Getting Together to Give

Tired of simply responding to fund-raising appeals, donors join forces to find worthy causes

Every Friday night for the past 25 years, a group of Jewish couples in Norwalk, Conn., has gathered to share the Sabbath in each other’s homes.

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First they recite the standard prayers. Then over dessert and coffee they carry out a less-traditional Friday-night ritual: They plot their philanthropy.

Together, the 13 couples put about $10,000 a year into a pool to give away. They have donated to dozens of charities, from an Israeli orphanage to a local soup kitchen.

And their gifts have included more than money: They once paid for medication that was smuggled — in a bag of M&M’s — to a critically ill Soviet Jew. The man, in prison for trying to escape from the Soviet Union, was eventually released. He later traveled to the United States, where he thanked the donors in person.

Members of the Norwalk group say their gifts would not be nearly as creative or as satisfying if they did not collaborate. “First of all, you have a larger amount to give when everyone is chipping in,” says Ellen Donen, a retired elementary-school teacher who helped found the group. “And with all of us suggesting groups and discussing why they’re worthwhile, we learn more about different causes than we would on our own.”

In recent years, a growing number of donors have come to the same conclusion. Many of them are joining together in living rooms across the country to discuss charitable causes and identify which ones deserve their support.

The idea of “team giving,” as it is often called, has taken hold outside the home, too.

At some companies, employees are forming groups to review proposals and visit charities during working hours. And community foundations, which raise and distribute money to local causes, are recruiting young professionals to form donor groups.

Many in the charity world believe that the rising popularity of team giving could help to reverse the recent decline in the number of Americans who give to charity. A study released last month by Independent Sector, a Washington coalition of charities and grant makers, found that 38 million fewer households contributed to charity last year than in 1993.

“You see donors in these groups start to get excited and wake up to the potential of the non-profit community,” says Tracy Gary, a participant in several donor groups and founder of Resourceful Women, a San Francisco organization that teaches women how to give wisely. “They start to bring other donors to the table as never before,” she adds.

Although no figures are available, non-profit leaders say donors who participate in team giving also tend to contribute more money and volunteer more time than they would otherwise. “People are willing to give more if they are in a group of people jointly figuring out how to give,” says Sue Hoffman of the Shefa Fund, a Philadelphia group that has tried to encourage group giving as part of its efforts to stimulate Jewish philanthropy.

Even so, team giving has its limitations. Maintaining a donors’ group takes a great deal of work and can be emotionally demanding, especially because members sometimes disagree over which charities to support and how the group should operate.

Judging from the makeup of most groups, team giving is particularly attractive to people in the baby-boomer generation, most of whom are now in their 30s and 40s. Those people tend to be more skeptical than their parents about traditional fund-raising appeals and less likely to give in response to telephone and direct-mail solicitations, numerous surveys have found.

They are also more likely to want direct involvement with the causes they support and to ask more questions before giving to a charity. Team-giving groups provide them with that opportunity.

The groups vary in their origins and in the ground rules governing their philanthropy, but most require all participants to donate a specific amount and to help decide how to distribute the pool of participants’ money, whether by casting a vote or by participating in reaching a consensus.

As the popularity of team giving rises, many groups that started out small have seen significant growth. A Territory Resource, a Seattle group started in 1978 by six people in their 20s who had inherited large sums of money, has seen a 40-per-cent increase in the number of its members over the last three years. It now has 210 members who each give $1,000 or more annually.

Like some other team-giving groups, A Territory Resource has evolved into a non-profit organization with a paid staff. It now has five employees who handle meeting schedules and other administrative tasks. (In 1995, the group gave more than $500,000 in grants.)

But other groups have chosen to remain small and informal.

Rebels With a Cause, a Seattle group created three years ago, is one organization that is adamant about maintaining its informality. Aimed at people in their 30s and 40s who make moderate incomes, the 18-member group uses its own letterhead for correspondence with charities. But its members rejected the idea of forming a tax-exempt organization to administer the group’s tiny grants.

Therese Ogle, an adviser to family foundations who founded the Rebels, says that each member of the group is supposed to give $50 every time he or she comes to one of the group’s quarterly meetings. That yields a pot of $500 to $800, depending on how many people show up.

At each meeting, two or more members talk about a worthwhile charity they have chosen and explain what that charity could do with a few hundred dollars. Then the group discusses the prospective recipients and votes on which charity will receive the evening’s contributions.

“A lot of us were writing checks for $25 here and there, which generally get lost in the shuffle,” says Ms. Ogle. “We thought if we put them together, we could make a difference. Now I don’t have to feel guilty about all the phone solicitations and direct mail I cannot respond to. This is how I give, and I’m satisfied with it.”

The Rebels recently gave $800 to a day-care center for homeless and other needy children run by Family Services, a local social-services group.

“When you are chosen to receive a gift like this, it is truly uplifting,” says Jane Ewing, director of development at Family Services. Such a spontaneous donation, coming from people who were not asked to give, she says, is often more inspiring to staff members than foundation or government grants, which usually come through more impersonal channels.

Whether they give a little or a lot, donors in team-giving groups share a strong desire to make sure that their contributions lead to tangible results.

Ms. Donen, a member of the Norwalk donors’ group, says that her friends “like to give to things that would otherwise fall through the cracks.” That has meant paying for a new mattress at the local center for the elderly or clothing for a homeless family.

While such gifts are decidedly unglamorous, Mrs. Donen says her group is gratified when it can see how its contributions make a difference to needy people.

That same desire to see results is what motivates many people who have gotten together to pool contributions on the job.

Organizers of those groups say they wanted a chance to work directly with charities, rather than simply to authorize that a portion of their paycheck be automatically deducted for United Way or similar organizations.

Rita Duncan chairs an employee-run fund started three years ago at the Raychem Corporation, a Menlo Park, Cal., company that makes electronics equipment. Last year, 558 employees gave $127,000 to the fund. In deciding how to distribute the money, Ms. Duncan and her colleagues reviewed proposals and visited the charities they were considering supporting, often during work hours.

“There’s a big difference in my mind between this and just giving part of my paycheck to a black hole,” says Ms. Duncan. “The letters we get back are so rewarding. This is something you can point to and say, ‘We gave this money and it went for something.’ ”

The company has been supportive of the donors’ group, says Scott Wylie, director of corporate communications, because it helps lift morale. Letting the employees visit charities during work hours, he says, allows us to “improve our relationship with employees and the community both.”

Donor groups also attract wealthy people, not just those of modest means.

Marta Drury, an independently wealthy San Francisco donor, says that the chance to work alongside other donors and non-profit organizations on women’s issues is what initially attracted her to team giving. Ms. Drury has contributed at least $22,500 and hundreds of hours of volunteer time as a member of a “funding circle” started two years ago by the Global Fund for Women, a San Francisco organization that provides financial support to women’s-rights groups. Members of the circle study forced prostitution and other types of sexual exploitation around the world and give money to organizations that deal with those issues.

“I was giving individually to women’s causes for 10 years before this,” Ms. Drury says, “and I felt isolated.

“Most of my friends are not involved in philanthropy, and they don’t see it as real work. They think it’s like collecting stamps.”

Participating with a group of like-minded people, she says, “breaks the isolation. You get a sense that you’re not doing impossible work alone.”

Many donors join team-giving programs because they get an opportunity to apply their skills to benefit society — or they can learn something new.

Ms. Drury, for example, and her fellow donors learned about promoting causes by working on a video documentary and a two-day conference organized by her group to increase public awareness of social problems that stem from forced prostitution.

“Wealthy people often feel that charities see them only as a bag of money,” says Gloria Gross Villa, director of marketing and development at A Territory Resource. “But donors want to feel they’re wanted for their skills, not just their checkbooks.”

Officials at the Chicago Community Trust, which started a donors’ group for people under age 40, say they make a point of recruiting people with accounting, legal, or other expertise to review proposals, evaluate budgets, and get involved in other grant-making tasks that require professional skills.

“This is unique and intriguing to donors, compared with being on a junior board where they just get asked to organize parties and special events,” says Leslie Kase, a development officer at the trust.

Team giving has done more than just channel money to charities.

Ruth Reiss, a development officer at the Boston Foundation, says that donors in her foundation’s Next Generation Group for young professionals have started volunteering more, particularly at charities they have visited as members of the donors’ group.

Several donors who visited Gang Peace, a Boston charity that works with gang members, for example, now volunteer there.

“It is a real turning point for donors to see these groups in the trenches,” Ms. Reiss says.

Visits to charities and other aspects of team giving have also taught many donors to be more discriminating with the gifts they make on their own.

“Now I look at charities to see who’s on the board and whether decisions are made by the board or staff,” says Suzanne Edison, a Seattle landscape designer and a member of A Territory Resource for nearly a decade. “I try to see if what they say they do is realistic. A lot of groups inflate their accomplishments. Being in the group has definitely changed my individual giving.”

But sticking with a donor group, Ms. Edison concedes, is not always easy. She says that she has sometimes disagreed with the group’s choice of causes to support. But she notes that in recent years, as the popularity of her group has grown, she has become increasingly fascinated with the collective-giving process.

“There are more people involved in the group,” she says, “which makes decision making more challenging. And non-profits are having a difficult time with government cutbacks, so there’s more demand for our money.

“It forces you to clarify your goals and strategies in giving. Now it is even more exciting than it used to be.”