posted on: Thursday, January 14, 2010

By Julia Craig

The Center for Participatory Change (CPC) in Western North Carolina released recently Horizontal Philanthropy: The Importance of Giving within Low-Wealth Communities, a report documenting “horizontal giving” in western North Carolina. CPC was part of NCRP’s Grantmaking for Community Impact Project North Carolina sample.

“Horizontal giving” is the mutual non-monetary sharing that occurs among friends, family and community members. CPC replicated a methodology used in South Africa to conduct 12 focus groups with 122 people across Western N.C., which included white, African American, Hmong, Cherokee, and Latino community members. The report identified 13 categories of giving, including concrete resources such as labor or food and less tangibles such as emotional support or support around experiences with racism. The report weaves anonymous quotations from the focus groups in with analysis of the findings.

CPC found that horizontal giving was more important among participants than vertical giving, which they define as traditional giving to and from institutions). Community members described the significant benefits they felt in improved quality of life they received from horizontal contributions. In the executive summary, CPC highlighted specifically the way racism and communal support for members who experienced racism was discussed by the groups: “systematic and individual racism is a powerful force in the lives of people of color … people need to come together to support one another around the racism that they experience, and … this mutual support around racism is an important form of giving.”

So, as CPC asked in its summary of the report, what do these findings on horizontal giving in low-wealth communities mean for grassroots social change organizations?

For one thing, the focus groups rarely talked about the nonprofit sector. There was no negative perception of nonprofits, but the participants primarily valued social networks and churches as communities (rather than as social service providers) and sources of support. CPC acknowledged that as a community organizing support nonprofit, it should better account for how the structures of mutual support within a community interact with more formal grassroots work. Craig White of CPC said:

“For CPC, we took a hard look at the findings from our study, and reviewed our work to be sure that we weren't doing anything to undercut or compromise the natural systems of giving that already exist in each community. We realized that the relationships that form in grassroots groups are often the type of connections that allow people to help each other with emotional support, housing, caregiving, transportation, and all the other forms of informal giving. Even more than before, we now try to make sure that a grassroots group isn't just spending time on work and projects and business, but that there's lots of time for conversation, having fun, and celebrating - because the relationships formed there may have just as big an impact as the group's official projects do.”

For traditional philanthropy, one lesson is similar to the conclusion CPC drew for its own work: funders should take the time to learn about and understand pre-existing networks of support and organic networks of horizontal giving. CPC wrote that institutions focused on giving can better account for the role that horizontal giving plays in lower-income communities when addressing poverty and other systemic problems.

You can download the full report for free on the CPC website, or read Craig White’s article in the current issue of Grassroots Fundraising Journal.

Julia Craig is research associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.