A Decade of Giving Circle
Last week I picked up a giant Chocolate Explosion cake at the market and had them write this (remarkably sloppy and uncentered) sentiment on top.
Hard to believe that it was ten years ago, in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, that some friends and I came together for the first meeting of our Giving Circle. I brought the cake to last week’s meeting and talked about the similarities between then and now. Specifically, in 2005, we were haunted and moved to action by the sight on television of drowned bodies in New Orleans. Ten years later, those drowning victims haunting us are Syrian refugees, another population of helpless civilians caught in the eye of a different kind of storm.
On the face of it, nothing has changed in ten years. If anything, our eyes have been opened to how many organizations out there need support, how wide the gap is between vision and funding.
Except for this: I, and I’d venture to say this on behalf of my fellow GC members, don’t feel so helpless anymore. The simple act of coming together four times a year with a fluid and widening group of friends, to pool our collective -and I assure you, individually modest – contributions has nonetheless made an impact for non-profits that are both local and far-flung.
I just pulled up my spreadsheet of the organizations to whom our Giving Circle has directed our contributions – as well as our volunteer hours – over the years.
Beyond Emancipation
Good Cents for Oakland
Berea College
Bishop Masareka Christian Foundations
St. Marks School Maputoland Fund
Center for Independent Living
Holt International
Oakland Community Pool Program
Hands On Gulf Coast
Wardrobe for Opportunity
Feral Cat Foundation
ARF
George Marks Children’s House
Charity: Water
Selective Mutism
Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation
Sports Sans Frontieres
Beyond Emancipation
St. John’s Shelter for Women and Children
Rebuilding Together Oakland
Project Linus
Horseriders for Health in Lesotho/Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
Oakland Elizabeth House
826 Valencia
Vida Verde
Ms. Jackson’s classroom at Allendale School, OUSD
City Slickers
Rising Sun Energy Center
UCB Sage Scholars
East Bay Agency for Children
Lighthouse Community Charter School
Camp Reel Stories
First Place for Youth
Breast Cancer Action
New Day for Children
Calico Center
Girls, Inc
Kiva
That’s a lot of good that a small group of friends has managed to pull off in the world. All it took was a commitment to two hours, every couple of months, over wine, dessert, and icebreakers that require Cone of Silence level privacy policies.
The next name to add to this list: The Milligan Foundation. It’s an Oakland based organization that provides transportation and relocation services to people who have been victimized by domestic violence. Established in 2010 by Tracey Milligan, who spoke at our meeting last week (and, I’m not going to give away the icebreaker, but apparently has a lead foot) the Foundation partners with over 300 shelters across the country to provide the most options possible for people who need to escape a life terrorized by domestic violence. Tracey shared some anecdotes of women – and a few men – and their children who have been rescued and transported to safe locations through her foundation. Truly harrowing stories.
Tracey and her foundation are now trying to take the “get safe, stay safe” message and tools worldwide, creating the International Domestic Violence Community (IDVC) to connect providers of resources to combat domestic violence across the globe to share education, resources, best practices, client services, funding opportunities, and emergency service alerts. With help from corporate donors like Salesforce, Twilio, and Forcebrain, the Foundation has raised everything it needs for its launch at the World Conference of Shelters in Netherland in November- minus $30k.
The GC ladies put down the chocolate cake and picked up the checkbooks and wrote out what we could. The next day, I got an email from Tracey. She had just found out that she needed to pay an unexpected software licensing fee for one aspect of the project. Our group contribution covered the fee, and left her $23 extra.
News like that makes Giving Circle seem kind of magical.
If you’d also like to help Tracey and the victims of domestic violence in Oakland and around the world, please consider your own contribution via the brand new GoFundMe page that Tracey set up after some of the GC ladies told her they’d like to share it with friends and family.
If you’re interested in learning about how to set up your own GC, hit me in the comments – I am very happy to share how we did it and how we run it.
Playing us out today: Neil Finn, Benedict Cumberbatch, and a Crowded House rarity, “Help Is Coming.” It was recorded in ’96 as a B-side as the band was breaking up. Neil’s just re-released the song as a fundraiser for Save The Children’s Refugee Crisis Appeal. Check out this video and then please consider downloading it on iTunes to help.
Related StoriesKhos Don’t CampKind Giving Circle Today on TueNightNext Midlife Mixtape ’80s Dance Party: October 8
