Sara Lomelin:
It was started by a group of five women who were all leading different networks of giving circles around America and decided that we needed to convene the giving circle movement because there wasn’t a space for us to come together and share learnings. I was one of those five women and was leading a network of Latino giving circles in California at the time. The other women were leaders from a diverse range of networks: black giving circles, Asian Pacific Islander giving, Jewish giving and a more general group focused on women's giving.

We reached out to the Gates Foundation for a small gift and in 2017 we gathered 40 people to dream about what was possible for the American giving circle movement and embarked on a full year co-design project. We involved more than a hundred people to help us work out how we could scale and supercharge the movement in the US. At the end of that first year, we presented a business plan to the Gates Foundation, and they gave us a seed grant to get started.

We launched on 1 April 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic which, looking back, was the perfect time because everybody was stuck at home and feeling this hunger to do something for their communities. A couple of months later we launched our first virtual program, and had attendees from New Zealand, Chile, Germany, France and Canada. That was the moment when we knew that this wasn’t just an American circle movement – we were here to support the Global movement.

Since then, we have met and learnt from incredible people every single day. I always say that I have the best job in the world because I get to work with the good people of this world. The giving circle movement is predominantly women-led. Over 90% of giving circles are led by women because they tend to give in a more holistic, social way. We want to learn, we're curious, and we don't need the recognition that our male counterparts sometimes need.

Sara Lomelin:
When we started this work there was very little research around collective giving. There was a study released in 2017 that found in the US alone, there were about 1600 giving circles involving approximately 150,000 people. The whole hypothesis around starting Philanthropy Together was to see what would happen if we supercharged the movement. We set a very ambitious goal to raise the number of giving circles from 1600 to 3000 within five years and mobilise $1 billion.

A couple of years ago we decided to measure the growth of this landscape. Anecdotally, we knew that the movement had grown, but we didn't know by how much. We partnered with the Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Colmena-Consulting and the results surpassed all expectations. Over the past six years, in the US alone, the movement had grown to more than 4,000 giving circles involving 370,000 people which moved $3.1 billion. It’s an incredibly powerful movement. Last year, Axios, a US-based publication, called it the fastest growing trend in philanthropy.

Sara Lomelin:
We do our work through four different strategic focus areas: Showcase, Scale, Strengthening and Sustain. The showcase element is about bringing more people into the collective movement by highlighting the model. Everywhere we can, we talk about the power of collective giving and why giving circles are an incredibly powerful tool in changing the narrative around who gets to be called a philanthropist.

We don't want people to think, “I'm not in my sixties or I'm not a millionaire or a billionaire so I can’t be called a philanthropist.” We want to tell people across all ages, backgrounds, faiths and socioeconomic status, that they can be philanthropists. They can get together with their community or family and colleagues and have an impact because one of the greatest benefits of giving circles is that they work as state funders for very small community-based organisations that are often completely invisible to the big ‘P’ philanthropy.

The second strategic focus area is to ‘scale.’ We want more giving circles to get started especially among young people, rural communities and to engage more people from different backgrounds. We run different programs to help new people get their giving circle started - we have our general incubator Launchpad, and we have programs that focus on community foundations and faith-based organisations. People don’t have to reinvent the wheel – they can learn from what other people in different communities are doing.

Our ‘strengthening’ and ‘sustain’ elements are to support the existing movement of giving circles by offering spaces for peer-to-peer learning and to share best practices. We know that not every single giving circle is doing their giving in the best possible way, so we help educate communities through webinars, a resource library and our YouTube channel. We have a directory of giving circles, we host in-person and virtual convening summits and our research plays a big part in sustaining and strengthening the field.

Sara Lomelin:
I loved my trip there. It was funny because a lot of people told me that philanthropy in Australia is behind the US, and they wished your country could reach US levels. I told them - don't. The enthusiasm and drive in Australia around supercharging and expanding philanthropy, is incredible. I hope you guys appreciate that coming in with a cleaner slate is advantageous. You don't have to unlearn a lot of the not-great practices around philanthropy that we have and there’s a lot of polarisation in the US right now, which is really difficult to navigate.

Sara Lomelin:
Philanthropy Together is not me. I might have the megaphone, but this is really about hundreds of thousands of people and how we can get even more people involved. There’s one story about a young woman who started giving circles when she was 16 years old. She wanted to debunk the myth that teenagers can’t make a lasting impact or big impact and although she was hoping to get 100 teenagers involved, she ended up with 180 teens with each of them giving just $25 every quarter.

They get together and talk about different causes and organisations and decide as a group where to give money to. In just two years, they have raised and given over $50,000. And this young woman, who has just turned 18 years old and started university has helped open more than 25 teen chapters, not only around the US but one in Canada, Pakistan and Germany.

That's what gives me hope. Imagine what this woman will be doing 10 years from now? And she’s just one story. There are so many people who want to give and want to help, but they don't know how. This movement of Philanthropy Together is bigger than us – it’s about going back to our humanity, really looking to each other and then doing something together.

Sara Lomelin:
With everything that is happening in the world and especially as we're waiting for this wealth transfer to women, my ambition is that movements like She Gives and Philanthropy Together can inspire more people to get involved. We already have many incredible women, but there's so much potential.

My ambition is that each woman we’ve inspired will go and inspire five more women, and then those five women will inspire another ten. I want this movement to grow, and I also want to move the needle in the amount of money that goes to supporting causes that impact women and girls. It’s infuriating that in the US, we are not getting to the 2% mark, which is ridiculous because women are 50% of the population. My goal is to help change that.