On a Tuesday evening in November, five Brooklyn organizations agreed on an unusual decision: they would split every campaign donation they received this holiday season. It’s the kind of thing that sounds simple until you think about it for more than thirty seconds.
Nonprofits don’t usually share donors. They craft careful pitches about why their mission matters most, why their work deserves your year-end gift. The sector runs on friendly competition, on making your case better than the organization down the street.
But in Gowanus, a Brooklyn neighborhood being transformed by luxury condos and cleaned-up canals, five organizations decided to try something different.
There’s St. Lydia’s, a dinner church where people gather around a home-cooked meal to dispel isolation, reconnect neighbors, and subvert the status quo. There’s Drag Artists for Expression NYC, bringing storytelling and creative arts programs to kids and teens across the city.
One Love Community Fridge fights food insecurity one meal at a time with respect, dignity, and health. Forest For Trees creates art to restore relationships between people and the planet. And Van Alen Institute reimagines public spaces with communities, showcasing the vanguard of community-led design.
On paper, they have little in common in terms of their specific efforts. In practice, they’re all creating spaces where neighbors truly know each other’s names, fostering a sense of belonging that resonates with the community.
“We realized we are all facing the same pressure—grow or get out. The neighborhood’s changing fast, and small organizations like ours are supposed to scale up or disappear,” says Billy McEntee, chair of St. Lydia’s Leadership Table.
Instead, they’re doubling down on staying small and staying connected.
Here’s how “A Stronger Bond” works: You donate to the campaign, and 50% automatically goes to St. Lydia’s (which organized the whole thing), while the other 50% gets split equally among the other four partners.
You’re not choosing between a community fridge and a dinner church. You’re betting on the whole ecosystem.
It’s the kind of model that makes fundraising consultants nervous.
“Won’t donors be confused?”
“What if they only want to support one organization?”
“Isn’t this leaving money on the table?”
Maybe. But the coalition bets on something else: that there are people out there—former New Yorkers, big-city visitors, folks who’ve read about places like St. Lydia’s in books and wondered if church could actually feel like that—who get it.
These are those who understand neighborhoods aren’t held together by one perfect organization, but by a bunch of imperfect ones showing up for each other. For St. Lydia’s, the model isn’t just practical; it’s theological.
“We’ve always said we practice before we believe,” explains Billy McEntee, Leadership Table Chair at St. Lydia’s. “We gather around a table and share a meal before we figure out what we think about God. This campaign is the same thing. We’re practicing abundance in an economy built on scarcity.”
Between now and December 31, the five organizations are sharing donors, sharing social media posts, and sharing email lists. They’re showing up at each other’s events. They’re telling each other’s stories.
It’s possible the whole thing is too idealistic, too Brooklyn, too small-scale to matter. Or maybe it’s precisely the kind of thing that matters most—not because it scales, but because it doesn’t. Because it insists the bonds between neighbors are worth more than any single organization’s bottom line.
McEntee added, “Ultimately, we know that New York is stronger when organizations stand together because we all face common difficulties in rising rents and gentrification. If we can raise a light for each other, that shows our unified efforts to serve our neighbors.”
More information about A Stronger Bond can be found at St. Lydia’s website.
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Fundraising officer for St. Lydias.
