How to upgrade your giving

How do you incorporate giving into your everyday living? What does giving mean to you?

For us, our personal giving has previously consisted of donating to organizations that have been highlighted in current events (e.g. wildfires, COVID related, social justice, etc.) and we always make annual donations to several organizations during the holiday season and on Earth Day.

This year we’ve been thinking more about our giving. Our goal is to have a more intentional giving plan and significantly increase the amount we give. We joined Resource Generation (RG) at the start of 2020 and it has propelled us along on our journey to use our class and wealth privilege to work toward a vision in which resources and power are more equitably shared. Through RG, we’ve learned about social justice philanthropy.

“Social justice philanthropy focuses on the root causes of social, racial, economic and environmental injustices. It strives to include the people who are impacted by those injustices as decision-makers. It also aims to make the field of philanthropy more accessible and diverse. In social justice philanthropy, foundations are accountable, transparent and responsive in their grantmaking. Donors and foundations act as allies to social justice movements by contributing not only monetary resources but their time, knowledge, skills and access.”

We’ve thought a lot about the kind of world we want to live in and how we can use our money to help construct that world. Similar to sustainable and socially responsible investing, we are supporting organizations that exemplify our values. So far in 2020, on a personal level, we have created a giving plan (check out RG’s giving guide to learn more), signed the RG giving pledge, taken the One for Democracy pledge, will be joining the North Star Fund Giving Project, and established a donor advised fund in an effort to propel ourselves to give more than what we’ve been comfortable with in the past. On top of our personal giving, we are donating at least 10% of Good Capital’s 2020 profits.

We’d love to invite you to join us on our giving journey. Giving takes diligence and commitment and we’re here to keep each other accountable. It’s also much more fun to give together! Let us know your thoughts on giving and how you’ve incorporated it into your life.

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To learn more about social justice philanthropy, check out Resource Generation and the North Star Fund.

This is the final post in our series on the “4 Ways You Can Align Your Money With Your Values.” You can find the other posts in the series here.