Sustainability of Giving Circles: Part 2

By: Hannah Kim

Aside from covering administrative costs, Colleen Willoughby, president of the Washington Women’s Foundation in Seattle, makes the following suggestion in Jessica E. Bearman’s report “More Giving Together: The Growth and Impact of Giving Circles and Shared Giving” for keeping giving circles sustainable:

“Keep founding board members in place for several years to build a solid culture for your organization. … If you bring in new people too early, you get new ideas. It can take your original concept in many different directions rather than establish the idea you had in mind. … I think that the value of institutional memory is a benefit to a new and growing organization.” (p.19)

Here are some other questions to address early on regarding sustainability, as we apply the recommendations in Bearman’s report to our Homeless Sponsorship Model (p.18):

• How big do we want our giving circles to grow?
• Exactly how much administrative cost will we need to cover per year?
• How much volunteer work versus work by paid staff will be required?
• What proportion of giving circle members will take a hands-off approach (where the only involvement is funding contribution), as opposed to greater engagement/interaction in supporting homeless clients?
• How long must members be committed to the giving circle, especially if we plan on applying Willoughby’s value of institutional memory provided by founding members?

Sustainability of Giving Circles: Part 1

By: Hannah Kim

In my previous post “From Concept to Practice”, I had raised the question of how exactly to mobilize capital and human resources to manage any tenant issues, attract and retain investors, manage investment funds, liaise with external partners, and take care of other administrative duties required to keep our Homeless Sponsorship Model flowing continuously.

Indeed, one of our major challenges with the model is covering the administrative costs of implementing the client selection → housing → job placement → self-sustainability process.

According to Bearman’s report for the Forum of Regional Association of Grantmakers (“More Giving Together: The Growth and Impact of Giving Circles and Shared Giving”, p.16), administrative costs of running giving circles can be funded by various external sources, including donations and grants from local community foundations. However, report findings suggest that external grants and donations are not very sustainable.

Another way of covering administrative overhead is requesting giving circle members to contribute additional funds just for that purpose. Of course, keep in mind long-running giving circles’ learning that members are much more hesitant to see their contributions going towards administrative costs than directly to the social cause (p.18).

The challenge of addressing administrative issues is one already brought up by a representative of SHARE Family & Community Services at the Tri-Cities Homelessness Task Group meeting on July 10, 2009. Watch for further posts on our progress in overcoming this challenge!