2012 has been a transformative year so far. I moved across the country from Seattle to New York, started a new job at Resource Generation organizing young people of color with wealth, and turned thirty. I was excited to step into the unknown, and ready to take on big challenges. I expected that there would…
This is an edited version of a sermon I gave this spring at the Mid-Columbia Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, a congregation I served as minister this last year. UUs are known for being great about sexuality education, but money can be much harder to talk frankly about. Hence, this sermon. Growing up, our family never worried…
There are two things that I’ve loved for decades. One, is asking questions. The second is hanging out with old people. Not just old people, but elders. For me, an elder is anyone older than me. With three older siblings, I learned how to listen and to learn from their lived experiences. At 25, I…
I was recently asked to speak to a captive audience on the subject of why I’m a “progressive funder.” I was more than happy to oblige, with one minor change: I preferred to answer the question of why I’m a radical activist who happens to have some money. Knowing that I’d likely ramble and run…
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…
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…
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…
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…
I love the crap out of rich people. RG has helped show me that. Meeting dozens and dozens of wealthy people, each and every one who is smart, thoughtful, and wanting so badly to do right by the world—time and time again, I am bowled over by the sheer magnitude of kindness and generosity in…
Another version of this post originally appeared on the AAPIP blog. It is probably no surprise that there is a long-standing need for funding for organizations that support Asian American and Pacific Islander LGBTQ communities, but I was surprised by just how little funding these organizations get. The numbers tell the beginning of the story:…
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