Why companies committed to gender equality need to pool their resources
It takes all kinds to change the world: activists, artists, philanthropists, policymakers, business leaders, and more. Given my background, I’m most interested in the role businesses play. I’ve written elsewhere about how giving back is no longer a “nice to have” for business, but a “must have” and about how my company, Working for Women, links businesses with nonprofits doing the difficult, essential work of accelerating women’s financial independence.
Today I want to talk about a powerful lever for change that is too often overlooked in the business community: pooling our resources in service of a common goal.
In a conversation last fall with coach and nonprofit strategy advisor Michelle Hynes, she pointed out something that had previously eluded me: Working for Women is essentially bringing philanthropy’s “giving circle” model into the world of business. If you aren’t familiar, a giving circle brings together a group of people with shared values to collectively discuss and decide where to make a pooled investment. Sara Lomelin, founding CEO of Philanthropy Together, explained in her TED Talk earlier this year that there are giving circles “with five members or five hundred, each person giving $5 dollars or $250,000, including any generation, geography, or identity.” Lomelin went on to note that “just in the past two decades, thousands of giving circles got started all over the world, collectively giving more than 1.3 billion dollars.”
Imagine the power of bringing this model into the corporate world. What if, like Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, we all put our money where our values are? Speaking of Chouinard, he is also the co-founder with Craig Mathews of the 1% for the Planet initiative, whose model illuminates the power of pooling resources in service of a common goal — in their case, protecting Planet Earth. “We can do far more together than we can alone,” reads the 1% for the Planet website. “And, saving our planet takes more than what one person, company or organization can do on its own.” To date, their members have invested over $350 million in environmental solutions through the 1% for the Planet network.
I am on a mission to channel as many resources as possible to women’s economic independence, which data shows (and shows, and shows) makes both society and the economy better for us all. While few of us work at companies that could easily write a check for $1 million, many of us work at companies that could fairly easily write a check for $1,000. And if 1,000 of us wrote that $1,000 check — stay with me now, this is the math portion of the article! — we’d raise $1 million for a cause that matters most to us. For me, that’s women’s equality.
As the 1% for the Planet website says, the power of their model is not just about the movement of money towards a worthy cause — it’s about that, yes, but even more, it’s about taking collective responsibility. To go from thinking that a social problem is someone else’s to solve, to realizing the power we each have to be part of the solution especially when we work together, is the most important mindset shift every one of us can make. The more we commit to channeling our resources together to create a better world, the sooner the promise of a better tomorrow starts to shape into a reality we get to experience today. That is truly the power of the giving circle.
To begin creating a more equal world for women — and to experience the social and economic ripple effects that women’s equality creates for all of us — join our business circle and make an impact today!
We can do more together!
Beth Bengtson
Founder & CEO, Working for Women
www.workingforwomen.org
beth@workingforwomen.org
@workingforwomen
