About Common Change
Our Mission
Common Change exists to help communities take care of each other. We build tools that make it easy to pool resources, share needs, and decide together how to help — because generosity works better when it’s relational.
Our Story
Common Change grew out of Relational Tithe, a small experiment that began in 2005 when a group of friends asked a simple question: What if we pooled our money and decided together how to use it?
Founded by Darin Petersen and Shane Claiborne after the 2002 Jubilee Celebration in New York, Relational Tithe started with a handful of people exploring what it might look like to practice generosity in the context of real relationships — not as charity, but as friendship.
What began around a kitchen table has grown into a global movement. In 2011, we launched Common Change as a platform to make this kind of collaborative giving accessible to anyone. Today, thousands of people use Common Change to care for their communities.
Where We Operate
Common Change is proudly rooted in South Africa, where it is registered as a Non-Profit Company (2016/004288/08) and recognised as a Public Benefit Organisation. While our home is here, we are part of a wider global movement that began over two decades ago.
The idea took shape in the United States in 2005, when a small group of friends started asking what it would look like to pool their money and decide together how to use it — not as charity, but as genuine friendship. That experiment, known as Relational Tithe, grew into Common Change, and over the years it spread to communities across the world who shared the same conviction: that generosity works best when it is relational.
Today, Common Change operates across three regions, each with its own independent governance and legal structure:
- South Africa — Registered Non-Profit Company and Public Benefit Organisation
- United States — 501(c)(3) nonprofit (Relational Tithe, Inc.)
- United Kingdom — Registered charity with Gift Aid eligibility