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By Larissa Ferreira
Philanthropy has different strategies when it comes to mobilizing resources, and one of them is donation circles – in English called giving circles. The donation circle is a strategy that brings together donors and organizations that receive resources.
But after all, what is known about donation circles? What have international experiences pointed to? How can they contribute to community philanthropy? With these questions in mind, we dived into the literature on international experiences of giving circles and the findings are shared below.
For the bibliographic review, the GIFE Virtual Library (Sinapse) was chosen; the website “givingcircles.asia”; Google and Google Scholar. Of the 26 materials collected and analyzed, 25 of them were in English. Only 1 was in Portuguese and addressed experiences that were not from the United States and countries in Europe and Asia. In other words, predominantly, studies on international experiences of donation circles focus on countries in the Global North.
But is it a donation circle or a donor circle?
One of the materials found points out that there is a difference between saying a donation circle or a donor circle. For Boyd (2017), the donation circle is a group of donors who get together, pool their donations and decide together what they are going to support – these are groups started by the donors. While a donor circle is a group of donors brought together by a social organization to have a shared impact or goal – the group is initiated by the institution and is a mechanism to raise resources for it.
Most of the materials are about experiences of donation circles initiated by donors and it was possible to analyze the materials based on: general characteristics and country of operation; influence of the donation circle on the behavior, attitudes and knowledge of its members; case study of giving circles; donation circle models/structure; impact of giving circles on the philanthropic scene; relationship between giving circles and host organizations; and how and why to establish a giving/donor circle.
The findings also highlighted how giving circles can contribute to democratizing philanthropy and rejecting the power of traditional philanthropy.
According to Eikenberry et al. (2009) and Eikenberry; Brown and Lukins (2015), giving circles make it possible to expand donations mainly to organizations and causes that do not receive as much support from traditional philanthropy, such as women, minority ethnic/racial groups and community development.
The narratives of donation circles can also contribute to reviving historical traditions of solidarity and mutual help, based on the idea that different social groups have ancient traditions of self-care, so donating highlights the importance of cooperation and care for the people around them. (JANGARA, 2021).
In the US, for example, some giving circles among African-American communities are based on the narrative of strengthening the sense of belonging of historically marginalized communities, as well as validating the idea that significant changes can be achieved through donations from the black population (JANGARA, 2021).
International experiences on donation circles indicate that this strategy has a lot to contribute to community philanthropy, however, it is clear that there is a greater number of studies from the perspective of who donates and the characteristics of the donation circle itself.
In addition to this perspective, I consider it important to expand the investigations to discuss how committed the actions of these circles are to socio-environmental justice and the guarantee of rights. As well as, expanding understanding of ways to mobilize collective donations from countries in Africa and Latin America.
Do you want to know more about the findings of international donation circle experiences and check out the references in this text? Access the full research report! Click here.
Larissa Ferreira is a manager and Environmental Analyst, currently a master's student in Education at UFSCar. She works as a volunteer educator at FunBEA – Brazilian Environmental Education Fund. It was part of the first edition of Rede Comuá's Saberes Program, with research entitled “Community Philanthropy and Environmental Education: analysis of the circle of donors on the North Coast of São Paulo”.
