When he talked about reasons why so many of us feel lonely and potential solutions he talked about joining groups. The name of his book “Bowling Alone.” One of his suggestions is to join groups like a bowling league or a tennis club or whatever, a book club. Join a group of people who are doing something you might enjoy.

So I’ve been thinking about that.

And in thinking about how isolated our lives have become, I’ve been thinking about opportunities to do things with other people that we might normally do alone. I remember a conversation that I was having with my very wise mother about getting information on google. She commented on how sad it is that we don’t pick up the phone to ask friends for information or advice as much any more. We tend to look online first. And that is so true. After that conversation I’ve started to actually reach out to friends to ask them about things I might otherwise have looked up online. I had tabouli salad at a friends home the other day and normally I would have looked up a recipe to make it myself the next week, but this time I actually picked up the phone and asked my friend for the recipe. It was absolutely a standard recipe, but I liked that moment of connection and I thought about my friend when I made the salad yesterday and I look forward to telling her about it when I see her tomorrow. Old school connection.

With the holidays on the distant horizon and well, with Giving Tuesday coming up, it seemed like maybe there’s an opportunity to talk about the idea of a pop up giving circle. This was a suggestion that came out of the We Give Summit conference that I participated in in May of 2024. Actually if you want to check out my talk from that conference, I’ll link that for you. 

But as part of the swag bag, the conference organizers, Philanthropy Together gave us this deck of cards with fun ideas to get more engaged with giving back to our communities. And a pop up giving circle was one of those ideas.

So let’s talk about this fun idea. I think there’s enough time to pull this off before the holidays this year, so let me know if you end up trying this out.

So what’s a giving circle and what’s a pop up giving circle?

A traditional giving circle:

• Meets regularly, such as monthly or quarterly sometimes on an ongoing basis or sometimes for a year or so. So there’s a level of commitment there. And that’s why people like it, the structure, the accountability, getting into a rhythm with a team. It’s a communal team like spirit. It can be very fun.
• Members commit to contributing money on a recurring basis. Maybe once a quarter for example. And everyone in the circle is involved in the discussions and decision-making process on where to donate the money. 
• Members of a traditional giving circle often engage deeply with the causes they support. That could look like having a speaker come in and talk with the giving circle to learn more about an issue, they might volunteer together, essentially they are building long term relationships within the group and with the cause they care about.

Episode 28 was all about how to set up a traditional giving circle. Check it out if you missed it. I’ll link it in the show notes if you don’t want to dig around for it.

So that’s a traditional giving circle.

Now let’s talk about a pop up giving circle.

• First major difference, they are temporary, a pop up giving circle might last for an hour and a half. Whoever is participating joins the gathering, everyone pools their funds that they are contributing, they talk about who they might donate the pile of money to, and then they decide. All within that time. Very fast paced very exciting, definitely sounds like a lot of fun to me. If y’all are having one of these, invite me!
• So there’s no long term membership to a pop up giving circle. There’s no commitment, there’s no complicated scheduling. Either you can make it that day or you can’t. I love that simplicity.
• Now the other difference is that there won’t be as much deep community building like you’d get with a traditional giving circle. That being said, if you do a pop up giving circle with people you already know, I do think it will be a fun energizer that your group will remember for a long time.

In fact, you can even do this as a fun team building type of activity at your job. I mentioned Philanthropy Together earlier, they are a nonprofit all about giving circles. Collective giving is their thing, they call it democratizing philanthropy.

I’ll leave a link to their website so you can get more info about how to set up a pop up giving circle or a traditional one, and it looks like you can even ask for their help in setting up a pop up giving circle at your workplace. It looks like they’ve done one for Google employees. And they did one with Giphy for women’s history month. In a really short amount of time, less than two hours, employees pooled their money and then decided as a group where they wanted to donate.

At a high level, if a pop up giving circle sounds fun to you, here are the general steps to follow:

1. Gather a group of people: Invite friends, family, coworkers, friends from your place of worship, your flag football team, your bookclub, the affinity group you’re a member of at your job.
2. Set a timeframe: Pop-up giving circles are typically short, lasting anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes.
3. Discuss values and goals: Have folks share their values and reasons for giving. This helps establish a shared vision for the group and get the warm fuzzies started. Opening people’s minds and hearts.
4. This is where you start to look for a topic that popped up a lot as people went around and talked about their values. Or maybe there’s something that connects the values that most people shared in the group. As a group you can start to choose a focus or cause: Decide on a specific issue area or community that the circle will support.
5. This is the point at which I would ask each person to throw their money into the pot. Initially I was thinking you’d have people pitch in the money before the conversation started, but I think you gotta warm up a little bit, be reminded of our community values and then decide how much you’ll throw in.
6. You could have a guest speaker or expert to provide information about the chosen cause. Here’s how I’d imagine that playing out. I could imagine a pop up giving circle let’s say for the black employee affinity group at my job. On the invite it could say, let’s gather together for some speed giving. We know we’re going to give to some Black led nonprofit in DC but we will have to decide which one and how much to give during the pop up circle. Then at the actual event, I could imagine having a speaker come in who is familiar with the needs in our city and what the landscape is of the type of work that’s going on.
7. Engage in discussion: if your pop up giving circle is large, you could use breakout rooms or small group conversations to allow participants to discuss the topic and which charity to give the money to.
8. As a group, decide on the organization or cause that will receive the pot of money.
9. And then to close the even tout, you could encourage everyone who participated to consider staying involved, for example volunteering with the charity in the future, or adding them to your own giving list.

Giving as a group sounds really fun to me, giving as a member of a temporary pop up group also sounds really fun.

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:

• Traditional giving circles are where you join a group of people that meets on a recurring basis for example once a quarter for a year, or maybe for years. Generally you pool your money with that community and you really learn about the various ways you can donate that pot of money, you have speakers come in, you maybe visit various nonprofits, you might volunteer as a group, you discuss and vote and donate together on a regular basis.
• A pop up is all of that except in an hour or an hour and a half. You gather up a group of people you know, like your coworkers or your bookclub, you set up a time. This Saturday at 5pm we’re going to meet up at the back room of the cafe, or we’ll meet up online. We will talk about things we care about, we’ll pass around a hat and then we will decide as a group where to donate and then make that donation by the end of the hour and a half. It’s fast paced it’s fun it’s energizing. And then you can all go do something fun after that. Go enjoy some outdoor bowling together or enjoy a meal together.
• If you want to learn more about giving circles pop up or otherwise you can check out Philanthropy Together, they put together a free virtual conference that I was honored to speak at in May of 2024, and it looks like they also offer some help if you want to do a pop up circle at your job and don’t know where to start. Or if you want to join a giving circle and want some help finding one.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out, that’s episode 99 What's your plan for Giving Tuesday this year?

My thought in talking about this idea now was that there would be enough time in case you wanted to do a pop up giving circle for the holidays as something a little off the beaten path. You could even do it in time for Giving Tuesday which is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and a big day for donations in America.

Links for everything will be in the show notes as always.

Were you looking for a way to be a good Samaritan today? I have an idea! Send this episode to someone who you think might enjoy it. Or send the trailer to someone to give them an idea of what the show is about. Podcasts, especially independent podcasts still tend to grow by word of mouth. So your help would be appreciated!

Let’s end with a quote…

Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place. -Rosalynn Carter via Joshua Garriga

Let’s talk again soon!