The Center for Participatory Change (CPC) partners with NCGives around two major goals: (1) documenting and lifting up Philanthropy of Community, the webs of mutual giving, help, and support that exist naturally in low-wealth communities and communities of color, and (2) changing communities by amplifying giving (especially the giving of time and talent in communities of color).

 

Documenting and lifting up Philanthropy of Community. When we think of giving or philanthropy, we typically imagine a wealthy person giving money (donations) or time (volunteering) through a nonprofit organization, usually to help people in need. This is one kind of giving, and it is important.

 

But there is another form of giving, one that is less recognized or celebrated, but that is actually far more important than the giving outlined above. 

 

People living in low-wealth communities give constantly to one another, within their networks of friends and family. Friends help friends who are ill; family members lend each other money; people offer each other a ride when neighbors don’t have transportation. This kind of giving within communities is far more important than giving that comes from outside of communities. 

 

The Center for Participatory Change (CPC) conducted a study of giving in low-wealth and marginalized communities across Western North Carolina. CPC’s study was carried out in close partnership with NCGives.  

 

Our study replicated, on a much smaller scale, a study called The Poor Philanthropist: How and Why the Poor Help Each Other, by Susan Wilkinson-Maposa and her colleagues at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) Graduate School of Business. The South African study asked 677 poor South Africans who helps them and who they help, what sorts of help are provided, and why they help. South Africans said that it was the help from within their communities – from their friends, neighbors, and family – that was most important, rather than help from grassroots organizations, churches, governments, nonprofit organizations, or foundations. They said that it was primarily help from the friends and family that allowed them to move out of poverty, or keep from becoming poorer. We wondered if this was the case in the US. We wondered how folks in Western North Carolina would respond to the questions they asked in South Africa.

 

Borrowing from the South African study, our study looked at two kinds of giving:

 

(1) Philanthropy of Community, or horizontal giving, reciprocal giving that occurs between friends and family within a community, among people who know and trust each other; and

 

(2) Philanthropy for Community, or vertical giving, giving where a person with wealth gives money or time to an organization, and that organization (which is usually based outside of a local community) provides some service or aid to people within a community.

 

In our study, we asked 122 people living in low-wealth communities (Latino, African American, Cherokee, Hmong, and European American) across Western NC to talk about the forms of giving, help, and support that are most important to them.

 

People said that the most important help they received was the help from their friends and family: a friend who loaned them money, a family member who took care of them when they were ill or injured, a relative who took care of young children while a mother was at work, church members who came over and put a new roof on their house, members of a grassroots group who helped them think through how to handle experiences of racism in their workplace.

 

Even when these forms of help did not directly involve money, people often talked about significant financial impacts: the money saved on daycare by a mother-in-law’s care of one’s young children, the money saved on home health care when a sister comes in to take care of a person who is recovering from a serious illness.

 

People repeatedly lifted up these forms of giving as far more important than the more formal, organized forms of giving from government agencies, grassroots groups, churches, nonprofit organizations, or foundations

 

We have come to see these various forms of Philanthropy of Community as perhaps the most important opportunity for moving people and places out of poverty – because when we asked 122 people living in poverty in our region how they move themselves and their communities out of poverty, they said clearly and emphatically that it was largely through Philanthropy of Community or horizontal giving.

 

CPC’s community work (see below) focuses on one small aspect of Philanthropy of Community within low-wealth communities: how people living in poverty can come together to form grassroots groups and networks to move themselves, their families, and their communities out of poverty. CPC’s role, effectiveness, and impacts are tiny compared to the Philanthropy of Community that goes on naturally in low-wealth communities, beyond the reach and scope of our work. Nearly all of forms of Philanthropy of Community exist outside of the scope or reach of CPC, our grassroots partners, or any other set of vertical giving institutions.

 

We see CPC’s role in this area not as trying to build up Philanthropy of Community within low-wealth communities, because there is already far more horizontal giving than we ever realized, and, from the perspective of people living in low-wealth communities, it is cumulatively far more effective at moving people and places out of poverty than the anti-poverty efforts of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, foundations, and grassroots groups.

 

Instead, we see our role as working to see, lift up, and value the mutual giving that occurs organically within low-wealth communities – to help vertical giving organizations working in marginalized communities begin to see the significant and under-acknowledged impacts of Philanthropy of Community and to start to integrate their work into these already-existing webs of support that exist within low-wealth communities

 

Changing communities by amplifying giving. The Center for Participatory Change (CPC) has also been partnering with NCGives to change communities by amplifying giving in low-wealth communities and communities of color across Western North Carolina. CPC works to support and strengthen grassroots groups working on racial and economic justice. These groups are key structures through which people living in low-wealth communities give their time, talent, and money.

 

CPC's work focuses particularly on the giving of time and talent, because these are the gifts most often made by people with little money. In our work, we have found that collective and strategic gifts of time and talent can change communities in profound ways. Through strategic gifts of time and talent, CPC's grassroots partners have engaged in charity or relief work (e.g., food pantry, clothes closet), family strengthening work (e.g., parent's groups, women's groups), development work (e.g., income-generating projects, converting a trailer park into a collectively-owned Community Land Trust), justice-oriented work (e.g., workers' rights, immigrants' rights), and systems and policy change (e.g., changing laws, holding public agencies accountable). These changes are significant and real, and they are all the result of people in low-wealth communities and communities of color giving their time and talent (and money as well) to make their communities more livable.

 

CPC supports 40 or so grassroots groups every year. Most of these groups are working on amplifying gifts of time and talent (also money) from people in their community. CPC works with these groups so that they are better able to amplify giving among community members, and so that they can channel that giving strategically. Concretely, CPC's support of grassroots groups focuses on capacity building (coaching and technical assistance around amplifying giving), community organizing (supporting efforts to pool people's gifts of time and talent for maximum effectiveness and collective power), network-building (connecting circles of people giving time and talent with other circles), and grantmaking (making matching micro-grants to grassroots groups to amplify the giving of money in local communities).

 

 

The Center for Participatory Change (CPC) supports grassroots leaders, groups, and networks based in low-wealth and marginalized communities across 25 Appalachian Counties in Western North Carolina. Not all of this work focuses specifically on giving, but it all does focus on building grassroots groups, which we see as one of the major vessels, containers, or structures through which giving occurs in rural low-wealth and marginalized communities. People in low-wealth communities often have limitations on the amount of money they can give, but they give richly of the resources they do have: their time, ideas, experiences, talents, commitment, and passion for improving their communities. This form of giving, often taken for granted, is an essential element of philanthropy for social change.