GivingTuesday launches Starling Collective to support grassroots leaders

GivingTuesday has launched an initiative to support grassroots leaders working to increase generosity around the world.

The Starling Collective is aimed at helping grassroots leaders discover and share best practices for increasing generosity and driving systems change, and is designed to identify and support those leaders who are working to accelerate particularly innovative approaches to catalysing generosity, empathy, equity and justice. 

The programme will offer coaching, peer learning and connection to GivingTuesday’s global leader network, as well as microgrants, with GivingTuesday to distribute an initial $250,000 USD participants in the programme. 

It is open to organisations and individuals worldwide with priority consideration going to applicants in areas of greatest crisis or lowest resource and to those with particularly innovative ideas for inspiring generosity through projects or initiatives and with potential to scale.To manage the Starling Collective, GivingTuesday is expanding its team by adding global regional directors who will review and select applicants and also serve as mentors/coaches to participants.

Applications for GivingTuesday’s first cohort of the programme closed on 1 September with selected participants to be announced in early October.

The initial round of grants is expected to help at least 50 initiatives around the world, and to range between $2,500 and $7,500 USD. GivingTuesday also intends to offer additional cohorts of the Starling Collective in 2021.

“Generosity is a powerful form of civic participation and grassroots, community-based and community-led efforts will be key to creating lasting change,” said Asha Curran, CEO of GivingTuesday. “GivingTuesday creates a shared space where those who engage with it can see, and work to co-create, the radical implications of a more generous world. We have an opportunity to create an inclusive, mutual learning network that drives grassroots generosity at a global scale. The Starling Collective will provide passionate leaders and movement builders with the tools to rapidly implement their ideas, and with the wisdom and support of one another.”

The Starling Collective is a development of GivingTuesday’s Starling Fund, which ran last year. This saw GivingTuesday distribute microgrants to 46 of its existing network of official community and country leaders to cover essential resources they needed to encourage and inspire givers, businesses, and NGOs in their regions for #GivingTuesdayNow.