Impact100 South Jersey: When One Woman’s $1,000 Becomes $200,000

Start with one woman at a kitchen table, writing a check for $1,000. On her own, that check is meaningful but modest — enough to help, not enough to transform. But she isn’t on her own. She’s one of two hundred women across South Jersey who each wrote the same check this year, and when you put those gifts side by side, something remarkable happens. One thousand dollars becomes two hundred thousand.

That’s the whole idea behind Impact100 South Jersey, and it’s one of the quietest, smartest models of giving I’ve come across in this region. The premise is simple enough to explain in a sentence: pool the collective giving power of women, then hand the results to the local organizations doing the hard, unglamorous work of holding neighborhoods together.

How the math gets divided

This year the math added up fast. At the group’s “Big Reveal” in January, members learned they had reached two hundred strong and assembled $200,000 in grant funding, awarded at the annual meeting in June. There’s a single $100,000 Core Mission Grant — a transformational, once-in-a-decade kind of gift for whichever organization receives it. There are two $35,000 General Operating Grants, the kind of flexible money nonprofits almost never get and desperately need. And there are three $10,000 Community Heroes Grants for the smaller outfits punching above their weight.

I want to sit on that middle category for a second, because it tells you these women actually understand the organizations they’re funding. General operating support isn’t flashy. It’s the money that keeps the lights on, pays the case manager, keeps the doors open in February when the donations dry up. When a funder trusts a nonprofit with unrestricted dollars, it’s saying: we believe you know your community better than we do.

Money that stays close to home

The eligibility rules keep the money close to home. To apply, an organization has to be headquartered or run a satellite office in Burlington, Camden, Gloucester or Cumberland County, and the project it’s pitching has to primarily serve residents of those four counties. This isn’t money leaving for somewhere else. It’s South Jersey women funding South Jersey work, and the people who feel it are the kids in the after-school program, the seniors getting a hot meal, the family that finally gets the help it’s been waiting for.

You don’t have to be a wealthy philanthropist to change your community. You have to be one of two hundred women willing to put in a thousand dollars and trust the collective to make it matter.Emma Brooks

Two hundred checks. One shared belief that South Jersey takes care of its own. And somewhere out there, a nonprofit that just got the biggest yes in its history. Impact100 South Jersey welcomes new members and renewals — you can learn about membership, the grant process, and the organizations funded at impact100sj.org.

Based on reporting from Impact100 South Jersey (impact100sj.org).