Have you ever wondered about giving circles? What are they? How do they work? How do you start one?
Are you in a giving circle and wondering how others are doing it?
In these interviews, RG folks share their experiences with and reflections about participating in giving circles. We have interviewed young people with wealth who have started giving circles, non-wealthy folks who have participated in them, and staff of organizations directly supported by giving circles. Learn what worked, what didn’t work, and why. Members answer several popular questions like: “How did you get started,” and “If you had to do it all over again, would you?” Continue reading
Here’s something great: I realized on Tuesday at RG Office Hours that it was my one-year anniversary with RG! Or at least, one year since I met Mike Gast for coffee and I really started thinking about diving into this work. I think often about what my life would look like today if I hadn’t gone back after that first meeting and decided that engaging with RG was something I wanted to at least try. I’m so happy I made that decision, and I’m so happy that amazing RG folks took the time to talk to me and support me in all of this!
There were six of us. Katherine Orr, Julia Read, Michelle Rider, Ellie Weiner, Nickerson Hill and myself. We’d formed a group with the expressed purpose of pooling a large amount of money to give away. But why were we doing this? Why was group giving so important to us? Isn’t giving money supposed to be this thing rich people do in private by writing a check and mailing it off to an organization, then quietly feeling good about themselves and never speaking about it to anyone, tucking the experience in their back pocket like a trump card to pull out in the event they need to deflect the judgment of others for being a rich person?
When I saw the tumblr site “We are the 1%. We stand with the 99%,” I thought about $140,050 sitting in a bank account in my name at the Permaculture Credit Union, money I’d received in distribution payments from my 5% share in an apartment complex. I questioned myself: How would I really be standing with the 99% if I held on to unearned wealth? As the Occupy Movement grew, I chose not to share my story of class privilege because I hadn’t yet made up my mind about how to take action. Despite years of analysis, self-reflection and conversations with trusted friends and peers, I still felt incredibly confused and uncertain about how to use my wealth and class privilege to positively affect social change. 
It is spring of 2008, and I am giving a workshop on prison industrial complex abolition at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. We start by asking participants, “What makes you feel safe?” There is a wide range of answers, from “my friends” to “having healthcare” to “self-defense classes” to “knowing my parents could support me in an emergency.” No one mentions the police or prisons.
