Demo VideoResources to help you connect with your giving
Welcome
Congratulations! By landing on this page, you are already on your way to becoming a philanthropist!
Yes, philanthropist. The term can certainly be intimidating, bringing to mind a billionaire deploying large sums of money through a well-staffed private foundation. But you don’t need millions of dollars to make your mark on the world. Anyone can make a meaningful difference by possessing passion, generosity and a desire to do good.
Even taking this first step to think about your giving means you understand the importance of conducting research and creating a strategy prior to making a donation. After all, why shouldn’t you take the time to think about how you best use your resources of time, money, and skills to best support the issues that matter most to you?
As you embark on this journey of becoming a philanthropist, we encourage you to think big and ask yourself, “How would I improve the world as it exists today?”
We’ve created this Philanthropy Toolkit as a valuable resource for you to develop a game-plan to achieve the kind of impact you’d like to see. Our goal is to make the process easier and more accessible because we believe that every individual should be able to make an informed decision about where to direct their giving.
This toolkit will act as your guide providing insights on
Why you give
Identify where to give
Define how you want to give
Evaluate nonprofits and organizations before you give
Determine the best way to act
If you are thinking, “I’m passionate about so many areas–improving education, addressing global warming, supporting civic engagement in my local community–where do I begin?” Well, rest assured that you’re not alone and we’re here to help!
To start, grab a piece of paper, a trusty notebook, or however you best collect and save your thoughts. You will want to keep this handy as you work through our guide. We are now ready to begin. Check out the next section to get started.
1
Consider your values
Why do you want to give in the first place?
Often our drive to do good stems from how we approach the world. Whether you’re a seasoned giver or this is the first time you’re thinking about philanthropy, it can be hugely helpful to get back to the basics and think about your core beliefs, your passions and your values.
For example, here are some questions to get you on the right path:
How or where do you spend your time?
What is most important to you?
What values do you choose to live by?
What motivates you on a daily basis?
We understand that these questions may be a bit daunting at first, so let’s start small. Try this:
Take five minutes to jot down at least five values that speak to your core beliefs. The questions above can help you think about what those values might be. If you’d like some inspiration, here’s a list to kickstart your own thinking:
Compassion
Integrity
Equality
Opportunity
Freedom
Spirituality
Impact
Justice
Community
Innovation
Courage
Leadership
Personal Growth
Sustainability
Security
Adventure
Tradition
Responsibility
Once you’ve brainstormed a good number of values, narrow that list down to your top three. Circle them or write in bold at the top of your notes. These three values will serve as the central pillars to your own personal giving strategy that will grow and evolve along with you.
2
Identify causes
Armed with these values, consider what they say about you. How can you translate your values into causes that you could potentially support? Let’s take “Opportunity” as an example. The definition being: “creating possibilities for all to advance and succeed.” A few related causes could be education, human rights, or poverty alleviation. Through this process, you can begin thinking about broad cause areas that are directly related to what motivates you.
Here are a few questions to help you get started. Feel free to write down your responses—these will be great to keep close.
Is there a cause that you are emotionally connected to? This could be anything from a news story to an event you’ve witnessed.
How do you define your community? Do you feel most tied to the local community or are you connected to another community in a different city, state, or country?
What community are you most active in? This could be your family, neighborhood, work, political, advocacy, or religious group. Also, is there an issue in the community that you would like to address?
3
Choose where to give
Just like there are many causes you can give to, there are also many philosophies that can help guide your giving.
Creating your own philosophy will help you find the nonprofits that you wish to support. This will become clearer later in the guide. For now, let’s explore this idea further. What scope or lens might you want to apply to your giving?
Take a few minutes and write down your reactions to the following questions:
Do you care about giving locally where you may have a direct connection to the cause?
Can you make the biggest difference in addressing your cause by supporting efforts in other areas of the world?
What is more important to you: the impact of your dollar, or having a personal connection to your cause?
To help you develop your ideas, we’ve outlined some helpful thoughts below on how other philanthropists have approached similar questions. Note what resonates most with you. What gets you excited? Do you have an “Aha!” moment? Or a strong emotional response? If yes, write that down and use it to further shape your own giving philosophy.
Local and community giving
Local giving is rewarding and valuable because many communities, no matter the size, have causes that can benefit from your support. The giving can be emotional and intimate, and it can encourage you to interact more with your community. Some examples include donating to the local homeless shelter, coaching a children’s sports team, or volunteering at a nursing home or animal shelter.
As you get to know your community better and understand the context of the challenges you want to help overcome, you will continuously learn about more effective ways to make an impact!
Write down which of these following community initiatives you would be willing to donate to or volunteer for, if any:
Homeless Shelter
Animal Shelter
Women’s shelter
Schools
Sports teams
Food Pantries
Employment Services
Rehabilitative Services
Senior Homes
Political Advocacy Organizations
LGBT Advocacy
Youth Centers
Booster Clubs
Health Services
Park Districts
Local Religious Organization
Giving to causes outside of your local community
Our world is more connected than ever, which means our sense of community is no longer confined to our immediate neighborhoods. There is a growing sense of global citizenship, which means our fates and successes are interdependent.
If you possess such a broad outlook, the phrase “charity starts at home” really means supporting causes around the world. The good news is that there are tremendous opportunities to support issues outside your own community
We suggest thinking first about whether the cause you are passionate about is best supported through global initiatives (ex: clean water access or climate change initiatives). Learn where in the world your issue is most dire and where there exists the greatest opportunity to address it.
If there is a community you want to support (think: Nepal after the earthquake), focus on finding resources that outline the needs of this specific community in this specific situation. Often local nonprofits have a better sense of what community needs actually exist and how to form thoughtful, appropriate and sustainable solutions, as opposed to international organizations (which may not have an appropriate understanding of community interests) forging interventions.
For example, with a disaster like the Nepal earthquake, the needs are often much greater than the initial emergency response efforts. Immediate needs like food, water and shelter are critical, but so are ensuring that pregnant mothers, children and families can access health facilities when roads have been completely destroyed. Remember supporting recovery efforts is also a huge part of disaster relief work. Local organizations usually have the best sense of what these recovery efforts entail.
Strategic Philanthropy
After you discover which causes are important to you, the question for strategic philanthropists specifically becomes: where can my investment of time and money do the most good in making a difference in this area.
While the term “strategic philanthropy” is used primarily in the context of the relationship between a foundation and its hands-on approach with grantees, the core principles are applicable to anyone thinking about how to maximize the effectiveness of his or her philanthropy. In many ways, this whole Toolkit serves as resource to help you think like a strategic philanthropists.
Below are key considerations that define “strategic philanthropy”, which can be applied to how you approach your giving at a local or global level.
Check out our Resource Library to learn more about strategic philanthropy and how you can adopt this approach in your personal philanthropy.
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What are my goals?
How do I best achieve these goals?
How do I know I’m achieving these goals?
Effective Altruism
Effective altruism is guided by the question: where can you help those who are in the most need?
Effective altruists define effectiveness by how many lives are saved and how much they are improved by each dollar given through a data driven approach. When determining which cause to support, effective altruists focus on the following factors: scale, tractability, and neglectedness. (See the dropdowns below)
Effective altruists would rather give to the most globally impoverished, not focusing on inequality but rather focusing on the eradication of absolute poverty.
It is worth noting that some types of issues may not even fit well into the effective altruism or local giving paradigms. One such example is advocacy work for large-scale social change. This may not be easily monitored or evaluated the same way effective altruists determines impact in their cause areas.
For more information on Effective Altruism, and its creator Peter Singer
For distilled characteristics of Effective Altruism, this GiveWell post is an interesting read
Here’s a criticism of Effective Altruism by David Brooks for The New York Times
Effective Altruism, like many giving philosophies, can be controversial. The question of how to effectively solve the world’s problems is immense, driving individuals to develop an interpretation of how their charitable contributions can create the greatest possible change. If Effective Altruism is not right for you, there are other philosophies aimed at doing good. It’s important to remember that while you might not agree with another’s philosophy, we all share the same goal.
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Scale
Tractability
Neglectedness
4
Select nonprofits
Now that you have a sense of where you want to give and why, let’s start to identify the recipients of your gifts.
First, it is important to research an organization before you donate or volunteer in order to ensure that your money or time is used responsibly. At the end of this section, you’ll find websites that can help you answer the following questions you should pose:
How does the organization address the issue you care about? Example: a local food bank addresses the issue of hunger by providing meals. Another nonprofit might also address hunger by providing assistance to farmers to reliably produce food.
How does the organization measure and share their impact? How do they measure success? Example: a local food bank might measure success in terms of the number of meals served, rather than the number of people who are well-nourished or no longer hungry. In this scenario, the local food bank’s success metric does not share the full picture of how healthy the meals are, how many people are actually receiving the meals- can we assume just one meal serves one person?
Does the organization make its metrics publicly available?
Does the organization partner with other credible nonprofits and institutions?
Is the executive team and board experienced in this space?
Using these questions on strategy, organization, leadership, and finances, here are some resources that can help you identify and research organizations:
Bright Funds
Guidestar
Philanthropedia
GiveWell
The Center for High Impact Philanthropy
Charity Navigator
Universal Giving
S&I 100
Private or Community Foundation’s list of grantees
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Financials
Risk
Overhead
Revenue
How Bright Funds can help
Bright Funds has its own platform where you can research organizations by cause, as well as press on their recent activities. Our platform is effective at helping you identify a cause, and then we make the process easy by presenting you with many giving options.
Through Bright Funds, donors can choose their cause and give to a “fund” comprised of multiple nonprofits that address a specific cause area. Each of these Flagship Funds adopts a global outlook to the designated issue and promotes a holistic solution to tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges by supporting carefully vetted nonprofits. Examples include:
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Improve Education
Alleviate Poverty and Promote Economic Growth
Protect the Environment
Provide Clean Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Fund
Improve Global health
Uphold Human Rights
Additional resources
Guidestar lets you comprehensively research specific nonprofits’ financials, including their tax returns and financial health visualizations that Guidestar creates on its own. You can also find each nonprofits’ mission statement and impact report through Guidestar.
Philanthropedia allows you to choose one of many causes (national causes like LGBT equality and local causes such as homelessness) for which they have analyzed nonprofits and given the best performers awards. Here you can find stories about the nonprofit as well as expert reviews and information on the nonprofit’s leadership.
GiveWell provides a small, concise list of the charities that you can give to using a strict adherence to Effective Altruism: evaluating high impact in lives saved and quality-of-life improved. Their top charities serve the global poor, focus on evidence-backed interventions, and are thoroughly vetted and transparent. They also publish their own research mistakes, so you know how both research and charity money has been mismanaged.
The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania focuses on the idea of strategic, or “high impact” philanthropy. The center provides a great toolkit and suggestions of important causes, both global and local, which can be significantly affected by your philanthropic dollar.
Charity Navigator is an independent charity evaluator that lets you browse charities by categories, and informs you of news in the philanthropy world, including new and notable organizations.
Universal Giving offers interactive ways to give gifts, fund projects, raise money for causes, and volunteer internationally, in addition to independent evaluations of charities. If you’re looking for new ideas in fundraising and volunteering, this is a great resource.
S&I 100 tracks high-impact nonprofits just as the S&P 500 tracks large companies. The S&I 100 team has screened each of the nonprofits included in the list for evidence of impact, as well as potential to scale.
Large Private or Community Foundations can vary in terms of how they evaluate their nonprofit grantees, but many have some of the best knowledge of specific communities or issue areas around. At the very least, these foundations have teams of program officers who conduct due diligences on their nonprofit grantees, which provides a baseline indication of the nonprofit’s quality.
Many foundations have a list of their grantees by program area and are easily accessible on their website.
Community Foundations exist to serve a defined geographic area (major cities or regions), and a result, develop a deep knowledge of local issues and appropriate solutions. To find a community foundation near you, we suggest checking out a comprehensive listing of community foundations put together by Council on Foundations.
Private Foundations are another excellent source of information, and usually address specific issue areas rather than specific geographic areas. The outstanding private foundations bring on exceptionally knowledgeable people to help better understand the issues and develop thoughtful grant making strategies to best-in-class nonprofits.
Some of the most notable U.S.-based foundations cover a range of national and global issues:
Now that you’ve taken a holistic view of how to think about philanthropy, the issues you want to address, and the kind of impact you want to have, we recommend writing down 1-3 nonprofits that you would be interested in supporting.
5
What you can do
After you’ve selected the causes and nonprofits you want to focus on, it’s time to decide how you would like to offer support. We have outlined a few options to help you come up with an effective strategy.
Donate
We’re not here to tell you much you should give. Giving is based on what makes you comfortable. But, it might be helpful to know how much others like you give when searching for guidance.
On average, Americans give 2.9% of their income to charity. Some groups, both religious and otherwise, also give recommendations on how much to give.
Christianity and Judaism, through tzedakah, ask donors for 10% of their income. Islam asks for a charitable contribution known as zakat of 2.5% of one’s accumulated wealth each year.
If you consider yourself an effective altruist, how much should you give? Effective Altruist philosopher Peter Singer recommends that Americans donate 5% of their incomes, hopefully to effective altruist causes.
Grow your donation
Matching programs are an excellent way to amplify your impact. Employers will match all or part of your gift, and some nonprofits have matching programs that are funded by larger donors too.
With 80 percent of companies engaging in social responsibility programs, corporate giving has the ability to be an even larger-scale source of nonprofit funding. Does your employer have a matching donation program? If yes, make sure to alert them of your donation. If not, consider asking your HR department about potential matching opportunities. Remember to itemize your donations for tax deductions.
Volunteer
Volunteering gives you an opportunity to connect with your cause firsthand through an experience that can be deeply valuable to the both volunteer and organization. Giving time can also be an invaluable learning experience and way to leverage your skills and expertise in a way that is meaningful to you.
Additionally, volunteer programs provide an added benefits for employees, giving team members time to connect outside of a work setting and create personal bonds with other people in the company.
Remember, being a philanthropist is about your intent to do the greatest good with the resources you have available to you– including your time, talent and love as a human being.
To get you started, we put together a guide to help you map out your volunteering strategy through identifying key characteristics of volunteer opportunities to look for:
How much time do you have?
A few hours a month
1-2 hours a week
3+ hours a week
Where are you willing to volunteer?
Close to home
Close to work
Close to family
What skills could you offer?
Skills you learned at work
Skills from your hobbies
Skills from your education
What gives you joy?
Physical activities
Interpersonal connections
Research
Planning or program coordination
Advocacy
Leveraging your skills
Are there other people you would want to volunteer with you?
Coworkers
Family members
Friends
Community groups
Conclusion
Continue to reflect, re-evaluate and expand your giving philosophy.
Thank you for choosing Bright Funds’ Philanthropy Toolkit to help increase your awareness about what it means to be an effective philanthropist!
In a short amount of time, you’ve identified causes, philosophies, and specific organizations to help you kickstart strategic giving. As your philanthropic journey continues to evolve, this guide can serve as a great way to reevaluate and reinforce your own personal giving philosophy. If you would like to continue your journey, Bright Funds would be thrilled to support you in your giving and help you take the leap!
Here’s how you can get started:
Donate through our platform which includes any registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, as well as recommended funds and causes which you can personalize.
Log your volunteer hours to keep track of your goals.
Connect with other givers to learn more and consistently challenge and strengthen your thought process.
Share this toolkit with your co-workers who want to give and don’t know where to start! Encourage others to access Bright Funds’ innovative and convenient platform!
For more resources to further your own philanthropic journey, we recommend checking out our library. There are some great insights and tools you can use on your path to becoming a better philanthropist.
Resource library
Giving 2.0 Take philanthropic thought leader Laura Arrillaga Andreessen’s course on personal philanthropy.
Giving Library Get to know the people behind the organizations: watch interviews with nonprofit executive teams.
GiveSmart Leading nonprofit consultancy Bridgespan has an in-depth resource with philanthropy strategy guides and interviews with notable philanthropists.
Stanford Social Innovation Review This quarterly magazine on the social sector includes topics that range from social innovation to public policy.
University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy This Center offers guidance on where to give, as well as publishes research and produces a podcast on philanthropy.
Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at the University of Indiana So interested in philanthropy you want to get an actual degree? The Lilly Family School of Philanthropy offers a number of degrees in philanthropy studies, as well as publishes research within various areas of philanthropy.
Guidestar Guidestar lets you comprehensively research specific nonprofits’ financials, including their tax returns and financial health visualizations that Guidestar creates on its own. You can also find each nonprofits’ mission statement and impact report through Guidestar.
Philanthropedia Philanthropedia allows you to choose one of many causes (national causes like LGBT equality and local causes such as homelessness) for which they have analyzed nonprofits and given the best performers awards. Here you can find stories about the nonprofit as well as expert reviews and information on the nonprofit’s leadership.
GiveWell GiveWell provides a small, concise list of the charities that you can give to using a strict adherence to Effective Altruism: evaluating high impact in lives saved and quality-of-life improved. Their top charities serve the global poor, focus on evidence-backed interventions, and are thoroughly vetted and transparent. They also publish their own research mistakes, so you know how both research and charity money has been mismanaged.
The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania engages the philosophy of strategic philanthropy. It provides a great toolkit and suggestions of important causes, both global and local, which can be significantly affected by your philanthropic dollar. For Impact definitions, make sure to check out this link.
Charity Navigator Charity Navigator is an independent charity evaluator that lets you browse charities by categories, and informs you of news in the philanthropy world, including new and notable organizations.
S&I 100 S&I 100 tracks high-impact nonprofits just as the S&P 500 tracks large companies. The S&I 100 team has screened each of the nonprofits included in the list for evidence of impact, as well as potential to scale.
A Life You Can Save Inspired by Peter Singer’s book, The Life You Can Save is an educational outreach and advocacy organization focused on extreme poverty. Notable resources include their “Impact Calculator” and “Giving Games”, available for companies.
For more information on Effective Altruism, and its creator Peter Singer
For distilled characteristics of Effective Altruism, check out this GiveWell post
A criticism of Effective Altruism by David Brooks for The New York Times
Dan Pallotta’s TED lecture on why a nonprofit’s overhead can only tell us so much
