Episode 108: Gigi Danziger
In this episode, Lori speaks with Gigi Danziger, founder and investor at Eutopia Foundation, about her work creating hyperlocal philanthropic models in Hudson, New York. Gigi shares how her family history, values, and desire for community connection led her to launch initiatives such as a basic income pilot, affordable housing, medical debt relief, and the Spark of Hudson learning hub. Her story highlights how philanthropy can thrive when it’s rooted in trust, sustainability, and co-creation with the community.
You’ll hear about:
How Gigi’s family history inspired her philanthropic values
The design and impact of Hudson’s basic income pilot
Why seeding power and trust are key to community-based philanthropy
Clearing medical debt as a model for other communities
The role of Spark of Hudson as a learning hub and gathering place
Building sustainable, equitable models for affordable housing and farming
Why starting small and hyperlocal creates scalable models for broader impact
How Gigi views her legacy as sparking others to thrive
Gigi’s Email: founders@sparkofhudson.org
Spark of Hudson Website: https://sparkofhudson.org/Spark of Hudson Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Spark-of-Hudson-100063508631540/Spark of Hudson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sparkofhudson/?hl=enWally Farms Website: https://wallyfarms.com/HudsonUp Basic Income Pilot: https://sparkofhudson.org/hudsonupHudsonDots Innovative Housing: https://sparkofhudson.org/hudsondotsHudsonStep Initiative: https://sparkofhudson.org/hudsonstepHudsonNest Residence: https://sparkofhudson.org/hudsonnest
Episode Transcript
you're listening to the positive
Speaker 1 00:10
You’re listening to the Positive impact philanthropy podcast where we share the journeys of everyday philanthropists as they incorporate philanthropy into their lives. Philanthropy is a
Speaker 2 00:18
personal journey through the stories we will share here, we hope that it sparks something in
Speaker 1 00:23
you, how you can make your own philanthropic impact in the world. I'm your host. Lori Kranczer, attorney, philanthropic advisor and legacy giving strategist. Together, we're going to explore what it looks like to be an everyday philanthropist make a positive impact in the world. Before we get started, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode posted on Wednesdays. Now today, I'm really excited that we have some kind of local to me. I'm downstate New York. She's upstate New York, as I would say, is upstate, and so her name is Gigi Danziger. She's the founder and investor at Utopia Foundation.
00:58
Welcome Gigi. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1 01:00
Great to be here. Well, I'm so glad to have you. So why don't you start us off and share more information about who you are, what you do?
Speaker 3 01:07
Yeah, well, so let me first say that i i used to go to a lot of gollops, right? And I'm kind of done with it. It's not that I don't like parties, right? Everybody likes parties, but I find that I'm done with feeding kind of large organizations that have a huge overhead where the impact is really less visible. What I want to be focusing my time on is two square miles. That's where I am now in Hudson, New York, and we've been doing a number of projects here that I like to say, it's a kaleidoscope of projects, right? And they hit different kinds of issues. We have a community learning hub where I am now the spark of Hudson. We have an affordable housing initiative. We work in transportation. We have a farm nearby that's hub for farmer entrepreneurs and and it's all kind of with a bigger vision of how we want to see the world and making it a more equitable place. And part of that is about my being comfortable with actually seeding or giving up power, for instance, we have a basic income pilot here in the city of Hudson, there are 128 people each receiving $500 a month for a period of five years, and that's no strings attached. They can do whatever they want with a fund. So I don't dictate, or we don't dictate, what they can do with them. So if they need a pair of sneakers, they can buy them. If they need to their car to go to work, the car breaks down. They can do that. Some people have taken their first vacations, and they're free to do that. And so I find that if I'm comfortable enough with myself, then I'm totally able to seed and give up power. It's all about, as I say, making the world a more equitable place. And we have an expression in our family. We're sailors and and it goes like this, it's one hand for yourself and one hand for the boat. And that means that one hand we kind of hold on so we don't like fall, fall off and hurt ourselves. And the other hand is kind of to work around the boat and to do things that need to be and for philanthropy, it's the same thing. It's one hand for ourselves. So we use funds to make sure that we're okay. We're thriving, our kids thrive, our friends thrive. But that other hand, that other hand, we work hand in hand with our local community here in the city of Hudson, and figure out together how best we can help one another.
Speaker 1 03:48
I love that. I've got to borrow that and apply to other things. I love that expression. So let's start with going back. How did you to get involved in doing what you're doing now? What did your journey look like?
Speaker 3 04:03
So I suppose I should talk a little bit about our family history. My parents and aunts and uncles, grandparents base led Germany during the Holocaust, and my aunt and uncle had a factory, and the factory was taken over by the Nazis, and after the war, there were reparations, and they got a relatively small sum of money for the factory. My aunt and uncle never had kids, and so they set up a small trust fund where my brothers and me. Now, it wasn't, wasn't a large sum of money, but it was enough to kind of create this small nest egg. And what that nest egg allowed me to do is I never had to worry about putting food on the table, or if I was in between jobs, so that I couldn't, like, make rent, right? I wasn't, wouldn't be off on the street and and, in fact, at one point I was a big corporate lawyer. You mentioned you were a lawyer yourself, and I really did not like being a lawyer, and so with this small nest egg, I was able to quit my job. I flew to Europe, Economy Class money, and then started to run bicycle tours there. And so that's the kind of fulfilling of it was a dream for me. It was a wish, but that's the kind of the freedom that I would love to see everybody in our community, the genesis of the basic income pilot where everyone gets $500 a month for five years. That really came from my own experience of wanting everyone to have that safe home base where they could make choices, take risks and follow their dreams Absolutely.
Speaker 1 05:45
And I have not heard of other foundations that are doing that type of work. How did this idea come to you?
Speaker 3 05:53
A lot of the work, and most of the work actually comes from listening to community, right, and also collaborating with them. I mean, we're not from Hudson. We were relatively new, and when we got here, it was really about making connections, finding out what the issues were, what were people struggling with. How can we help? And I think communities around the world, there are incredible people who have super smart ideas, but don't necessarily have the resources, and so it's really about supporting the ideas that they have, and then working together to make it happen.
Speaker 1 06:31
So it sounds like a community engagement type of project. Can you share who else joined you on the journey? Gosh, we
Speaker 3 06:40
work with all different parts of the community. But I'll start with when we first came to Hudson, we had this idea of basic income, and we've been talking about that for years and years. In fact, I did a TEDx talk in that many years ago, and but we came to Hudson, we realized that would be a really interesting place to launch this pilot. In fact, we're the first small city Basic Income pilot in the US now hundreds. But when we first came here, we met with the mayor, we were introduced, and he connected us with leaders of different organizations. And basically we came together, and every week for a few months, we would get together and try to co create this pilot together, right? And a lot of it is, it was about building trust, right? The leaders building trust with folks in the community. Because frankly, when we when we came, nobody believed it. Nobody believed that we would actually give $500 a month, no strings attached, it would be just plop in people's bank accounts. The challenge that we had was a lot of people came to the community with a lot of big promises, and then I don't know, short time later would leave right with none of the promises fulfilled. And so a lot of the work we've done is kind of getting over that hurdle and doing various projects so that people could start to believe, start to trust us and work together with us.
Speaker 1 08:08
So an interesting question related to this is a lot of organizations, funders, funders in general, want to measure impact. So what do you do about that when the money is given for whatever that recipient wants to spend it on? How do you measure that impact that the actual program is fulfilling what you want it to do?
Speaker 3 08:32
Right? Well, so a lot of it are about the stories that come out, right? So one of the projects that we did was we realized that there was a huge burden of medical debt in the city, and so I negotiated with the CFO of the local hospital, and I said, Look, I'm going to give you a relatively large sum of money, but in exchange, I want you to clear medical debt for anybody who owes it. So these are folks who had liens on their houses, who were on payment plans, right? And and we so reached agreement and announced it, and in one fell swoop, people couldn't believe it, right? This is these are people who were stressed every day worrying about how to, like make that payment plan, or, God forbid, their house would be taken away from them. So just hearing from the community what a relief it was to have their medical debt cleared to get this 20% of the city had medical debt that was there.
Speaker 1 09:28
That's incredible. Yeah, so there is your impact. And then in the stories that people are able to do other things besides thinking about how they're paying back that debt, how long is this program going on?
Speaker 3 09:39
Now, medical debt was a one time, like we just kind of cleared, like the history of it, the basic income pilot is a five year pilot. So there are 128 participants, and there we actually have a study that's being done on it, and the results are incredible, that our physical health better mental health. Interestingly, employment has almost tripled among participants. And I was sort of curious, and we wondered why that was. And it turned out that people would use the funds to fix the car so they could go to work also leave a job for a day. Let's say they had an interview, right? They weren't afraid to then leave the job, say at McDonald's or wherever they didn't like working, to be able to interview for the job that they really wanted, right? So that breathing room was a huge impetus for them.
Speaker 1 10:33
There's so much value in what you're doing, and I also know you're involved with many other things, so why don't you start to share some of the other things that you're
Speaker 3 10:41
involved with. So we're all about models right, models for other donors, as in this medical debt right, or basic income pilot models for communities and models for investors. And one of the models that we're working on right now is one for steward ownership and and the way it works is it's actually another example of our giving up power, and in for instance, the case of affordable housing, we are agreeing with the stewards, the folks who are living there, that we won't sell or mortgage the houses out from under the people who live there, right? So it's a way to make the world a more equitable place. We charge minimum rent. It's only really the carrying costs that we split the upside 5050, with them, if the building is ever so. So that's another example of the work that we're doing.
11:33
And there's more, right? Oh, there's
Speaker 3 11:34
more, right. But right now on that spark of Hudson, which is a Community Learning Hub we built here, if you ever come to Hudson, please come visit. It's a gorgeous building. While we we renovated it and and we run a whole slew of programs that our motto is, learn together. So we've got a whole number of learning circles and programs. In fact, as we speak, downstairs in the cafe, there is a woman, Fatima, who is teaching teens how to be a barista. And so these kinds of programs, the apprenticeship program and and programs that support the community. It's a wonderful gathering place for different community organizations or individuals that want to maybe they're not. They want to become engaged. They don't want to feel so isolated. They want to learn about something. Hope you'll come up and and I should do a little shout out, because for the projects to succeed, it's all about sustainability. And so we're hoping that folks, when they think about, say, holding up an off site or a celebration that they'll think about coming to the spark of Hudson, which, by the way, has a beautiful sky deck that overlooks the mountains. And it's with the income that we get from these events that we can pay for the programming and apprenticeship programs and all of the other initiatives, incredible.
Speaker 1 13:00
And I know there's many, many layers where we can continue going down that path, but I want to stop here and ask you about your inspiration to be philanthropic, because there is usually something, as we dig a little bit into people's past, what first inspired you to do something, to give back, and most People can identify either a moment or a person something
Speaker 3 13:26
of giving. Well, I think some of it has to do with this, the family history that I had. So I mentioned my grandmother, my relatives, and particularly my grandmother, who used to give salons in Berlin, and in fact, she entertained folks like Einstein and and she would gather people from all parts of the community. And I've always done that, right? I've always kind of, I've thrown salons as a fancy way of saying, a gathering of folks. And sometimes it's as simple as just a lot of them, by the way, are just women, right? And we gather together, and we create what I like to call this safe home base. And for me, a safe home base. It's a safe home base for me, right? Because when you gather people and you feel the love of people around you, the support people are cheering you on, and I feel like you can do anything in life, right? And so it's these salons that I've been giving that really have kind of spurred me to the work that I'm doing now, because it's about creating safe home bases here in Hudson, and we have the spark of Hudson building. We also do gatherings. We give people opportunities, even the basic income pilot, right giving people opportunities so that they can pursue their dreams. They have the freedom to do what they want. It's all about creating a world in which people can thrive. And so I think from these salons that kind of that germ
Speaker 1 14:55
or flower, I know you have so many different projects and programs that are ongoing, that have been created. Are there anything else that's waiting in the wings that you're starting to incubate?
Speaker 3 15:07
Oh, we have that farm here called Wally farms, and there, what we're doing is we're creating a hub for farm entrepreneurs, and the idea is that the farmers support one another, right? They share, they help in each other's fields, but they also share equipment and the infrastructure. Because what we're trying to do for this farm, and also, actually all the projects, is envision a future, a future in which we all want to live and with the farm, it's how do we create a circumstance in which small farmers can actually succeed, because it's so tough to be a farmer, right? And so by creating this hub, by supporting these local farmers, who are basically creating a world that, hopefully, potentially, if it all works, that they can launch their own businesses successfully.
Speaker 1 16:01
So and as we keep going like layer by layer into everything you're doing, obviously it's hyper local model that you're working on. Can you share more about why you decided to stay in your community that you're focused on and where you live right now, rather than doing something in a wider community?
Speaker 3 16:20
Yeah, I think ultimately, it's about creating a model for others, right? Well, two things is creating a model for others and also doing good, literally on the ground, where I can see one day to the next, people's lives are changed. And that's an incredible feeling that I get a joy. And there's nothing more wonderful than creating a circumstance, creating that safe home base to see people thrive. And I mentioned the galas earlier, and supporting these large organizations where you can't see the results of the funding you give. And here I can see, you know, with Fatima giving the horse on how to be a barista, right? Or we have somebody else teaching how to clean gravestones. Or we have an entrepreneur circle on AI where people's eyes light up at the magic of what's possible. Those are things that are tangible for me, that I can see and also create these models for other communities. They can look at what we're doing. As I mentioned, we were the first small city Basic Income pilot in the US. Now there are hundreds. And seeing people adapt and learn from what we've been doing, it was a wonderful place to start. So I'm a big believer in starting small, starting in our
Speaker 1 17:37
own community, and then seeing the impact locally. Yeah, that's fantastic. All right, so I think this is really the best segue into our last question, which is, what do you envision your legacy to be?
Speaker 3 17:48
Well, I guess the first thing that comes to mind is, I kind of want to be irrelevant. The projects, for the most part, are designed so that one day we can disappear and the projects can live on without us now that said that the models that I just talked about, right? That's certainly part of the legacy, and hoping that people will adopt them, I guess the other thing I would say is the building here, the spark of Hudson, the spark is really key to a lot of the work that we're doing. We love to kind of spark creativity, spark innovation, Spark people's ideas, give fuel to them, right? So they can whatever is they want. And I guess, for a legacy, I would say it's in the people that we are giving the fuel to that we're sparking and seeing them thrive and live on. I mean, that's, I guess, where our legacy will potentially and hopefully be manifested. I love that,
Speaker 1 18:48
because you're intertwining your legacy with your community legacy, and I think that's great. Well, thank you, Gigi, where can people find out more information about you and what you do? You can certainly go ahead and
19:00
list a little bit different all
Speaker 1 19:02
of our listeners. We're going to put everything the show notes. But Gigi. Go ahead. You can reach me at
Speaker 3 19:08
founders, at Spark of hudson.org you can check out our spark of Hudson website again, thinking about if you've got an off site, and thinking about hosting it. We'd love to have you. And you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Spark of Hudson. There's Wally farms. Hudson up is the name of our basic income pilot. Hudson docks is our affordable housing initiative. So I'm happy to give you a whole list that you can put in the show notes.
Speaker 1 19:35
So we're gonna list everything, and I want to thank you again for joining us and sharing your interesting models that you have created, which is currently very successful and are being modeled around the country. I love it. Starting local. Hyper local is a great way to start when one can be philanthropic. So thank you again for joining us, and I hope for everyone listening, we provided some insights and inspiration that you could use for your
19:59
own philanthropic journey.
20:01
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 20:04
Thank you for joining us. I hope we provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. You can tune in every week, on Wednesdays, when new episodes are dropped.