Despite some progress in recent years, philanthropic giving remains inequitable. For instance, according to a 2015 study by Hispanics in Philanthropy less than 1.3% of philanthropic dollars go to Latino-based organizations. On the gender side, a recent study by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found that only 1.9% of philanthropic dollars go to women and girls’ issues. A separate study by the Ms. Foundation for Women found that when it comes to organizations dedicated to women and girls of color, that number is even lower — they receive less than 1% of foundation funding.
But this inequity extends beyond underinvestment in Latino-serving organizations. There is also a significant underrepresentation of Latinos in philanthropy. One women-led giving circle is looking to help fill that gap. Part of the Latino Community Foundation (LCF), the Latino Giving Circle Network is the largest network of Latino philanthropists in the U.S. One of its 22 giving circles, the Peninsula Latina Giving Circle — which was established in 2014 and has a total of 25 members — focuses its funding on issues like early childhood education, mental health and social justice. The giving circle’s members have awarded more than $150,000 in grants to local organizations that work to support women, girls and families. For its latest round of grants, the giving circle raised $20,500.
Grantees include Ayudando Latinos a Soñar (ALAS), a Latino-focused organization that provides cultural arts, education, social services and mental health assistance to Latino families in Half Moon Bay; St. Francis Center of Redwood City, which provides food, clothing, shelter and other social services to individuals and families struggling with poverty; and the Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN), which uses leadership development, policy advocacy, community education and organizing, and civic engagement and legal services to empower low-income immigrants and refugees.
Bego Lozano, who founded the Peninsula Latina Giving Circle, said that while it’s important for philanthropy to address issues around the world, it’s equally important to fund issues closer to home.
“When you do a giving circle… it democratizes philanthropy, it democratizes giving and it’s closer to you,” Lozano said.
According to Lozano, one of the reasons philanthropy under-invests in women and girls’ issues is a lack of women in leadership roles. Women have traditionally made up the majority of giving circle participants in the U.S., and giving circles have a long history as spaces where women of a variety of class backgrounds can engage in collaborative charitable work.
“If we’re not seated at the table, if we’re not talking about what’s important, if we’re not bringing the issues that are important for women and girls, then we will continue to be underfunded,” Lozano said.
From invisibility to visibility
The way the giving circle works is simple: a group of like-minded individuals will come together to collaborate philanthropically in order to maximize their giving. Members will first pull their resources together and decide amongst themselves what their focus will be. Once a focus is chosen, the giving circle looks at which organizations are working to address those issues, meets with them, and then decides where to invest, Lozano explained.
In the case of the Peninsula Latina Giving Circle, for an organization to be considered for funding, more than half of its beneficiaries must be Latino, along with more than half of the people working there. This year, the giving circle’s priority is COVID-19 support. As we’ve written before, Latinos have borne a disproportionate brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic in California. The Peninsula Latina Giving Circle’s funding is meant to alleviate some of the problems COVID brought on.
For example, part of the mission of ALAS — which means “wings” in Spanish — is to provide crucial mental healthcare services to Latinos, especially farmworkers, in Half Moon Bay. This support has been crucial during COVID, since farmworkers are essential workers and have faced mounting difficulties during the pandemic, including child care needs due to school closures, lack of access to the internet, language barriers and isolation.
“Our work was inspired to create visibility for our Latino community that in many ways has been invisible for years,” said Dr. Belinda Arriaga, an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco who founded ALAS.
Arriaga, who is a clinical therapist, was inspired to create ALAS while doing pro bono work out of her private practice. During her sessions, she saw that many Latino children and their families were struggling mentally because of societal stressors, including with anxiety and depression.
Arriaga noted that while she saw the cultural strengths of these communities — the value they placed on hard work, language, heritage and connection to their ancestors — she also witnessed the negative impact of increasing anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric and policies, both before and during the Trump administration. Children she treated, for example, were concerned about separation and deportation.
“I saw the disparity between the societal messages and the reality of who we are as Latinos, the community, and the strengths of these families,” said Arriaga, referring to the juxtaposition of common anti-Latino narratives and what she saw in Latino communities. For many Latinos, there were few opportunities to highlight their cultural strengths.
Arriaga decided to create an organization that provided an outlet to highlight cultural strengths and provide healing through the arts, including with a mariachi group and traditional Mexican dance lessons, among other offerings.
“It wasn’t just the arts as a hobby, but it was… the arts as a way to build visibility, to build resistance, to build community and to build wellness,” Arriaga said. “And so I also use those tools as cultural sensory interventions of health. It’s like our own medicine of healing, but it’s also the way we collectively come together.”
“We underestimate what culture can do,” Lozano said. “What we’re doing is to advocate for equitable access to education, health and economic security.”
In time, ALAS began providing counseling, created a farm worker program, a social services program, a crisis program, and ultimately a COVID relief program. All of ALAS’ services are provided free of charge. ALAS hopes its next program will be an early childhood program.
Democratizing philanthropy
The Latino Giving Circle Network at LCF seeks to be an avenue to open up philanthropy to everyone, rather than limit the practice of philanthropy to a fortunate few, as has traditionally been the case.
“Giving circles are a great grassroots way to diversify and democratize philanthropy,” Lozano said. “We need to take care of each other. We need to make sure that we are seeing each other… fully.”
While big foundation initiatives and multimillion-dollar donations from mega-donors often receive a great deal of attention and scrutiny, collective giving through giving circles is an opportunity to fund lesser-known organizations that provide crucial support for marginalized communities.
“What the big donors are doing is phenomenal, but… if there’s one message that I tell people, [it’s] that we are all philanthropists,” Lozano said. “It’s just a matter of focusing and deciding where you want your impact to be. And I think giving circles are an incredible opportunity for people who care about the community to work together and to create larger change.”
While women-serving and Latino-led organizations continue to be underfunded, the Peninsula Latina Giving Circle is a good example of people from the community coming together to make a difference in the lives of their neighbors.
“It’s super easy to move to a new place and say, ‘I only see what I want to see,’ and have your blinders on. But the truth is, we all need each other,” Lozano said. “What we can do together is more than we can do for ourselves.”