On the one year anniversary of WHO declaring the pandemic, we’re reflecting. Just as we’ve experienced immense loss, fear and isolation, we’ve also seen the transformative power of generosity create healing, hope and optimism. Imagine what we could do if we each embraced that spirit every day.

Radical generosity challenges us to re-imagine our world as a place where we don’t just work harder to alleviate harms but one where we don’t tolerate them in the first place.

As we consider how we recover from this crisis, generosity must be at the heart of the society we rebuild together, unlocking dignity, opportunity and equity around the globe.

What we need is not incremental but radical generosity—generosity not as a benevolence that the haves show to the have-nots, but rather an expression of mutuality, solidarity and reciprocity.

Radical generosity transcends simply giving money—which unfortunately has yet to stop wars, suffering and inequity through the ages —and focuses our efforts to love, help, understand, offer hope and find new ways of healing at the root of our issues.

Radical generosity challenges us to re-imagine our world from the ground up as a place where we don’t just work harder to alleviate all these harms but also one where we don’t tolerate them in the first place; it also challenges us to center others even in the smallest and most mundane aspects of our daily lives.

We have seen people driving extraordinary efforts to help front-line workers, establish thriving mutual aid networks, uplift communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic and economic crisis, address issues of food insecurity, foster new connections and understanding while continuing to drive giving and action for causes and communities.

When we act collectively—what we can, with what we have, from where we are—we can make massive change happen. We know it can work and our collective action has so much potential still untapped.
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Through my organization GivingTuesday, we see people across all borders, sectors and beliefs come together as a global movement in shared moments to give, mobilizing communities and strengthening the ties that bind us together as a society.

In 2020, we saw unprecedented spikes in giving around the world during #GivingTuesdayNow on May 5 and Giving Tuesday on December 1. Imagine what we could do if we each embraced that spirit every day.

Our goal is to uncover grassroots innovation, emerging opportunities for collaboration and analyzing data to understand how radical generosity is happening and mobilize more people to act on this idea, just as we have with GivingTuesday throughout its nearly 10 year history.

It’s this kind of generosity that illustrates that our neighbors should be clothed, fed, cared for and included, and this should not be restricted to the realm of nonprofits, governments, large corporations or wealthy individuals.

Philanthropic power is something each of us holds, even if we haven’t discovered it yet. Philanthropy’s true meaning, “love of humanity,” is within the capacity of every single human to practice, and the intentional practicing of it brings healing, forges strong bonds between people and strengthens communities.

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Written by Asha Curran, Co-Founder & CEO of GivingTuesday
Image: M.J. Ryan
Publication date: March 11, 2021

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