Local givers rise to the COVID-19 challenge

A Gallup Poll in December noted a sharp rise in the number of Americans who would prefer to live in smaller localities. Nearly 50% would choose a town or rural area rather than a city or suburb. That’s up from 39% two years ago, or before COVID-19. During times of national upheaval like a pandemic, Gallup noted, more people search for safety in less-crowded places. These are also communities with higher levels of trust where people tend to know each other, often providing what Abraham Lincoln called “the bonds of affection.”

This new preference for smaller communities fits with another trend over the past year. Of the more than $20 billion in charitable grants provided for COVID-19 relief, more than half were given by hundreds of community foundations. These are local philanthropies whose pots of money range from $100,000 to $1.7 billion, while the median grant size is only about $10,000. With their on-the-ground knowledge, community foundations are better able than national institutions to listen to the needs of local people. In 2020, their work was supported by more than 1,000 charity groups created in response to COVID-19, such as new food banks.

“Philanthropy has responded to COVID-19 like no other crisis in recent memory,” states a report by two charity-related groups, Candid and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, that included a tracking of community foundations.

The report explains that many communities already have “highly resilient support networks” that can be easily reached by donors. This is especially true for marginalized Americans. More than a third of philanthropy for COVID-19 relief went to Black and Indigenous communities, and other minority groups.

“If a large giver can support a community foundation, then the [everyday] gifts can flow through with little or no overhead,” said Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at a seminar last month. He refers to local giving as “deep engagement.”

Local giving is hardly new. “Giving circles” that rely on individuals in a community sprang up in the 1980s. By 2017, they numbered more than 1,600 in the U.S. Last year’s post-Thanksgiving donation day known as Giving Tuesday netted an estimated $2.47 billion, a 25% increase over 2019, with much of that money going to local needs. The internet has helped local givers to better pool their donations for greater impact.

Yet “COVID-19 has inspired a groundswell of response to human need,” wrote a group of philanthropy scholars in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. “These expanded ways of giving promote greater participation and reshape the meaning of citizenship.” They are also expanding the bonds between people within communities in the spirit of what Lincoln called “charity for all.”