https://www.fcd-us.org/by-community-for-community-creating-belonging-in-philanthropy/
(Portions of this blog are adopted from Hali’s book, The Big We (Sweet July/ Zando 2025)
I grew up in Kansas City in the 1970s and ‘80s. My brother Eli and I were the only Asian kids at our elementary school. When we were in first and second grades, two enormous sixth-grade boys chased us home from school, yelling and taunting us, “Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees,” making their eyes slant up, and telling us to go back to where we came from. Certain we were going to die; we ran into our house. Our mom chased down one of the boys, marched him into our kitchen, and made him call his mom to tell her what he’d done.
Another time, when we were visiting my grandmother in Chicago, a very scary older white lady told us to go to the back of the bus, where we belonged, so she could have our seat. The bus driver stopped the bus and told the lady to get off.
About once a year throughout my childhood, something awful happened that had to do with race, belonging, and being told we didn’t belong. Fast-forward to now. Paul Brest, a giant of the legal and philanthropic fields (there’s a building named after him at Stanford University), recently said during a disagreement at a small philanthropy gathering, “Well, Hali, maybe you don’t belong in this room.”
Belonging, or not, is a recurring theme in the experiment that is America. And yet the beautiful hard truth is that belonging is an ideal we can create only by doing it together, and that applies to philanthropy as much as to any other sector.
If Not Here, Where? Giving Circles and Big Phil
Philanthropy as a professional field was born out of America’s first Gilded Age, when industrial fortunes created large foundations and modern grantmaking practices.
Today’s billionaire philanthropist often applies business-minded ideals and structures to philanthropic practice. This style — strategic or technocratic philanthropy — focuses on metrics, evaluation, and outcomes. In this model, the wealthy donor is often the central figure. In my book, The Big We (Zando, 2025), I call this form of philanthropy Big Phil. Big Phil has accomplished important things, and there is a place for it. But it is not the only way to practice generosity, nor is it the best or the oldest.
The other tradition — the one I call the Big We — is bottom-up, people-powered, and often anonymous. The Big We precedes Big Phil by millennia. Humans have been practicing this style of generosity for far longer than foundations have existed.
We are witnessing the Big We in real time. Belonging is being protected in communities across the country as people come together to support their immigrant neighbors in the face of ICE surges that are creating fear and trauma. In Minneapolis, where two people were recently killed by immigration officers, communities are crowdsourcing resources for legal aid and rent; neighbors are grocery shopping for families sheltering at home and using whistles to warn that ICE is in the area; and parents are patrolling schools at drop-off and dismissal times to protect students and their parents. These practices are emerging across the country to directly address the immediate needs of communities.
What are all these community efforts but expressions of love, care, and philanthropy in action?
Creating Belonging in Philanthropy
My understanding of belonging was shaped not only by exclusion but by what my family carried with them when they immigrated from Korea in the late 1960s. They were part of an early wave of Koreans coming to America after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended long-standing quotas that had favored arrivals from Western European countries. My parents and grandparents survived colonialism, war, imprisonment, and profound loss. Growing up, I heard many stories about scarcity and survival – but I also heard stories of abundance and generosity.
As this early wave of Korean immigrants arrived in the United States, they brought many cultural traditions that persisted despite the enormous differences between their new homes and the places they had come from. They improvised food, recreated holidays, and built community.
Another tradition that made its way from Korea to the United States was the idea of a geh, or a shared saving circle. The geh might meet monthly, and every member might put money into a common pot. Each month, one member takes the pot home. The members take turns until the cycle is complete.
Gehs work because they’re built on trust, friendship, and shared cultural heritage. Sure, it’s possible for people to cheat the system, but for the most part, people don’t. I’ve heard of giant gehs where the pot might be large enough to start a business, put a down payment on a home, or send a child off to college.
One of the really fun parts of doing this work is that I’ve learned that gehs — or something like them — exist in almost every culture. They’re called tandas in Mexico, sou sous in parts of West Africa and the Caribbean, arisans in Indonesia, and many other names. Faith traditions also carry practices of collective generosity: tzedakah, zakat, tithing, dāna.
Giving Circles in Action
If Big Phil sits at the head of a corporate boardroom, collective givers and community doers do their work around kitchen tables, in living rooms, and in church basements. These everyday spaces have historically served as organizing hubs, especially for women, people of color, immigrants, and queer folks. In the U.S., this tradition is rooted in a rich history of mutual aid, where communities have come together to care for one another, feed children, bury the dead, organize for dignity, and help newcomers survive and thrive.
When I started the Asian Women Giving Circle twenty years ago, we were excluded from philanthropic networks because giving circles, groups of people who pool their resources and give together, were not considered proper philanthropy. But I have seen the power of this approach again and again.
Q-Wave, a group of scrappy, young, Asian American activists and organizers, wanted to integrate the official Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade to include gay, queer, and trans people. It was 2009, and at that time, queer folks were not allowed to be out, loud, and march in the Parade. Q-Wave had applied to the Asian Women Giving Circle for a $4,000 grant to crash the party with a visual spectacle of rainbow flags, dragon kits, and flying fish kites. We women of the AWGC were excited to fund their project and march alongside them--official sanction or not. Our $4,000 was the only grant they had, and it covered beer, Oreos, and art supplies. The night before the Parade, Q-Wave received official permission to march, and the next day, we walked together in jubilation. At the time, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade still barred openly queer participants, but from that year forward, the Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade would be open to all. They made history.
I love this story so much because it demonstrates what a group of scrappy, young activists can accomplish with a ton of heart and not much money. And it demonstrates that a group of scrappy philanthropists can stand alongside and make history with them.
Small dollars can help bring about big change. Don’t underestimate yourself, your giving circle, or the power of the projects you’ll fund. Together, groups of concerned citizens have been the engines behind driving equitable social change. As Margaret Mead is famously quoted as saying, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
To the metaphor of the kitchen table, I add an important tweak: add a leaf or two so you are sure to invite people who are just outside your circle of regulars. It’s important to bring in perspectives beyond your own so that you are constantly learning and not simply reinforcing what you already believe.
Conclusion: A Vision of Belonging in Philanthropy
Imagine an America in which millions of citizens are engaged in thousands of groups, meeting in each other’s living rooms to put their heads, hearts, and money together in order to better their neighborhoods and towns. They break bread together. They quarrel, listen, iterate, and learn together. They help each other out when someone is dealing with an ill parent or has a kid starting a new school. They volunteer, they vote, and they move money together.
In a moment when many children of immigrants — not so different from my brother and me — are still being told they do not belong, the work of building community is not optional. It is essential.
This is the world I want to live in. Let’s get out there and build it. Together.