The vital importance of everyday giving: A Q&A with Bill and Melinda Gates

At the Greater Giving Summit on February 23, 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates spoke with Shena Ashley of the Urban Institute about trends in everyday giving. This summary of their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Melinda: We’re all seeing the effects of COVID. It’s in our homes, in our communities, and globally on the news. So many people are hurting and lacking basic services, whether it’s health care or putting their kids in school or having enough to eat.

On the front line of that crisis are the nonprofits. They are the ones who know these communities, live in these communities, serve these communities. Some of the most heroic work we have seen has happened through nonprofits. They are vital for us to support as a philanthropic community, because they know what’s needed and know what’s going on with their neighbors.

Bill: Everyday giving is over 70 percent of giving in the U.S., so it is a huge part of the sector. There are also all the additional ways people participate, such as volunteering and serving on boards. And everyday givers and volunteers provide valuable feedback: Is this food bank keeping up with demand in my community? Is this afterschool program working well?

If you could double either the big givers or the everyday givers, I’d pick the everyday givers because of that deep engagement. Now, we want to double both—so we’re big fans of all kinds of philanthropy.

Melinda: Today we don’t actually know how many leaders of nonprofits are people of color, women, or Latina. We need to measure that so we can make sure we’re supporting those organizations—because, again, they know their communities, they know what’s needed. We do have some statistics on women-led organizations and funding for women and girls. Only about 1.6 percent of philanthropy flows towards women. Knowing that is really helpful because you start to see, where are the gaps? What are the needs? We would start to learn that, too, about communities of color if we really measured it.

I have been really proud to see a few big philanthropists step forward and say, “I want to fund these communities,” and identify the nonprofit leaders who know their communities. MacKenzie Scott made enormous donations last year. She did a very systematic and analytic look at the field and said, these are the organizations that are serving low-income communities and people of color, I’m going to trust them to do the right thing, and I’m going to make a big bet on them. That’s incredibly encouraging.

Melinda: As philanthropists, we can look at innovations, and we can look at what others are doing. Amid the calls for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, responded quickly. They decided, “We are going to give [$120 million] to historically black colleges and universities. We know they need funding. That is a great place to reach out to communities of color.” That’s a great example of just going ahead and giving, and many followed.

Innovations are also key. One that Bill and I have supported is GivingTuesday. We’ve given them $10 million in grant funding since 2014. Last year alone, they mobilized $2.4 billion from everyday givers—in the middle of the COVID crisis!

Another is DonorsChoose. Since 2000, their platform has supported 600,000 teacher-led projects in 85,000 schools—and 78 percent of the donations have gone into low-income communities. Supporting those kinds of innovations is something we can all do as philanthropists.

Bill: Digital solutions are very promising for their ability to connect somebody who wants to be generous with an organization that’s highly impactful. They can help you learn about the needs and the social service organizations that are making a difference. Then, if you give money, and you can see that those organizations are doing more, you feel like you are part of that improvement.

I don’t think we’re where we need to be yet with digital solutions, but through gatherings like these we will hear about new innovators and spread best practices across the field.

Bill: A lot of countries look at the amount of everyday giving in the U.S., which of course we’d like to increase, but it is among the highest in the world.

In some countries, the willingness to give exceeds the capacity of the sector. We take for granted in the U.S. that we have these nonprofit organizations. Large givers can help bootstrap the sector and see what’s missing.

In the U.S., many community foundations play a very strong role. If a large giver funds the infrastructure of the community foundation, then gifts can flow through with little or no overhead. And those community foundations can highlight recipients and help local nonprofits do their job better.

Bill: Historically, a lot of giving connects to churches or religious groups, not only giving to the church, but also the church’s involvement in the community. As some people are less engaged in churchgoing, the ability to connect with them about community volunteering and other activities declines.

So how are we connecting to people? Where do they sit down and hear from their friends about their giving? I know, as an employer, Microsoft matches employee gifts and helps nonprofit organizations get exposure to employees. So business has a role to play here, to make sure that they’re getting their employees involved.

But we need to track why giving is stronger in some communities than others and what improvements we need to make.

Melinda: This is another place where, as philanthropists, we can think of these digital platforms and how we support them so they can help others connect to the needs in their own communities.

Bill: For both of us, our parents were strong, everyday givers and strong volunteers. My parents, by setting a good example, really set me on a course, along with Melinda’s influence that philanthropy is just this incredible way to make change in the world.

Melinda: It really does come back to your family. Bill grew up in a home where his parents were deeply committed to giving back to the community. I grew up in a home where we did lots of volunteering, and my parents did a lot of work giving back through the church. We had those values instilled in us at a very young age by both seeing our parents role-modeling it, but then them also expecting us to go out and do that work.