Women’s Charity Circle Gives Big, Takes Charge

With brie, raspberries and wine set aside for later, 30 of Orange County’s most well-heeled professionals pondered how their money could improve the lives of struggling women and girls.

Sitting around this table were lawyers, accountants, CEOs and small-business owners -- all of them women. They and 83 others make up the Women’s Philanthropy Fund of the Orange County United Way. The cost of admission to this unusual group: annual donations of at least $10,000.

In three years, they have collectively contributed about $3 million for charity and, along the way, nearly doubled the number of United Way donors in Orange County who give more than $10,000 annually.

United Way spokeswoman Sheila Consaul says the Orange County effort is distinctive among United Ways nationwide because the women make up nearly half of the local organization’s $10,000 annual donors. Nationally, only 7% of United Way donors who give $10,000 or more are women.

“To get over 100 women to donate at that level in such a short time is phenomenal,” said Mary Ann Milner, former manager of the national women’s leadership council for United Way, who now works in the organization’s Philadelphia office.

The Orange County group has given money to the arts and women’s shelters and has allocated $400,000 to educate disadvantaged women about finances, including how to balance their checkbooks, budget their incomes, manage their debts and save money. The group will announce the first round of winning applications for funding in June and distribute about $200,000.

That hands-on strategy -- identifying community issues, determining how to address them and deciding how much money to spend on them -- is known in philanthropy as a “giving circle,” an increasingly popular tactic because it puts decision-making in the benefactors’ hands.

For the Orange County women, it means reading grant applications from organizations funded by United Way and visiting the charities before deciding which ones will get their money.

Such giving circles “are not about bake sales. They are about money, new money made by women, not old money inherited from family,” said Anita Daley of the San Francisco - based Women’s Funding Network.

But the giving circles are popular for reasons beyond altruism, said Jessica Bearman, deputy director of New Ventures in Philanthropy, which studies ways to increase philanthropy. Women, she said, enjoy being part of a “prestigious social network.” As an example, 32 of the Orange County women recently sat down to dinner with Melanie Sabelhaus, deputy administrator for the Small Business Administration.

In Orange County, there’s no other organization quite like this one, they say.

And it’s one of the most powerful women’s giving circles in the country, by virtue of its size and the requirement that members donate $10,000 annually. Most of the 700 or so giving circles in the country require $5,000 annual donations and are not affiliated with United Way.

“Seeing how quickly these powerful women mobilized and how they put together the fund with other women, that’s been my wow factor,” said Carla Vargas Rivas, an Orange County United Way vice president who solicits major gifts.

Other giving circles that also fetch $10,000 donations include the 57-member L.A. Donor’s Circle, created by the Women’s Foundation of California, and the 35-member Quantum Leap, formed from the Women’s Funding Network in San Francisco.

Like the Orange County organization, the L.A. Donor’s Circle selects its beneficiaries after reviewing grant applications. But the L.A. members donate $10,000 over five years instead of annually.

The L.A. group’s goal is to raise $1 million.

Of the $3 million raised by the Orange County giving circle, about half was turned over to the United Way and the balance earmarked for specific causes, including the $400,000 to promote basic financial education.

Most of the Orange County women are older than 40 and veterans of careers in fields usually steeped with men. In the United Way group they find like-minded women with whom they can socialize.

Two giving circle members are researching how the philanthropists can extend loans to help fledgling businesswomen prepare business plans and apply for commercial loans.

About 30 of the members gather for morning beach walks in Newport Coast on Wednesdays and Saturdays, some days putting in 10 miles.

Also among them is Janet Davidson, a retired partner of the law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker and board chairwoman of Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

“I’m old enough that I remember when ... women made cookies,” said Davidson. “This is about women’s power. From the beginning we wanted to do more than write checks.”