Generosity isn't reserved for the ultra-wealthy. Whether you have $50 or $5,000 to give, your dollars can go further and your impact can grow exponentially when you give collectively. In this episode, Lisa LaFrance, philanthropic advisor and founder of LaFrance Project, breaks down how pooling resources through giving circles is changing modern philanthropy and creating significant change in local communities.

Lisa shares the surprising statistics behind collective giving, how democratized philanthropy puts donors in the driver's seat, and reveals why supporting grassroots organizations can be more impactful than writing checks to large institutions.

Listen in to discover how giving circles create networks of learning, engagement, and community transformation—all while making your charitable dollars work harder than you ever imagined.

What You’ll Learn:

• How collective giving has mobilized over $3.1 billion from hundreds of thousands of donors since 2016.
• The difference between giving circles and traditional charitable donations.
• Why donor-advised funds represent a major untapped opportunity in philanthropy.
• How technology and data may reshape the nonprofit sector in the coming years.
• The "3Ms" of meaningful nonprofit engagement.
• How group decision-making offers education, transparency, and deeper engagement.

Ideas Worth Sharing:

• “The wonderful thing about collective giving, which is it democratizes philanthropy. The people that are contributing to the pool of funds have some say in how that money gets distributed.” - Lisa LaFrance
• “Trust-based philanthropy is really about developing really strong relationships between the donor and the nonprofit, so that you can have a really open conversation and communication.” - Lisa LaFrance
• “If you give that $500 to the American Heart Association, it's great, but if you give that $500 to a small nonprofit that's just building, that maybe has a budget of a hundred thousand dollars, really impactful for them... You've changed their balance sheet significantly.” - Lisa LaFrance

Resources:

• Lisa LaFrance: Website | LinkedIn | Email: lisa@lafranceproject.com
• Genevieve George: Website | LinkedIn
• Giving Reimagined: Leveraging Technology to Transform the Way We Give by Randy Scheid
• Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong | TED Talk
• Sara Lomelin: Your invitation to disrupt philanthropy | TED Talk
• Cause IQ
• Grapevine
• Philanthropy Together

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