The Secret Giving Networks Quietly Funding the Causes Traditional Philanthropy Ignores

The Meeting Nobody Else Was Invited To

On the third Thursday of every month, a group of about twenty women gathers in a living room in suburban Columbus, Ohio. They drink coffee, catch up on each other's lives, and then get down to business: deciding which local nonprofit is going to receive their collective pot of money this month.

Each member contributes $100. That's $2,000 a month — $24,000 a year — flowing directly to organizations that most of them had never heard of before joining the group. No board meetings. No grant applications. No six-month review cycles. Just a community of people who trust each other enough to pool their resources and act.

"We funded a tiny reentry program for women leaving incarceration last spring," said the group's founder, who asked to be identified only as Renee. "They had maybe twelve people on their email list. They'd been turned down by every foundation they applied to. We gave them $4,000 and they used it to buy interview clothes for women getting out of prison. That's not glamorous enough for a big donor. But it changed things for those women."

This kind of story is playing out in living rooms, church basements, Slack channels, and workplace break rooms all over the United States. And the scale of what's happening is quietly remarkable.

What a Giving Circle Actually Is

The concept of a giving circle — a group of people who pool donations and collectively decide where the money goes — isn't new. But the form it's taking in 2024 is more decentralized, more digital, and more diverse than anything the traditional philanthropic sector has seen before.

According to research from Philanthropy Together, there are now more than 2,500 giving circles operating in the US, collectively distributing over $1.29 billion since they first emerged. And that number is almost certainly an undercount, because many of these groups operate entirely informally, with no website, no 501(c)(3) status, and no interest in being counted by anyone.

Some are rooted in faith communities — mosque congregations pooling zakat funds, Black church networks directing resources to community organizations, evangelical small groups collectively supporting international relief work. Others are workplace-based, with employees at tech companies or hospitals organizing their own giving programs independent of their employer's official charitable matching programs.

And then there's a growing category of purely online networks: Discord servers, Facebook groups, and WhatsApp threads where strangers from across the country coordinate to flood small nonprofits with micro-donations when they need it most.

The Gap These Networks Are Filling

To understand why these informal funding models are growing so fast, it helps to understand what they're responding to.

Traditional philanthropy — the world of foundations, endowments, and major gift programs — has a well-documented bias toward organizations that look a certain way. Large budgets. Professional development staff. Polished annual reports. Strong connections to established networks of wealth.

That leaves out a lot. Community health clinics in rural Appalachia. Mutual aid networks in immigrant communities. Youth programs run out of someone's garage in a neighborhood that's never had a community center. Organizations led by people of color that have been chronically underfunded relative to their impact.

"The grant-making world rewards stability," said Marcus, who helps coordinate a giving network in Chicago's South Side that directs funds to Black-led nonprofits. "But a lot of the most important work is being done by organizations that are scrappy and new and don't have time to write a twenty-page grant application. We can move faster than any foundation."

Speed, it turns out, is one of the defining advantages of community-led funding. When a crisis hits — a flood, a spike in food insecurity, a sudden need for emergency shelter — informal giving networks can mobilize in hours. Foundations take months.

How the Networks Actually Work

The mechanics vary widely, but a few models have emerged as particularly effective.

The rotating pot model — like Renee's group in Columbus — pools contributions monthly and votes on a recipient. Some groups use formal voting procedures; others operate by consensus. The key is that every member has a voice, which creates genuine investment in the outcome.

The amplifier model operates more like a flash mob. An organizer identifies a small nonprofit that's running a time-sensitive campaign, shares it with their network, and asks everyone to give within a 48-hour window. The goal isn't just the money — it's demonstrating community support in a way that can attract attention from larger donors.

Faith-based pooling often works through existing tithing and giving structures, redirecting a portion of congregational funds toward community organizations that leadership has vetted personally. The trust built through shared faith creates a level of accountability that formal grant agreements rarely achieve.

Workplace giving networks are perhaps the fastest-growing category. Frustrated with corporate charitable giving programs that funnel money to the same national organizations year after year, employees are organizing their own peer-to-peer campaigns inside their companies — sometimes with employer matching, sometimes entirely on their own.

What the Nonprofits Say

For the organizations on the receiving end, support from community giving networks feels different from traditional funding in ways that go beyond the dollars.

"When a foundation gives you money, there's always strings," said the director of a small domestic violence organization in rural Tennessee that received a $6,000 gift from a local giving circle last year. "With these groups, they trust us. They've met us. They've seen our work. There's a relationship there that makes the money feel real."

Several nonprofit leaders mentioned that community-sourced funding often comes with something foundations rarely provide: genuine advocates. When twenty people in a giving circle vote to support your organization, those twenty people become ambassadors. They tell their friends. They share your posts. They show up to volunteer. The funding creates a network effect that no grant can replicate.

The Challenges Nobody Mentions

For all their strengths, informal giving networks aren't without friction. Coordination takes time and energy, usually donated by one or two people who can burn out quickly. Decision-making by committee can get complicated, especially when members disagree about priorities. And because most of these groups operate without formal legal structure, accountability can be murky.

There's also the question of sustainability. A nonprofit that becomes dependent on a single giving circle is taking a risk — if the group dissolves or shifts its focus, the funding disappears overnight.

Organizers who've been doing this for years tend to emphasize the importance of transparency, clear processes for vetting recipients, and making sure no single organization becomes too reliant on any one informal network.

Why This Model Is Only Going to Grow

Something is shifting in the way Americans think about charitable giving. Trust in large institutions — including large nonprofits — has eroded. People want to see where their money goes. They want to feel connected to the impact. They want to give in community with people they know, not just click a button on a website and hope for the best.

Giving circles and informal funding networks scratch all of those itches. They're personal. They're accountable. They're democratic in a way that traditional philanthropy has never been.

And for the small, scrappy, overlooked organizations doing vital work in communities that big foundations have never visited? These networks might be the most important thing happening in American philanthropy right now — even if nobody outside the living room knows about it yet.