What is a Giving Circle?

100 Women Who Care About Long Island is a giving circle.  Our Chapter currently has one circle started in Melville/Farmingdale Area.

According to Wikipedia; a giving circle is a form of participatory philanthropy where groups of individuals donate their own money or time to a pooled fund, decide together where to give these away to charity or community projects and, in doing so, seek to increase their awareness of and engagement in the issues covered by the charity or community project.^[

100 Women Who Care About Long Island was Founded by Tracy Lobdell (First Women on the Right, Below).  She was also one of the Four Chapter Leaders who formed The 100 Who Care Alliance.  Today there are over 650 Chapters around the globe.

About 100 Who Care Alliance

The four-chapter leaders who formed the Alliance (from l-r): Traci Richards (Northern Virginia), Sally Wiarda (DuPage County, IL), Laurie Richter (North Suburban Chicago), and Tracy Lobdell (Long Island, NY).

The 100 Who Care Alliance was started as a volunteer effort by four chapter heads that wanted to create a format for sharing ideas and learning from the best practices of other chapters. As chapter heads, we all have to address similar issues and challenges within our groups. We recognized that since we are in such diverse geographical locations, most of us can’t meet other chapter heads face to face, and often, we don’t even know about each other. Towards that end, the Alliance was created to connect us, the Chapter Leaders.

A secondary goal in forming the Alliance was to get the word out more broadly about what we all are accomplishing locally, so we could inspire additional chapter growth throughout communities around the world. Our first activity was a conference in May 2015. We were hoping for 20 people, and 96 attended.

You do not need to “join” the Alliance or become a “member” of the Alliance to start a chapter. We compile a master chapter list and keep it up to date (so you don’t have to do that additional time-consuming work for your own website). If you run your chapter in accordance with the main intent of Karen Dunigan’s original model, we will eventually learn about you and get you listed.

Of course, the benefit is the ability to connect with other chapters all over the world to share best practices and exchange ideas via our LinkedIn and Facebook forums and at conferences. The updated chapter list also ensures that you can directly view and contact any operational chapters.

As a reminder, you are free to operate your chapter as you see fit, as we believe in the grassroots nature of this giving circle in that you know what’s best for your community. The concept was formed to be simple, impactful, and powerful.

The Alliance remains volunteer-driven. If you are interested in lending your talents,
lease contact us directly.

100 Women Who Care About Long Island has a place for everyone.  You can be a member, a financial supporter, a volunteer, a nonprofit organization, or simply a guest.  It is good to be in the presence of positive empowering people who care about Long Island.