20-05-2025
Hali Lee
Credit - Courtesy Kate Russell
To Hali Lee, the future of philanthropy lies in collective giving. That's what the philanthropy consultant contends in her new book, The Big We: How Giving Circles Unlock Generosity, Strengthen Community, and Unlock Change. Social change, she says, can start with people, often women, gathered around kitchen tables, pooling their resources to donate whatever they can afford to local organizations like soup kitchens and libraries. 'Everybody's got a kitchen table,' she says.
It's a movement that seems to be taking off. From 2017 to 2023, one study found, nearly 4,000 collective giving circles in the U.S. donated $3.1 billion to charity. The same study found that women comprised more than half of the donors in 84% of collective giving groups and 60% of circles were all women.
Lee has been doing her part. Twenty years ago, she founded the Asian Women Giving Circle, which has made more than $1 million in small grants to support cultural projects helmed by people of Asian American and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Island ancestry. In 2017 she helped launch Philanthropy Together, an organization that works to scale the collective giving movement. And in 2018 she co-founded the Donors of Color Network, the first national network of high net worth donors of color.
Bigger change can ultimately result from these individual, often smaller-dollar donors coming together, Lee believes. While 'Big Phil' certainly does good, she says, 'billionaires don't have any incentive to change the systems that made them rich.'
Lee spoke with TIME about the evolution of giving circles and how interested donors can launch a successful group.
The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Why is the giving circle movement so heavily female?
I'm Korean American and in my culture there is something called a geh, a shared giving circle. You might have heard of tandas, [in Mexico] or sou sous [in West Africa]. Indonesians call it arisans. A lot of these cultural forms of pooling resources are organized and run by women.
I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist but my hunch is that it's because women were often traditionally excluded from the more formal ways of banking. These cultural forms of generosity, while not philanthropic in origin, lend themselves naturally to being turned into philanthropic forms.
Is there a political aspect to the giving circle movement?
Where I really land is civic engagement. Giving circles are a great vehicle, not the only vehicle but a really good one, for people to practice being civically engaged. And if there was ever a time when we really need to do that in this country, and maybe even globally, it's now.
Civic engagement just means being curious and interested in what's happening in my community and then caring enough to get educated, then taking one more step with a group of friends, neighbors, or colleagues to take action together.
What are the most common problems in running a giving circle?
The really common problem—I kind of make a joke of this in my book—is constipation. Very commonly a group will start to try to replicate Big Phil. They think they need to be very formal, have a 501(c)(3) [the tax code designation that allows donations to be deductible] and all this apparatus that they actually don't really need. All of that tends to constipate the flow of dollars. I often just tell people, don't build apparatus unless you need it, try to keep it simple, just get the money or volunteer time flowing. You will 100% make mistakes along the way, so build in learning and humility.
How can all the members of a giving circle stay on the same page about which causes to support?
Have a couple of conversations about what are your individual values, what are the group's values. If you can agree on something in your neighborhood or town that keeps you up at night, maybe that's the thing you agree to raise money for or volunteer for. Some circles decide to pick a different thing every year. Each member might get a turn. That's a good way to learn about a lot of different issues that impact a community. The important thing I think is just to dive in and get can adjust along the way.
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