News, Blogs and Other Writings

News, Blogs and Other Writings

100 Who Care Alliance 

AS POPULARITY OF GIVING CIRCLES HAS TRIPLED, HISTORIC GATHERING OF AMERICAN GIVING CIRCLE NETWORKS CO-DESIGNS VISION FOR SCALING & STRENGTHENING THE MOVEMENT FURTHER.


Seattle, Washington (April 26, 2019) – Supported by a lead grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 19 other funders, 82 participants from dozens of American giving circles and giving circle networks came together for a historic gathering in Seattle, Washington to connect with and learn from each other, and to build a vision for amplifying, strengthening and scaling giving circles across the United States.


Recent studies by the Collective Giving Research Group demonstrates that giving circles have exploded in popularity in America, and that they offer a way to meaningfully engage people in giving and in investing in their communities. A recent report from the Lilly School of Philanthropy found that giving circles tripled In number from 2007 to 2017, to 1,500, and have donated as much as $1.29 billion in that time.

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A Long-Standing Tradition

(THE ROOT)

The African-American tradition of philanthropy is long-standing, aided by the Christian custom of tithing — giving 10 percent of earnings to the church. Even outside the church, astonishing acts of charity have been made by people of humble means, such as washerwoman Osceola McCarty's $150,000 gift to the University of Southern Mississippi upon her death in 1999. The tradition of giving is being continued by the most fortunate among African Americans, particularly toward education. Meet 12 top philanthropists within the black community. 

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Ray Tamarra/Getty Images; Amy Sussman/Getty Images; Jamie McCarthy/WireImage/Getty Images 

All Aboard for CIN!

 By Benjamin Dixon, a member of New Mountain Climbers Giving Circle, Blacksburg, VA.

What will it take to get you on the bus?  I’m talking about the bus to Birmingham and the Community Investment Network (CIN) conference being provided by the conference planning committee, free of cost.    Can it get any better than that?  Okay, so you need more compelling incentives to get you moving!  Consider this.


        Civil rights Institute:                    “Fifty years ago in Baton Rouge, La., black citizens banded together to fight the segregated seating system on city buses. They quit riding for eight days, staging what historians believe was the first bus boycott of the budding Civil Rights movement.”


Yes, in 1953 these folks decided to get off a (segregated) bus in order to be able to ride a bus where they could choose to sit anywhere they wished. Their bold action inspired similar boycotts all over the South. This includes the one in Montgomery where Rosa Parks in 1955 decided to sit down in defiance in order to “stand up” for her right to be free,  


Forty years later, Black Men “…African American men from across the United States converged on Washington in an effort to “convey to the world a vastly different picture of the Black male” and to unite in self-help and self-defense against economic and social ills plaguing the...(more)

Why I Go ‘Round in Circles!  by Ben Dixon

President Barack Obama said it well,


"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for.  We are the change that we seek.


After decades of trying to be the change I sought, I realized there was something missing from my strategy of “giving back” to various communities, and both loving where I lived (by trying to make a difference), and living what I love (by sharing what I have a passion for) in the process.  Too often, it seemed, I found myself doing all this alone.  Too often, I was sharing my treasure and talent with people I never even met.


So, I started going around in circles, first in Virginia, now in South Carolina.  By joining hands, and linking arms with friends, family, and neighbors, we pooled our individual efforts and resources in order to significantly increase the probability that the community change we all sought would be achieved....(more)

His “Dream”: A Real and Virtual Touchstone for Today

(The importance of individual contributions)

by Ben Dixon



By now, less than three months since its opening on October 16, 2011, thousands of us have stepped down from our cars, buses, and bicycles to set foot on what some may call sacred ground. As each of us approached for the first time the path leading to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., we carried with us our own appreciation of and joy in being able to “touch” the granite stone out of which the image of the “Dreamer” emerges. We reveled in the opportunity to stand for photo next to the carefully carved prophetic and hopeful statements of Rev. Dr. King, as if to say... “Amen and amen!” to the power and veracity of their content.


My experience at the Memorial was both s...(more)


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