The power of collective giving and its effect on communities was the emphasis of The Women’s Fund of Smith County’s Seventh Annual Power of the Purse Celebration Luncheon. More than 300 women attended the event on Tuesday at the CrossWalk Conference Center at Green Acres Baptist Church. The event, which had a theme of “In Harmony with Philanthropy,” featured Carol Palladini, founder of the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara as the keynote speaker.

 As founder of The Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara and that city’s Woman of the Year honoree, Ms. Palladini said she wanted to share with the Smith County women about the “awesomeness of women’s collective giving.”

Ms. Palladini and a group of women started the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara after she read a Los Angeles Times article about a collective giving program. Since 2004, that Women’s Fund has grown from 60 members to more than 600.  In that time, the fund has granted $4.7 million to 64 local programs and projects benefiting 83,000 women, children and families.

The Santa Barbara Women’s Fund works in the following way. To be a voting member, a woman must contribute $2,500 annually. Women can also form groups to contribute the minimum of $2,500 and decide as a group how they will cast a single vote. That money is put together and women vote annually to determine which nonprofits they want to grant it to. A research committee does the work of finding projects that meet the needs of women, children and families.

She said women love the fact that they can build relationships with each other while doing something important for their community.