About US
"A One-of-A-Kind Club of Good Guys"
Charity Chili is a forum where generous people celebrate their nonprofit giving and volunteering, encourage others, and find inspiration to do more. Our members have diverse backgrounds, locations, and interests. Each of us chooses our own causes to support, and we support those causes directly. By including our activity in Charity Chili, we become part of something bigger.
Our Mission
Our mission is to stimulate nonprofit giving and volunteering by building a sense of teamwork and community, even among those who support different causes.
Methods
Charity Chili currently features four ways of furthering our mission: (1) the website’s activity ticker that lets people celebrate their own generosity, feel kinship with the generous activity of others, and find inspiration to do more; (2) the website’s tallies of total donations and total volunteer hours, which invite people to feel part of something bigger; (3) our regular member newsletter, a more intimate approach to building community; and (4) outreach efforts to drive growth. We have plans to add new ways to further our mission in the future.
Why Charity Chili?
We’ve been asked, “Why Charity Chili? Do I need to bring a slow cooker?” Chili becomes chili when we combine a variety of ingredients to make something better than each ingredient is individually. The secret ingredient here is you. Chili also deserves a nod for its history of bringing people together to raise money on a local scale.
The Founder
As support for nonprofits plummeted early in the Covid-19 pandemic, demand for services from some charities skyrocketed, and revenue-generating activity for other nonprofits was dead in the water. As I considered my role in solving that problem, I thought about my own network, and the full spectrum of viewpoints contained within it. Fundraising for a single organization, or even choosing a new cause each quarter to focus on, would limit my opportunity to make a difference. I began to develop the idea of raising money without championing a particular cause or organization. What if people could feel drawn to being part of a group that is giving together, but each to something different? What if a feeling of momentum and team accomplishment could stimulate new giving and volunteering? It worked for Giving Tuesday and similar large-scale events, but could it work all year long for a grassroots effort? In a survey of Charity Chili members, 50% of respondents gave more or sooner because of Charity Chili. That’s proof of concept for a new idea in grassroots fundraising.
