183. What happened when a group of friends in Brooklyn decided to donate together

This week let’s chat about Radfund, a group of friends in Brooklyn that decided to pool their money to donate together in 2015. Ten years later, the group is still going strong and they’ve learned a lot about the pros and cons of donating together. This week’s episode is about their lessons learned and what it has been like.

Links from today’s episode:

Rad Fund NYC

https://www.radfundnyc.com/ 

ICYMI another episode you might enjoy:

Episode#123 The Poor People’s Campaign

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Transcript

Welcome to Progressive Pockets! I go by GG, that’s short for Genet Gimja. This is a show about our money, specifically about the power that our money has. You and me, nonbillionaires. Our money has power too. So on this show you’ll hear episodes about how we can consider the environment when we invest our retirement portfolios. You’ll hear episodes about how to switch to a bank that actually serves our neighborhoods and communities. Today I want to talk about giving, and specifically I want to tell you a story about what happened when a group of friends from Brooklyn decided to give together.

This story starts in 2015. Four friends in Brooklyn wanted to deepen their friendships and their commitment to social justice. Some of them were inspired by movements like Black Lives Matter and wanted to channel their energy into something tangible. Some of them had been engaged in their communities for a long time but wanted a more structured way to give. Their day jobs were in production and nonprofits and law and tech and health and finance. Some of them were first generation Americans. They all like to dance at parties. 

Their idea was that if they formed a group and donated money together, as a group, that they would deepen their friendships and encourage each other to give more and to give more thoughtfully.

They started by having conversations about what mattered to them and how they could support grassroots movements. They learned from other giving circles and to guide their process. Over time, their group grew to 13 members, and they formalized as a giving circle—a space for learning, accountability, and mutual support.

If you’re thinking about starting your own circle, the first step is to gather a group of like-minded people—friends, family, coworkers, or neighbors who share your passion for a cause. You might start with just a few people and grow from there.

Radfund’s approach is deeply relational. They prioritize both financial support and meaningful connections with the organizations they fund. They also focus on intersectionality—recognizing how race, class, gender, ability, and other identities intersect in the fight for justice.

When you’re starting your own giving group, your own giving circle, take time to define your mission and values. What issues do you care about? How will you make decisions together? How will you ensure everyone has a voice? These are important questions to discuss early on.

Radfund spent a lot of time figuring out what they believed in. For example, they knew that they wanted to prioritize giving to groups who don’t usually get access to philanthropy, either because they are small or they are new or they don’t know the right people or speak the right language to open those doors. Here’s another example of what they believe: they believe that asking nonprofits to do tons of reporting keeps them from doing the actual work serving their communities, so they knew that they weren’t going to ask for a lot of paperwork and reporting from the groups they donated to. They want to give to groups they trust and do a casual yearly check up and get out of the way of the actual community building work.

This group of friends all live in Brooklyn and they donate all of their money to nonprofits working in New York City. 

One of the things that makes Radfund stand out is a unique decision they made early on. Instead of setting a fixed dollar amount, members give a percentage of their income and wealth.

They try to give at least 1% of their annual income, and 2% of income over $100,000, 3% of

income over $200,000, etc. So that’s the income portion.

Plus, at least .1% of their total wealth, and 0.2% of wealth, over $1,000,000, and 0.3% of wealth

over $2,000,000, etc.

So it’s a progressive scale according to your income and your wealth. And I like that they include your wealth as a part of the discussion. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has ever had an awkward conversation with a wealthy person cosplaying as a middle class person by talking about how small their salary is while leaving their wealth out of the conversation.

I like the sliding scale, but I will say i was caught off guard when I heard that they revealed their numbers to each other. Their incomes and their wealth.

And when you hear from members of Radfund they say that it was awkward at first—talking about their salaries, their inheritances, what they could really give. There were some surprises about the wide range in their economic statuses. Some raw feelings. But naming those numbers out loud was the moment they became a circle, not just a group.

For your circle, you’ll need to decide how much each person will contribute. Some circles set a flat amount, while others use a tiered or sliding scale. The key is to make sure everyone feels comfortable and included.

In addition to transparency, these friends are also committed to each member having an equal voice in decision-making, regardless of how much they give.

So after this group of friends assembled themselves and thought about what they believe and disclosed their wealth to each other, they were ready to start giving.

So here’s the logistics of how they do this.

They meet every 4–6 weeks, with rotating facilitators and flexible subcommittees. They hold annual retreats for reflection and planning, and they stay connected through a website and newsletters. If you’re interested, I’d encourage you to check out radfundnyc.com.

When it comes to actually giving the money away, Radfund members suggest and research organizations, focusing on those for whom a grant under $10,000 is meaningful. They have informal conversations with groups and use voting rounds to select grantees.

Radfund is about more than just giving money. Members attend rallies, demonstrations, and fundraisers together. They host workshops and trainings to learn more about social justice and philanthropy.

I like the idea of thinking about how you can build community beyond the money. Maybe you’ll host potlucks, volunteer together, or attend events as a group. These types of activities could help strengthen relationships and deepen your impact as a group.

As Radfund continues to grow, they’re always asking questions: Should they expand membership? Should they fund individuals as well as organizations? This group is active and they are constantly learning and growing. And I love that they are sharing what they’ve done so we can learn from their example.

If you go onto their website you will see they have uploaded a toolkit and it has some details of how they run their group and some photos, the photos were really nice to see. You can see that they are a tight group. But the toolkit has information about how they do their meetings and even how often they try to do their fun hangouts. You can see what kind of workshops they’ve done in the past to educate themselves to be better givers.

I was recently at a conference put on by Philanthropy Together and they were sharing some statistics about this type of collective giving. They shared that

55% of people said that giving in a group positively impacted their ability to live a healthy life physically mentally and/or spiritually.

83% said it increased their confidence when taking action to change their community

And 91% said it increased their sense of belonging to a community.

So to recap, here’s what we covered today:

• We talked about the story of a group of friends that got together in Brooklyn to donate their money together, they call themselves RadFund.
• They have 13 members and they give to groups doing social justice work in New York City.
• They prioritize groups that don’t usually get access to philanthropic funds.
• They don’t require a lot of reporting so they can focus on the actual community building work.
• They have workshops so they can educate themselves to be better donors.
• They have fun hangs too, they all like to dance so they go to dance parties together.

If you have more time today, here’s another episode to check out that’s episode 123 The Poor People’s Campaign. You may remember that from the history books, it is what the late Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was working on when he was assassinated, the Poor People’s Campaign is back and very relevant to what is going on today. I’ll link that episode 123 in the show notes.

If you haven’t already, you may want to sign up for the Progressive Pockets newsletter, it is free, it comes out about once a month, no spam no filler. It is concise and has links and goes a little beyond the episode. 

Are there any friends you’d like to donate with? Maybe you start off by donating together for your birthday or for an upcoming holiday. Send them this episode about RadFund to see what they think.

Before we go, let’s end with a quote…This quote comes to us from Nelson Mandela.

“There can be no greater gift than that of giving one's time and energy to help others without expecting anything in return.”

Let’s talk again soon!