 Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are so glad you're here. And I also like to say welcome back for those of you that have been here before. But if this is your first time, we're glad that you're joining us today as we have two amazing leaders that are going to share with us about giving circles and group philanthropy. So we have Kim Tarno Polsky joining us, chief community builder, 100 plus women who care, Valley of the Sun. So she's joining us from Arizona. We also have with us, Laurie Richer, co-founder 100 Who Care Alliance joining us from Illinois. And you're going to hear from both of them just in a moment. So I want to say hats off. Thank you to Julia Patrick for creating this platform of conversation. Julia serves as the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And I'm Jarrett Ransom. I get to play as the co-host CEO of the Raven Group. And I also call myself nonprofit nerd because I can eat, breathe and sleep nonprofits as I have for the last 20 plus years. But again, also shout out of immense gratitude to our partners that allow us these opportunities. So thank you to our friends over at Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy at National University, nonprofit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd as well as nonprofit tech talk. These companies collectively have been with us most from the beginning to help us to produce nearly 1,000 episodes. We've been touting 900, but we're really coming close to 1,000. You can find us on broadcast podcast and you can also download the app and find us there as well. Okay, ladies. That's the housekeeping I have to do before we get going with the two of you. But I want to invite you into conversation starting off with Kim Tarnopolski. Again, thank you, chief community builder, 100 plus women who care, Valley of the Sun, welcome to you. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself, Kim? Hi, Jared. Well, thanks for having me. Gosh, I have been in the Valley of the Sun, Phoenix, Arizona for well over 30 years. I started as a HR executive for 20 years. And then when I hung that hat up, I was looking for something else to do and found my way into philanthropy. And that all started when I heard about this amazing concept, which we call a giving circle, which we'll explain later what that is. And I jumped right in and here I, almost 10 years later, run the Valley of the Sun giving circle here in Phoenix with three different groups. And we raised money for local nonprofits and it's a great way to give back to our community and bring other people along with me. It is so fantastic and inspiring. And I will just give a little secret that I just joined the group. And so I'm so thrilled to be a part of it. Lori, we'd love to learn from you. Lori Richard joins us, co-founder, 100 Who Care Alliance. Where are you joining us from, Lori? And tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, I am joining from Chicago. That's where I live, right in the heart of downtown Chicago. And I started this after I retired. I was in market research for many years. I worked for Quaker Oats, then I worked for myself. And like Kim, as I was getting to that point where I was slowing down my actual paid work life, trying to figure out what to do, I ran into a woman randomly, just such a random event who had just been awarded money from a local giving circle. And I just kind of listened a little bit. Like, what are you talking about? What is this? Went home, did a little bit of research, took about six months, and I finally started my own. And that's one of the things we'll talk about as we talk about giving circles, that's how they all start. You hear about it from somebody, you end up at somebody's meeting and the light bulb goes off. So I started my actual circle is in North Suburb in Chicago. I lived in the suburbs while I was raising my kids. And I started it, I'm in my 11th year now. And then probably my second year, we started the alliance. And a couple of us just got together and said, hey, let's see if we can find a few other people who are doing this and have a conference. And that's how it started and it's gone from there. So I live in the city now, but I still run my suburban circle because that's the one I started and that's where my heart is and all my friends still are. And I don't right now have the bandwidth to do a second one in Chicago like Kim does, which is amazing that she does three. But that's kind of my story. And I'm gonna do this as long as I can. So inspiring. And for those of you watching, please check out the websites. It's amazing, 100WWCvalleyoftheSun.org and 100WhoCareAlliance.org. So let's start off with the elephant in the room. What is a giving circle? Like let's just define that because I know that everyone really understands what that is. Which of you wants to start off with like telling us the basics of the giving circle? I'll start, I'll jump in and Kim just jump in anytime. Very simply, it's getting a group of people together so that they can pull their resources to have a bigger impact than they could have on their own. So I'll give you an example. My friends come to me and they say, hey, I'm really into this charity. Do you mind donating? And I'll write a $100 check and I'll send it away. And that's it. Never hear anything else. That's the end of it. What a giving circle does is takes that same $100 but says let's get a group of people together who are all willing to put that money in and then let's do something much bigger with it. And depending on how big your circle is, that determines how big what you can do is. But for example, my suburban circle, when people come to our meetings and put their $100 in, we raise about $17,000 or $18,000 each time. And to a local small nonprofit, that's the game changer. Like programs can happen that would never have happened otherwise. And it's still me and my $100, but I'm part of something so much bigger. So that's what a giving circle is. It's just a way of collecting resources and pooling resources to have a bigger impact. Yeah, that collectiveness of bringing it together. Kim, what would you add to that? I would add, like Lori said, we turn reactive giving, which is my friend asks me to make a donation to a walk to a cause. I see a social media campaign. I'm reactively giving to something and we turn that into proactive giving. So we turn it into, we put the power of giving into our members' hands. So they actually are the ones who are democratically deciding where we wanna put our money for that one quarter. And that's a game changer because we always say, anybody can be a philanthropist. You don't have to give a million dollars to be a philanthropist. You can show up every quarter and give $100 and you can be a philanthropist and you can start impacting those charities because there's not a lot of people that can write a $10,000 check, a $50,000 check. But when we come together as a group, we're doing just that. We're delivering $10,000 plus every quarter and the beauty of it is we do that in one hour. There is no big fundraisers. There's no silent auction. There's no live auction. There's minor event planning that goes in to these events and it's just an exercise in efficiency and you're bringing men, women, teens, people together to collectively give and support a cause and they're local causes. And so you're having a direct impact in your local community. And you live. Yeah, I just wanna add one thing. Many of us are veterans of having done the fundraisers that we're also familiar with where we have dinner and silent auction and live auction and whatever. And they take months of time and dozens of people to organize those. And having done those when you find this model and you see that in an hour of time, we can accomplish the same thing. That was it. That's what converts most people to say, I'm gonna start a group like this. And there really are no obstacles to entry. You get a couple of friends. You find somebody who will sponsor a place for you to be and that's all there is to it. It doesn't cost much. It's very easy to get involved as a leader also, not just as a member. So it's just a God send to somebody who spent a lot of time doing those fundraisers. Well, I love that there's no black tie or ballroom gown like required, you know? Tell us more, Lori, you mentioned, you know, $17,000, $50,000 to community-based organizations giving circles play, I'm gonna add critical role truly in community led philanthropy. And Kim, you also mentioned, you know, anyone can be a philanthropist. I subscribed to that model too. And in fact, in the definition of philanthropy, there is no dollar amount. There is no numeric dollar amount of the definition of philanthropy. So one of you, would you share with us, like again, how these giving circles are really playing a critical role in this space? Sure, well, I can speak to Arizona and we have probably 10 different giving circles throughout the whole state. Flagstaff, Tucson, Prescott, Sedona. I am a little unique in that our giving circle, we have three different, what we call sister groups, that we run. Most chapters are just a singular group, but because we're kind of overachievers here in Phoenix, we have three, so we do this three times a quarter. And in the nine years that we've been running our giving circles, we've given close to $1.2 million to local charities and we've impacted over a hundred charities. And that is simply by coming together once a quarter, each woman giving $100 a quarter and it adds up really quickly. And I did a quick math on the state, giving circles in our state of Arizona, we have given over $3 million. And that all stays in the local community. So it's a tremendous impact. It also aside from just funding organizations, it gives our members, it educates our members and it makes them more well-rounded about what the needs in the community are. So it's our members who bring the charities to us and they're the ones who tell us about those charities and it could be anything from homelessness to animal charities to, we just gave to a charity for deaf or hearing impaired children and giving them the opportunity to become spoken language capable. So it's lots of different causes and so even if the charity doesn't receive the funds at the giving circle of that quarter, the education and awareness that's been built around that cause is tremendous. And then they always get another opportunity down the road to present again. So it's a ripple effect, you know? And we see our members who, then they start to volunteer for these organizations or they become recurring donors with the organization. Some of them will join the boards of organizations. So the ripple effect is tremendous. That's fantastic. Lori, I'm curious if you'd be willing to answer this live question that just came in. And if not, Kim, jump in. But someone, you know, mentions that they lead 100 plus group in Butler, Pennsylvania. They started in 2019, they've donated 70,000. They're stuck at about 30 to 40 women with 12 to 15 coming each quarter, right? So like attending. They meet at restaurants, that's not ideal. So how would you, Lori, recommend, you know, they switch things up, where should they meet? Do you meet at food places? Like how do they get their giving circle to increase by the amount of membership and attendance? Right, it's a great question. And we talk about this a lot. The first thing I would say is whatever you're raising, however small or large your group is, is money that whoever you're giving it to wouldn't have had otherwise. So sometimes I think because we're called 100 who care, people kind of get concerned that if they don't have 100 people in the group, they haven't met the goal. And it's just really aspirational, 10 people is fine. So that's the first thing I would say is don't worry about it. And the restaurant comment is interesting because my group has always met in a restaurant. That's just part of our thing. People like to have a drink, they like to eat dinner, they like to socialize a little bit before. But there are lots of other places if you wanna pull out of that kind of environment. There are other libraries and all kinds of office space where they'll lend you conference space. So if you wanna be outside of the environment, there are certainly ways like that. How to grow, it's the hardest question. What we have found over and over is we grow through the referrals of our members. They bring their friends and their family. They're excited about it. And we've tried a lot of things. We've tried to get local press. We've tried to do promotions. We've tried to do raffles. But at the end of the day, if you're excited about it, you will tell the people you care about and they'll come. And once people come, when they're actually in the moment, they get really into it because it's really inspiring. I mean, when you talk about it, on paper, it just sounds like another meeting. But when you're there and you actually see the passion of the people who are coming up to present and the passion of the people who care about them. So I think you just have to keep at it. And you'll get five who will come in the door and then you'll get five who will say, it's time for me to move on. And you're constantly trying to keep the leaky bucket filled. But again, whatever you're raising is pennies from heaven for somebody who didn't have it before. So you just got to keep on keeping on, I guess they say. I love your attitude of celebrate the win. Regardless of the size, celebrate that win. Kim, would you add anything to this individual who is saying like, how do I add people? How do I add attendance? Anything you would add that's been kind of your secret sauce? I'm not an event planner by profession, but I have planned many, many events over the course of my career. And one thing I've always learned is that it's the energy that you create at your event. So taking a look at how you structure your event, we were very purposeful and we've learned this over the course of the nine years that I've been running a giving circle. We don't call them meetings. We call them giving circles because a meeting kind of means work. And who wants to go to another work meeting? So be very intentional about the language that you use around your events. Be very intentional about the energy that you create at your events. And also be very intentional about the type of person that you want to attract to your event. So those are all things that we've done here. And to Lori's point, you're always going to have attrition, but it is really getting your members excited about what you're doing so that they will bring friends and they will invite back. And just like anything, everybody has so many different things in their life. And this is just another thing in their life to try to keep them excited about. Can I add one more thought? Another thing we did occasionally that I thought was really useful before COVID happened was we would have separate events that were just happy hours. We would say, we're all gonna meet here, no meeting, no anything, just come and bring your friends. And because people really wanted that social connection and when they come to the meeting or whatever you wanna call it, when they show up, there's not necessarily time for social connection because we have a job to do. So we tried to bring it out of that and just say, let's just meet as a group of women and just enjoy each other. And then COVID happened. So that kind of, and since COVID, I have found that some people have not wanted to return back at all to in-person things with a lot of people. So now we also zoom everything. And I probably have a third of the attendees showing up on Zoom so they can still vote, they can still participate, they can present, but they don't wanna be in the room. And so having both of those options, I think is another way to try to build who your universe can be because if people don't wanna come back, if they don't wanna come in-person, you're never gonna be able to get them otherwise. So. Thank you for adding that. I think having that hybrid or asynchronous opportunity has been successful for so many different ways over the last several years. Kim, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to also share how you do giving circle teams. So I'm wondering if this person might also want to consider having teams instead of, perhaps it is a challenge of finding all members to make that quarterly donation. Would you be willing to elaborate on what you offer for your chapters? Sure, absolutely. I do wanna take a step back real quick though. And just do a quick description of what a hundred who care is. Cause I think we've kinda missed that in this conversation. And this is the piece that when I, when I give this little elevator speech, I look for that light in the person's eyes and I look for that, oh my gosh, that's amazing. I'm in. So just real quickly, what a hundred who care is is you get 100 or more people together for one hour, once a quarter. Those members nominate local charities. We hear about three charities that we randomly draw from a hat. There's different ways you can do it. We randomly draw them from a hat. And then we hear about those charities. Our members vote. The charity with the most votes is the recipient. And every member donates $100 directly to that charity. And in one hour we've donated $10,000. So that's the concept. You can take the concept, you can mold it, you can do different things with it. One of the things that we do here in the value of the sun chapter is that we allow members to join in as an individual member, which is a $100 donation a quarter, or you can join as a team of two, three or four. So if you wanna share that quarterly contribution amongst other friends and other women, you can do that because we do wanna be inclusive of all giving budgets, all income levels. And so teams have worked really well for us because when I started my chapter, it just so happened, I have a 21 year old daughter now, but it just so happened that my daughter and all her friends were, I think in seventh or eighth grade and a lot of my friends were joining National Charity League and with their daughters. And so they're like, oh my gosh, Kim, I wanna participate in your group, but I just joined National Charity League, which came out of their giving budget. And so they joined as teams and I would have lost out on a lot of those women had I not offered teams because they had just committed to another charitable organization given the age group of their girls. Right, yeah. Now I really appreciate that and I hope that our viewer has gotten some ideas, some creative thoughts to move forward. Let's talk about how to find these giving circles, right? And then also how do we get involved? So for our viewers and listeners, which we know we have many of you watching live, we also know that our archive, and you can access this episode pretty much at any time. How might other people interested really find these given circles and then also get involved? Which of you can talk to that point? I can start. And there's sort of the micro learning about 100 Who Care Alliance and then sort of the macro about other giving circles and a broader network. So let me start with us. 100WhoCarolines.org is our website. And right on our website, we have in the nav bar a list of chapters. And if you go to that link, you'll be able to find where all our chapters are broken out by where US, Canada, state, whatever, and then by men versus women versus youth or teens versus business groups. And every one of our active groups will have a link there. So you can go to the link and you'll either be linked to their website or Facebook page and you can find out about that particular group and then you can reach out to them and join. And what we always counsel people to is if you don't find one in your area, start one. We will help you because on that same website, we have a whole set of resources that Kim and I wish had been around when we started because it wasn't. So we just had to figure it out but there's all kinds of resources there to help people get started. And it's again, it's really easy. You just get your friends and you find a place that will let you have a meeting and the rest of it is, it just happens. It's not that hard. So that's the way you would do it with us. And then there is a broader organization I think Kim mentioned, Philanthropy Together, which is philanthropytogether.org and you can go to their website. They are a network of networks and they were funded I believe by the Gates Foundation. Their whole mission is to get the word out and to help get people trained and involved in community-led philanthropy. So we are just one network of theirs and there are all kinds of affinity networks for everything you can imagine. I think Kim mentioned, we're focused on geography. So the commonality within our groups is that we are all within the same community and we wanna fund different nonprofits within our community. But people can be organized around everything from social justice, Jewish issues, LBGTQ, you name it, and they can be much broader based in terms of their geography, but they have a common mission. So whatever your interest is in getting involved in a giving circle, if you go on Philanthropy Together and you do a little bit of research into the different networks they have, you will find something that will satisfy your own giving desires and then you can contact them from there. Great. Anything to add to that Kim? No, I mean, I was looking at Philanthropy Together's website this morning and they said there's over 2,500 giving circles that they're tracking. So to Lori's point, there really is something for everyone. And it's just, it's a flexible model so you can make it what you want. Like for me, when I learned of it, I was sitting on the board of a local charity and somebody said, I'm gonna nominate this charity for my 100 Women Who Care group. And I was like, what is that? And I actually, I went to one of their meetings, took it all in. I kind of like to do my own thing. So Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the country. That was only, there was only that one women's giving circle. I'm like, there's room for lots more here in Arizona. And so I started my own. You know, so get your friends together, start your own. Like to Lori's point, there are lots of resources on the Alliance website and to the person who asked the question, if they're part of our network, reach out to Lori and I. You know, we've both been at this for a long time. We're happy to brainstorm with that person if they wanna reach out to us. Right. Our organization has a Facebook page for our leaders and the whole purpose of the Facebook page is to either a combination of share best practices or ask for help because we face common problems. And there's nobody that is gonna be better suited to help figure out how to solve a problem than a person who's doing exactly the same thing and has probably faced it. That has been an enormous resource. And again, to that person, if you're not in that group, join that group because it is a real big help, especially as people are starting out and trying to figure out some of those questions. Like, do I allow teams? Do I not? Do I have different levels? Another thing I wanted to add about the team issue, I don't have teams, but what we do have is a half price initiative for people who are 35 or under. Because if they don't have the resources for $100 a quarter, they probably can afford $50 a quarter. So, you know, as a way to try to bring younger people in. So, you know, you can play with this model 100 different ways and make it work for the universe that you're in. It's very flexible. Yeah. I would love, Kim, if you're willing to answer this, what if we're a business? What if we're a company and we want to be involved? Like, how can we leverage our revenue, our community interest in, you know, groups like this and community-based giving? Is there a space and a way that a company could be involved? Sure. On a couple different levels, we used to have a 100 businesses who care here in Phoenix. Unfortunately, it just never gained the traction. So, it's no longer in existence, but companies can either, they can send their employees to be members, or like what I do is, since 100% of our donations go to our charities and we're a 100% volunteer organization, we do look for sponsorships. We look for corporate sponsorships of $500 annually that will help us pay for some of our administrative costs. Things that used to be free, mail-chimp, event-bright, they're no longer free. That's true. Yeah, so we're all incurring some costs. So, companies could get involved that way and sponsor one of their local chapters to help them cover some of those administrative costs. And, you know, or if they, you know, if there are certain charities that they like to support, they can encourage that charity, somebody from that charity to get involved and be able to nominate themselves to have an opportunity to get funding from one of our groups. Yeah. Great team-building thing also within a company. I mean, let's say you're working in a large company, you just get a group of people there together and, you know, start your own. You just have to decide what it is that you're all agreeing on that you want to fund. And that's sort of always the challenge. And one of the unique things about our setup with geography being what's our commonality because not necessarily everybody in the group shares values and wants to fund the same kinds of things, but we all commit to whatever we pick as a group, that's where our money's going. So it might not have been your first choice, but everybody is willing to say the need of the community is such that it's worth it for me to commit my money there because we're gonna bring value back into the community. Yeah, support that local, you know, space. Well, Kim and Lori, thank you truly for both of you sharing your time, your valuable time, your valuable expertise. You've both been inspiring, especially as we wrap up this year, move into next year. You know, there's a lot going on and I feel like there's always a lot going on, but I really think that someone and plural people will be interested in joining and maybe even starting, they'll take on that challenge, you know, and say, hey, I want to start this. So check out Kim and Lori, check out their web addresses, again, 100 WWC, valleyofthesun.org and then also 100 WhoCareAlliance.org. Check these ladies out, Julia, Patrick and myself. So honored to have you join us and Kim, you know this, but I mean, I've been watching your chapter here grow, flourish, be so successful. Lori, so grateful to have you on and to talk to us about what you're doing in Illinois and how this exists, you know, across the nation. Our partners, our company partners that allow us to do this great work and to bring in thought leaders like Kim and Lori that you just heard here. Again, we just want to say thank you to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, fundraising academy at National University, nonprofit thought leader, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. These companies are amazing supporting the nonprofit sector. I like to say their mission is your mission because they really want to help you do more good in and around your community. Well, Kim and Lori, you've both been a pleasure. Thank you. As we wrap up today's conversation and we end with the same mantra, but we noticed that it always lands a little differently and we want to invite you to stay well so you can do well. Thank you all, I appreciate your time.