A few years ago, the San Francisco-based Latino Community Foundation noticed a significant uptick in the number of Latino women donors asking how to get more involved in its work to help vulnerable Latino families and children. “They wanted to give back in a deeper manner,” says Sara Velten, the foundation’s VP of philanthropy.

In response, the foundation organized its first giving circle, launched in November 2012. In its first two years, that giving circle—made up of an intergenerational group of Latina women from highly diverse backgrounds—distributed $30,000 in small grants to mainly women-led groups doing powerful work in their community. “It’s unbelievable what these organizations have been able to do with [these grants],” says Velten. “And the fact that they’re getting individual support from Latinas—from mothers like them—it’s very special for them.”

The Latino Community Foundation currently has five giving circles, four of them all female. With its Catalyzing Community Giving grant, the organization is working to grow its giving circle program—and to further engage Latina donors. “The format is very appealing to women,” Velten says. “And it’s unbelievable how they now use their voices in ways they wouldn’t even think about a few years ago.”

“We know that women will give if they are also taking action,” says K. Sujata, president and CEO of the Chicago Foundation for Women, an organization with a long history of developing women and girls as leaders and philanthropists. The foundation is now using this principle to guide its Catalyzing Community Giving work to grow—and, importantly, diversify—its donor base. “The focus of our project is to engage more donors and expand the diversity of our donors, at all levels of giving,” she says.

One cohort of donors the foundation hopes to more fully engage is millennials—specifically, young women of color. The organization already boasts a giving circle made up almost entirely of millennials. But recruiting more young women donors means “finding out what moves them and what activates them,” says Sujata, adding that this cohort is particularly driven by issues related to justice.

Meanwhile, the Women’s Foundation for Greater Memphis is also using its Catalyzing Community Giving grant to recruit new women to philanthropy, albeit in a different way. The organization is helping local women of color-led civic organizations to secure more donors and more resources by enhancing their communications and messaging strategies—particularly those designed to engage donors of color in their work and their programs.

Helping these organizations develop the messaging that touches the hearts of donors of color—and taps into what executive director Ruby Bright calls their “deep spirit of giving”—is a key part of this effort. The foundation is also teaching these organizations and their leaders about fund development and how to expand their programs to achieve further impact.

Through these efforts, all three foundations are learning more than they ever knew before about how to inspire women of color to engage even more deeply in and through philanthropy. “This project is a learning lab for us,” says Bright.

Zeke Spier, Executive Director of Social Justice Fund Northwest, sat down with us to discuss his organization’s work funded through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Catalyzing Community Giving grant opportunity. Social Justice Fund Northwest is a member-funded foundation that offers small-scale grants to community groups in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.

Q: What are your current efforts to catalyze community giving?

A: We have several different Giving Projects that we facilitate, all which bring cross-class and cross-race groups together for community building, skill development, fundraising, and grantmaking. Each project is organized around an issue area (for example, environmental justice or economic justice) or identity (for example, our Next Generation Giving Project).

While it’s worth checking out our complete list of Giving Projects, one of the issues our members have been concerned about is the ongoing criminalization of communities of color. Our Criminal Justice Project looks at the broader issues at play when we talk about the criminal justice system and how it’s serving (or failing to serve) our communities. We look at the system broadly and consider how the criminal justice system intersects with issues like immigration, homelessness, and police violence.

Q: Do you think projects like the Criminal Justice Giving Project are part of a larger movement to link community-based giving with social justice issues?

A: Yes. Because we’re able to focus on small-scale grants at the grassroots level, we are able to be responsive to developing issues. With the increased attention to police violence in response to events in Ferguson, we have had an influx of folks interested in learning more about what kinds of programs they can fund to do something about it. Community-based giving is a great vehicle to get people connected.

This is something we see happening all the time. When people begin to feel overwhelmed by what’s happing in the world, they need a place to turn to that they trust and know is effective. That’s where Social Justice Fund Northwest comes in. We connect people across class and race divides to learn and take action collectively. Many of our donors wouldn’t normally have the relationships or contacts in place to leverage their dollars and support where they are needed most.

Q: What would you say is your unique approach to philanthropy?

A: We help donors engage with their whole identities, building relationships and skills in grassroots fundraising. We ask our Giving Project participants to move outside their comfort zones to participate in conversations about race and identity. These tough conversations are vital to address the disconnection between people with different amounts of privilege.

We’re also a regional organization. Our home office is located in Seattle, but we make grants in five states in the northwest and facilitate projects in three. The regional approach allows us to bridge the urban-rural divide by building relationships and moving resources to communities with little access.

Q: How are you documenting this project?

A: Most of our documentation right now takes the form of capturing stories from both our members and grantees and sharing them with our boarder community. We share these stories at events, through our email list, and on social media. We find inspiration from the transformative experiences our participants have as well as the impactful work of our grantees.

To learn more about our organization and how you can contribute, you can visit us online at http://socialjusticefund.org/.