Seacoast Women's Giving Circle: a wave of philanthropy washes over New Hampshire's Seacoast

When Anne Rouse Sudduth gathered 12 women in her living room in April 2006, it wasn't to discuss the latest novel on Oprah's book club list over cheesecake. Determined to pool their skills, energy and financial resources, the women formed the Seacoast Women's Giving Circle to make a difference in southern New Hampshire's Seacoast region.

Giving circles: a growing trend

Giving circles, which have been a rapidly growing national trend since the 1990s, magnify the power of individual philanthropy by creating a collective mission and strategy. According to a 2007 report by New Ventures in Philanthropy, giving circles across the U.S. boast nearly 12,000 members. Together, giving circles have gifted more than $100 million to community-based organizations.

Not content to simply write a check for a local charity, giving circle members become engaged in emerging community issues through collective giving and grassroots action.

Most importantly, notes founder Rouse Sudduth, giving circle members want to connect with like-minded people to practice community leadership.

The work itself is about learning, about the issue that we've tackled for the year, and where we can make a difference, both in terms of our philanthropy and in terms of our engagement, explains Rouse Sudduth, who moved to New Hampshire after taking leave from her role as national director of community involvement at Deloitte & Touche USA. Deloitte and Touche's Personal Pursuits program allowed Rouse Sudduth to dedicate her five-year leave to a personal goal outside of work.

Since I spent my professional career and non-working time focused on community engagement in some form, I wanted to get to know this community, understand what was happening here, and find out ways to get involved, she recalls.

Many people I encountered here also wanted to have conversations with community and non-profit leaders, understand what the issues were locally and what they could do to help.

Three-pronged Mission: Learn, Give, Act.

We pick our social issue for the year, learn about it, then figure out the niche for our philanthropic dollars where they could have an impact, explains Rouse Sudduth, adding that Seacoast Women's Giving Circle members contribute a minimum of $200 annually to a pooled fund, and agree to volunteer in community service projects.

The women are concerned with challenges facing women and children, affordable housing and homelessness, health and healthcare, and the environment.

Process: learning about community giving, community needs and specific organizations

Through research tools, including SmartLink, and input from community leaders and experts, giving circle members familiarize themselves with their chosen issue. They then spend several months studying local organizations addressing it and reviewing grant proposals. Two organizations are invited to make presentations to the giving circle, after which members choose a recipient for their annual gift. Along with the financial gift, members participate in grassroots projects such as beach clean ups or serving meals to the homeless to raise awareness about various local organizations and have a direct impact.

We do not learn about these issues inside of a bubble; we learn about them so that we can have a broader impact and engage other people in that work, says Rouse Sudduth. It's very much about trying to have that ripple effect.

2007: choosing wisely

For its first giving cycle in 2007, the Seacoast Women's Giving Circle chose to focus on the environment, believing that issues like climate change, land conservation, and water quality were both urgent and local. The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), a regional environmental advocacy organization, received $10,000 from the circle to pursue strategies to protect the Great Bay Estuary Research Reserve.

Through its research, the giving circle discovered that idling cars was a huge problem in their community, particularly outside schools.

People think the air quality in our area is pristine, because it's a more rural state, but it's actually quite poor; a 2006 study found we have the fifth-highest asthma rate in the country, says Rouse Sudduth.

So this was one of those low-hanging fruits, where we can make a big impact by making a small personal change. After hearing there was a need for a community-wide education and awareness campaign around idling, we launched one.

Modeled after a successful campaign in Washington State called, the women initiated the campaign in about 20 schools in various districts.

All these schools have signage up, we've got magnetic bumper stickers on cars all over the Seacoast, and families have signed pledge forms saying that they are not idling anymore, reports Rouse Sudduth. It's become a visible topic, and more and more towns are interested in signing up and expanding the reach of it.

More than money

Giving circle members also found ways for themselves, their friends and their neighbors to make better choices in their own lives by learning about environmental sustainability.

We had a mini-conference with about 85 people in the community, where we brought in speakers to talk about how they could incorporate environmentally sensitive choices into their lives. Each person who came had to identify two actions they were going to take as a follow-up, adds Rouse Sudduth.

There's a significant number of people in the community that are interested in getting engaged and feeling a part of something important and meaningful. We see sharing information as a part of generating support for these organizations and issues that we've identified. Instead of asking people simply, Give money to this organization, we're saying, Come learn with us!

2008: a changing economy

In 2008, affordable housing and homelessness emerged as the circle's focus for the year. The group learned that basic healthcare for homeless families was urgently needed. Having grown to 30 members, the circle was able to grant $13,000 to a Portsmouth-based Health Care for the Homeless program run by Families First Health and Support Center. The Center is the Seacoast area's only community-based organization providing health, dental and family support services to over 1,000 homeless people each year.

For us, it's about sensing just how overwhelming and growing the needs are in the community, says Rouse Sudduth. One of the things we struggle with as we try to pick our issue is whether or not we end up focusing on what I would describe as the line outside of the soup kitchen, or the folks inside who are needing a bowl of soup. With our first gift, we were very much focused on the line outside the door, addressing a broader set of challenges: longer-term advocacy and solving public policy issues. Our second gift was much more about serving the people inside, helping people who are facing homelessness today, and who need health care today.

The funds were specifically earmarked to hire a care coordinator for the organization's Healthcare for the Homeless van. The recognizable, multi-colored vehicle visits shelters, campgrounds and low-cost hotels to reach people in need.

This was a very significant sized gift for us, says Martha Virden Cunningham, Families First's director of development. The care coordinator is the first point of contact when a person comes on our van. In this recession, more and more people are becoming homeless. We've had our demand for services grow by about 40 percent over a four-month period, and the giving circle gift really made a difference for us at a critical time.

Virden Cunningham notes that, Anne's involvement as founder of the giving circle brought a level of professionalism that I've really never seen before. They are incredibly well organized, and they educate themselves with great discipline. Non-profits are so often challenged with increasing awareness, even within their own community, about the work that they do. The giving circle takes that role very seriously; they get very involved with the organization and promote it significantly in a way that we can't do for ourselves.

Family values and inspiration

Rouse Sudduth comes from a long line of civic leaders, including her late father, Willard G. Rouse III, who founded Liberty Property Trust and created the Philadelphia-based Rouse Family Charitable Trust. She credits her philanthropic role models with giving her the tools to launch the Seacoast Women's Giving Circle.

For generations, our focus as a family has been very much around coupling civic leadership with philanthropy. Without exception, every person in my generation has engaged in some way in trying to address community issues. That is my family legacy.

Rouse Sudduth also gleaned invaluable knowledge from SmartLink.org.

The website is so helpful because it breaks down issues and strategies, she says.

Our group has found that it's a wonderful starting point for saying, Okay, here's a place in which we'd like to make a difference. Let's begin. SmartLink gives us that map so we can dive deeper and dive local, and get well-organized information that we can immediately put to use. Plus, we've benefited from reading about other donors' inspiring experiences.

Seacoast Women's Giving Circle has come a long way in its short existence, and its founder has this advice for emerging giving circles:

Don't be passive. Couple civic leadership with philanthropy, and both will have more of an impact. Ours has been a great, wonderful journey.

In 2009, the women are focusing on children and how to address and prevent risky behavior among the Seacoast community's teens.

Wendy Helfenbaum is a Montreal-based writer and television producer.