PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES 2013
July, 2013
Dear Friends,
If you have attended a program, workshop or nonprofit mixer, participated in a Bolder Conversation, followed our progress, or supported our work with a gift, volunteer contribution or goodwill, we thank you.
The following documents our progress over the last year. Whatever your relationship has been with us, we encourage you to act with generosity and grace and, most of all, to give big!
Our Brief History
As you may know, Bolder Giving was founded in 2007 and in 2010 we were recognized as an inspiration for the Giving Pledge and received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies and others to dramatically expand our capacity to build and deliver programs. Together these grants, and gifts from you, have fueled our growth.
Sharing the True Diversity of Bold Giving
This past year we have been particularly focused on sharing new stories of Bold Givers who were under-represented in philanthropic thought and practice. We are reaching out more aggressively to include people under 40; donors from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds; immigrants to the U.S.; economically diverse givers, including people with resources under one million and those with $50M-plus in assets; and people with diverse sources of wealth and approaches to activism. This has included stories like Brickson Diamond, a finance professional who founded and funded BlackHouse to lift up the work of African American filmmakers and Boris Yakubchik, an immigrant from Russia who donates half of his teacher’s salary to combat global poverty.
Collaborating with Ally
Organizations to Enhance Our Outreach
Bolder Giving developed programmatic collaborations with Tides, Resource Generation, Liberty Hill Foundation, Global Greengrants and the Seattle Foundation to deliver custom workshops and seminars to engage their donors in conversations about changing their giving, to provide trainings for their staff on how to support donors in exploring these issues, and to develop targeted Bold Giver profiles within their communities. We have also developed strategic syndication relationships with nonprofits that distribute our stories and other content to their networks and members, thereby widening our audience. They include Chronicle of Philanthropy, which hosted a series of 11 webchats over the last 2 years reaching over 10,000 people live and thousands more through the posted transcripts and associated articles on the Chronicle site; as well as the Million Dollar List at IUPUI Center on Philanthropy, Planned Giving Design Center, L3 donor network, Basil Magazine, and Jazi Giving, who each have published profiles of our Bold Givers and information about our monthly Bold Conversations in their communities.
Making Resources Available to a Broader Public
In addition to distributing the Bold Giver profiles and Bolder Giving workbook to a broader audience, we have designed and launched www.morethanmoney.org to offer free download and print-on-demand access to all 42 archival issues of this groundbreaking quarterly journal that explored issues of money and values. Additional content includes Outrageous Generosity, a blog that I write, and a newly compiled collection of books authored by Bold Givers.
We completed an update to the Bolder Giving Workbook with a more customizable layout that we have co-branded with organizations ranging from PNC Bank to the Greater Atlanta Community Foundation as companion pieces to workshops we’ve delivered for their clients and donors. Additionally, we are now working on several new versions focused on our topical initiatives (environmental justice, LGBTQ equality and social impact investing) and co-branded versions for several program partners.
Groundbreaking Give OUT Day Raises the Profile of—and Funds and Awareness for—LGBTQ Equality
Last summer Bolder Giving received a three-year grant from the Kevin J. Mossier foundation to fund the first-ever Give OUT Day, an annual national day of giving to LGBTQ organizations, the brainchild of Bold Giver Charlie Rounds that took place on May 9th. Give OUT Day broke new ground as it adapted a fundraising model that has proven successful for local multi-issue fundraising to a national single-issue focus. Bolder Giving took the lead in building the giving platform, www.giveoutday.org, raising prize money, generating media attention, and supporting nonprofits in their fundraising as part of the day. When all the returns are counted in the next several days, Bolder Giving will have been the impetus for more than 400 LGBTQ nonprofits in every state of the union and Puerto Rico and D.C. raising approximately $600,000 in funds—and engaging over 5,400 donors for their causes!
LOOKING AHEAD TO 2014
Bolder Giving will launch two exciting new programs that speak to needs articulated by our growing constituency of donor activists.
The first is the Giving Communities project, funded by the Amoveo foundation, whose end product is a national online donor network directory. To date more than 35 giving communities have completed their profiles for this new web portal, and we’re expecting to include over 50 communities by the time we launch in the fall. Log on then, and we will help you develop your own profile of giving communities that best suit your needs.
The second program is Bolder Investing, which fosters and promotes social impact investing. Over the last two years Bolder Giving has collected stories of people who give boldly and work to align their money with their values. Individuals in this cadre of donors, whom we call Bold Investors, employ a wide range of strategies to deploy all of their resources for positive social change including impact, ESG, ethical, mission-related, community development and socially responsible investing, micro finance and social entrepreneurship.
As it has done with other initiatives, Bolder Giving will seek collaborations with non-profit organizations offering peer support, education, and conferences for Bolder Investors. On June 26, 2013 we launched Bolder Investing at the renowned, groundbreaking firm Domini Social Investments, during a special session headlined by Philippe Cousteau, Tom Van Dyke and Kristin Hull. These committed individuals both give big and invest their conscience.
Bolder Giving will also promote the Giving Communities portal to social-impact investors as they build their networks of allied individuals and institutions.
Additionally, as an expansion of its Environmental Justice Initiative, on May 8 Bolder Giving co-hosted an intimate dinner with Bill McKibben and Bill Moyers for donors interested in learning more about the role of student organizers in the fossil fuel divestment campaign. We partnered with the Responsible Endowment Coalition to produce this in-depth conversation about climate, energy policy, investment ethics and risk, and youth leadership, for a small group of donors. We will also be a co-sponsor of “Outside the Levees,” a field trip to the Bayou in New Orleans on September 29, 2013 that offers a rare opportunity for donors to see firsthand how an enterprising group of traditional Louisiana Delta island communities are fighting for survival.
Future Growth in Partnership With You
The institutionalization of bolder giving – through storytelling, donor education and resource accessibility – has the ability to move the needle on giving overall from the 2 to 3 percent of income that has persisted in the US since tracking of such statistics began over 60 years ago. Imagine what could happen in our communities if collectively we can move society to even just give an average of 1% more per year. We at Bolder Giving know that this is possible. Join us in the movement to give more, risk more and inspire more.
Sincerely,
Jason Franklin, Executive Director
& the Staff of Bolder Giving
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