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Episode 88: A Brighter Day

I am so excited to introduce you today to an amazing man, Elliot Kallen. He is a passionate entrepreneur, nonprofit founder, and father who has transformed personal tragedy into a mission of hope. As the CEO of multiple companies and the founder of A Brighter Day, Elliot brings both business acumen and deep empathy to his work. After losing his 19-year-old son, Jake, to suicide, Elliot committed himself to supporting teens struggling with depression and anxietywith his nonprofit,  A Brighter Day.

Today his organization touches thousands of families each month. Grounded in the life lessons passed down from his Holocaust-survivor mother, Elliot lives with a deep sense of purpose—driven not by profit, but by impact. His story is one of resilience, love, and an unwavering belief in the power of helping others.

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what A Brighter Day does?

Elliot Kallen: What we do is we create resources for teens and their families on stress and depression with the goal of stopping teen suicide.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about Growing up and your family?

Elliot Kallen: I’m the CEO of three companies right now. I grew up in a very middle-class home in New Jersey. My parents were community-minded and active members of our local synagogue. We gave money, even though my dad never made more than forty thousand dollars a year, and my mom was your typical 1960s–70s stay-at-home mom. Still, we gave back.

My mom often spoke about her father, who was a librarian in Vienna and probably made five dollars a week during the Great Depression. Every week, he would empty the change from his pockets, and that’s what he would donate. We were always taught to give back. Most of the time, that meant giving to family or helping cousins around the world.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start A Brighter Day?

Elliot Kallen:  It’s a heartbreaking story, and sadly, it doesn’t have a happy ending. Eleven years ago, my 19-year-old son, Jake—a sophomore at the University of Montana—took his life in the early hours of a Friday morning. No drugs, no alcohol. He walked onto the highway and stepped in front of a truck.

We were frantically searching for him all day because his phone was off—something no teenager ever does. At 6:30 that evening, FedEx delivered a six-page suicide note. That’s how we found out he was gone. His note was filled with the typical ramblings of a teen in crisis, but one paragraph stood out. He wrote, “Mom and Dad, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I never would have told you how I felt. I never would have asked for your help. And I never would have taken your help.”

It was as if he was trying to let us off the hook—but how could we ever be?

His mother and I flew to Spokane the next morning, then drove to Missoula to claim his body, which had been left unclaimed at a funeral home. On the flight home, his body in the cargo hold beneath us, I kept rereading that paragraph. I turned to his mother and said, “We have to do something to prevent this devastation from happening to other families.” She replied, “I can’t do it. You’re on your own.” And so, I began the journey to create a nonprofit.

At first, the idea was to use music—bring in adult cover bands and host events for teens with mental health resources. But when we met with local musicians, they gave me critical advice: “This has to be for teens—by teens. No adult bands, no adults in the room. Teens won’t open up if they feel watched. And the resources have to be teen-friendly. Most mental health tools are built for adults, and they miss the mark.”

We decided to focus on depression, anxiety, and suicide prevention—issues teens face every day. A recent survey showed that nearly 50% of teens have felt anxious or depressed in the past year, and many have had suicidal thoughts.

I often describe it like this: imagine a six-sided box—four walls, a top, and a bottom. For teens, it’s rarely all blue sky. Life can feel like constant turmoil. And when all six sides of the box feel black—when it’s all pain and no light—some teens begin to believe, “Yesterday was awful. Tomorrow will be worse. No one will miss me anyway.”

That moment—that hopelessness—is where suicide lives. That’s what we’re trying to stop.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Elliot Kallen: I don’t want to downplay how cathartic it’s been to start a nonprofit and to share Jake’s story—especially in that first year. Every time I told it, I could barely hold back tears. What surprised me was how many people shared their own stories in return—about their uncle, aunt, parent, sibling. We cried together. I kept tissues nearby and handed them out often. If you cried in my office, chances are I was crying too.

Sometimes, I still go to the cemetery. Nothing changes—the view, the conversation—but it grounds me. I stand on Jake’s grave to read the plaque, and I talk to him. I talk to God. I don’t want to imagine Jake’s face in the clouds like a movie ending. But I do hope he’s listening.

I’ve built and sold businesses, so I understand the lifecycle—products, services, cash flow, lawsuits, people problems. A nonprofit is different. You still have people issues—because people are people—but the bigger challenge is constantly telling the story in a way that touches hearts. That’s not hard for me. The hard part is finding the right audience to tell it to. Filling rooms, building an online following, gaining traction—that’s the uphill battle.

And here’s the truth: every nonprofit is regional—until it either goes national or goes out of business. I’ve served on national boards like the Boys and Girls Clubs and the American Cancer Society. They were national before I joined. My nonprofit, A Brighter Day, has resources used in all 50 states, but when it comes to fundraising, we’re still very local. Regional nonprofits live hand-to-mouth. That means I need to lead, write checks, and carry the mission forward every day.

But I don’t want to die and take the nonprofit with me. I’m working hard to build sustainability so I can eventually step back from being the de facto leader and just serve as a board member. We talk constantly about that next step—about building longevity and putting a structure in place so A Brighter Day has legs without me.

I believe there should always be a Kallen on the board—because it began with us—but they don’t have to lead. They just need to show up once a year, wherever they live, to remind others why we exist. This began with Jake, but it doesn’t have to end with me. That’s the goal.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Elliot Kallen: I’ve been very blessed in my life. Even after losing my son to suicide, I still consider myself incredibly fortunate. I grew up in a small, middle-class home, but I was always deeply loved. My father was part of the Greatest Generation and my mother survived Auschwitz. They had both seen unthinkable tragedy and loss.

Their voices still guide me—what I call the “schizophrenic voices” on my shoulders, not devil and angel, but Mom and Dad. My father’s message was always, “You can never make up for hard work,” and he instilled that in his three children—we all became workaholics. My mother’s voice says, “You can do better today than you did yesterday, and better tomorrow than today.”

That mindset stays with me. I still come to work each day with energy and excitement, whether it’s in my for-profit ventures or in the nonprofit space. In business, I’m always asking how we can grow, improve, and learn from our missteps—because mistakes are just painful learning moments. In the nonprofit world, the question is: how do we serve more people, more effectively, without burning through resources?

Every organization, for-profit or nonprofit, has a financial burn rate. If you ignore that, one day you wake up and can’t make payroll. That’s the reality. Whether or not you call it capitalism, we’re all accountable to the numbers—even in service work.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Elliot Kallen:  Right now, through A Brighter Day and all our online resources at abrighterday.info, we’re reaching thousands. One of our biggest tools is a teen-focused texting crisis line that gets 50 to 150 new teens every month. They receive a response within five minutes—because teens love to text—and almost every single one asks the same heartbreaking question: “Am I the only one feeling this way?” They’re incredibly isolated.

We also know that if your teen came to you and said, “Mom, I’m cutting” or “I’m thinking about hurting myself,” you’d do everything you could to get them help. But in most places it can take 6 to 10 weeks to get a live appointment with a licensed therapist. We can connect teens with a licensed therapist via Zoom in all 50 states within seven days. And while virtual counseling isn’t quite the same as being in the room, it’s still meaningful support—and we cover the cost for 90 days.

Right now, we’re reaching between 3,000 and 6,000 families every single month.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Elliot Kallen: If there’s one word that defines our goal, it’s impact. We want to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives, and that only happens if our message truly reaches them.

People ask me, “Where do you see yourself in 20 years?” My honest answer: I hope I’m still alive—but not still running the charity. That would mean I failed to build something sustainable. What I really hope is that, at my funeral, someone stands up and says, “He made a major impact on everyone he touched.” That’s the legacy I’m striving for.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Elliot Kallen: The biggest lesson? Life is incredibly short. My mother used to say, “Life goes by in the blink of an eye,” and I never understood it until I got older—but she was right.

You can’t take life for granted. You have to show up every day with the right attitude, because attitude really iseverything. If you keep putting in the effort with heart and intention, good things follow.

What truly matters is the people around you, the lives you touch, the impact you make. It’s not just about who’s impacted you—it’s about how many lives you can reach and make better. If you focus on that, you’re doing something truly great.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

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Episode 87: Raregivers Global

You’ve heard me say it time and time again—the universe constantly places incredible people in my path. Sometimes I think my brain has a special filter that helps me find the very best humans on this planet. A few months ago, I was speaking to a National Charity League group and selling books when this bright light of a woman approached to buy a few. We started talking, and of course—she’s a nonprofit founder! But she is so much more than that. Her story is as amazing as she is.

I am truly excited for you to meet Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin and hear her incredible journey of service with her nonprofit, RareGivers Global—a worldwide network that provides emotional support to caregivers of those with rare, chronic, and complex diseases. Did you know that 350 million people worldwide live with a rare disease? That’s 1 in 15 families globally who are navigating these caregiving challenges. Cristol’s story is ultimately a love story—for her brothers, whom she lost to a rare disease—and how she now uses her life to help countless others.

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Raregiver Global does?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin: Raregivers cares for the caregivers. We are all about providing emotional relief services to caregivers that are living in what we call a radical caregiving environment. We work specifically with patients, parents and  healthcare professionals in rare, chronic and complex diseases. There’s about 10,000 uncured rare diseases that have been genetically identified, and it’s not a small community. It’s the wrong word… rare. The rare disease community is actually one in 10 families in the United States, and one in 15 worldwide.

This is really radical caregiving. This is 24/7 medical management at home. This is doing skilled nursing interventions like administering epileptic medications every hour on the hour, 24/7 for decades.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about Growing Up…Did you have any indicators that maybe you would go into this type of work?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin:  My parents met when they were 15—he was the football captain, she was the cheerleader. They married at 19 and told their pediatrician they wanted a big family. Within eight years, they had five children. What my mother didn’t know was that she was a carrier for Hunter Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder affecting boys.

My oldest brother didn’t have it, but my younger brothers David, Jared, and Randy did. My mom noticed early delays in their development. Eventually, they received the diagnosis: Hunter Syndrome. There’s no cure. Our family went through every phase of grief, holding on to hope.

I was 10 when Randy passed at 12. My other brothers passed at 18 and 19. I was 10, 14, and 15 when they died. Not long after, my parents divorced. Later, I learned that divorce rates are six times higher in rare disease families. Depression, anxiety, and addiction rates are also staggeringly high among caregivers.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Raregivers Global?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin:  You even mentioned in your book, Change for Good, the impact of mortality events.  I think there is a moment in your life where you realize you’re mortal.  You think, I may not be on the planet as long as I thought I was going to be. This is not a dress rehearsal and we only have one life to make our mark.  I always wanted to be in an environment where I can give back and to have some sort of meaningful element to the work I’m doing.  That moment for me was far after my brothers had passed.

As I started thinking about starting a family.  I was genetically tested and actually found out that I was a carrier. And based on that, my dad and I go to the national MPs (Hunter’s Syndrome) family conference. We walk in the door and we look around and there are all these young men that look like my brothers. It just gave me chills.

I came home and said to my girlfriends, “There’s a part of my history that I’ve never really shared with you.  And I want to do something.” We started a fundraising organization called Angel Aid.  Angel is a moniker, A, N, G, E, L which stands for A Nonprofit Group Enriching Lives.

It took awhile but we raised $50,000 and in 2002 we received a matching research grant  which went on to become an FDA approved treatment. The research doctor had this very elegant idea that if the kids are missing the enzyme, they need to create a synthetic version of that enzyme, and we’ll flush it through their body like dialysis, Enzyme Therapy. We went through FDA approval that funded research. Then  we went through clinical trial, and now young men that would have passed away in their teens are going off to college.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin:  The challenge is that missions morph. Angel Aid was the precursor to Rare Givers.  And here’s the challenge. There’s no cures for any of these diseases.  Community is not a cure, it’s a treatment.  I mentioned 10,000 rare diseases, one in 10, one in 15. Worldwide, that’s  350 million families and there’s only treatments for 5% of that community. So the challenge is the other 95% have no options, none.  They’re going through the same cycles that my family went through holding hope and grief in the same heart every single day.

In 2016, I went in and I got a routine mammogram. I came out with a breast cancer diagnosis.  I was like, Oh no, well, there’s another shift in mortality.  Now I have a 10 year old. I’m married. What hit my heart was, what am I waiting for?  I thought my community was the MP/Hunter’s Syndrome community. Then I realized, my community is this much broader community. I was waking up every single night, thinking these families with rare diseases must all be in emotional crisis. There’s no cures. That community needs emotional support like I received with breast cancer support.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin: My mother inspires me because, as I mentioned, my parents divorced, and my mother went on a very deep, dark journey with alcohol,  gambling, with any really kind of escape mechanism to deal with the pain and grief.

We can’t imagine the choices that my family’s had to make. Somewhere along the way, her faith pulled her through, and she got sober. She came back to me. My mom showed up for my daughter and my family in a way that was really profound. She actually reconnected with my father and did a lot of really healing conversations. So what fuels me is very personal, but it’s also, an example of what can happen in rare disease families. This is the joy to the grief.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin: We’ve identified 287 pieces of published research on the emotional toll of rare disease caregiving. From this, we developed an emotional journey map outlining six stages families go through—from noticing changes in a loved one to diagnosis, caregiving, and end-of-life care.

We started with seven women in a living room in 2019. Today, we’ve reached 77,000 families. Our guidebook—thanks to Microsoft—has been translated into 12 languages. With AI tools, they’re working on 400 more. Our goal? Reach 3.5 million rare givers by 2026. What do we need now? Funding. But we have momentum on our side.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin:  I dream big. My dream is very clear and specific. I want Dolly Parton to write a song about RareGivers. Then Melinda Gates will hear it, fund a $10 million endowment, and Oprah will spread the word to hospitals worldwide. Colin Farrell, whose son has a rare disease, will join in. Chris Hemsworth will visit rare disease families in Australia. Eva Longoria will thank us at a L’Oréal event. John Mayer will bring a Hunter Syndrome patient onstage. And Julia Roberts will direct and star in an Amazon series to educate the world. That’s my dream.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin: When I was younger, I used to think that I was creating change in the world and I would just muscle it out and use my intellect, my network, connections, skills and just manifest change. During COVID, it was just a global pandemic, that humbles you in a way that  you just can’t deny.  We had to relaunch Rare Givers.  I started realizing that I can’t muscle through this.

I was looking at my mother, she’s a very strong woman of faith, and I really had not cultivated that side of my heart and my soul.  The word surrender just kept coming up again and again.  It brings me to tears, because as soon as I surrendered the outcome, then it just became an exercise in faith. I will tell you that the miracles just start coming, and then you start living in gratitude, hopping from miracle to miracle and that exact right person arrives.

Charity Matters: You mentioned there was a happy ending to your familY’s story, can you share it with us?

Cristol Barrett O’Loughlin: My parents married young and lost three of their five children. They divorced, remarried, divorced again, and married new partners for 20 years. Both were widowed in the same year our daughter Chloe was born.

Chloe’s arrival reopened their hearts. After 35 years apart, they began dating again. And last year, at 81 years old, we remarried them—60 years after their original wedding. That’s our happy ending.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

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Charity Matters Inspiration

Episode 86: William’s Be Yourself Challenge

Easter has passed and we are officially into springtime, the season of renewal. There is no greater renewal story than today’s guest Susan Shaw. Susie and her husband lost their nine year old son William in an accident. In the years that followed they have taken that pain and turned into purpose for other grieving families.

Join us today for a powerful conversation about love, loss and renewal. Susie’s journey is one of inspiration and hope that there is always love.

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what WBYC does?

Susie Shaw: At WBYC, we empower individuals to embrace their authentic selves with courage and joy. We are dedicated to fostering meaningful connections within our community and supporting grieving families by providing the tools they need to honor their loved ones and navigate their journeys of healing. Together, we create spaces where love, remembrance, and personal growth flourish.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start WBYC?

Susie Shaw: We started the organization shortly after my son William died. He died in 2019, when we were on a family ski trip out in Montana.  William was nine. There was an accident and, as you can imagine, it was one of the most painful and excruciating events that I’ve ever experienced. The beauty that came from my community after he died, was incredible. I live in a very small town, where everybody knows everybody.

 When William died, he was in third grade and the whole town suffered with us.  As time went on, we started  to notice and hear that some of William’s friends and parents were still struggling in their grief.  A year after William had died, my husband and my surviving son, Kai, were getting support. We were going to the grief groups because there are services for people like us there. There aren’t any services for best friends.

If you’re the friend of a little boy who dies, there’s no support group for that right? I was so close with all of these families that I just hated what I was seeing for them.  So a group of moms got together with my permission, and they decided to put on our very first event playing a game William loved. When we saw the excitement and the beauty and the love that all these kids felt for each other while honoring William and they had that agency over their feelings. Williams Be Yourself Challenge spawned out of that inaugural event. We went on to host an educational lecture and brought in a therapist to talk about grieving for the community. 

 I also realized how privileged my family has been in our grief journey and the support that we have received through therapy and our beautiful community. My husband got to take six months off of work. That is not the norm.  We had this unbelievable privilege of him taking those six months and we got to travel as a new family of three to figure out. We were able to create some new memories. All this stuff that happened in the early months after William died was percolating in me. A while after, I thought,” I wish other families could have this. I wish other families could go away, because sometimes home is hard. The bedroom is there, the toys are there.” There’s all these reminders. 

We’re currently raising money to be able to buy a single family home for families who have suffered the loss of either a child or a parent. We want to be able to give 52 families per year a free week-long vacation. I realized that getting away was so incredibly important for our family. Now all I want to do is allow other families to have just a week. Isn’t long enough, but it’s something.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Susie Shaw:  I am an entrepreneur. And that was something I had never done before.  This isn’t me. My first job out of college, I was in the nonprofit space.  I worked for the United Cerebral Palsy of Chicago. I was their events planner, and it was an amazing job. Then I worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in their development office and at the LA County Museum of Art. So, I had this past of service and understanding of the world of philanthropy and giving.

Some of my challenges have been being the starter. Before, when I was in nonprofit, I was the worker.  Now I’m telling people what to do. I’m walking that line of not trying not to control too much, but needing help finding the right help. Now we need expertise in real estate and in planned giving.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Susie Shaw: I just think about the families that I want to serve because I know what it feels like to need that support, you know. I’ve walked their path. And I certainly don’t want to insinuate that I know what every grieving family feels like, because every grieving family has their own unique story. However, I do think that some of the things we want to do for these families are universal. You want to be cared for. You want to be seen in your grief. You want to be witnessed in your grief, and know that somebody is looking out for you who understands.

And so that’s what I think about when, when I get off a call with a potential donor who just doesn’t get it or isn’t interested in the project.. It happens. You’re not going to relate to everybody.  Then I go back to the families because I’ve been there and I know how painful it is.

 I just want to be able to give other families that same little bit of hope to know that they’re going to be able to survive. I was so afraid that my family would disintegrate after William died. Instead, we had a ton of support, a ton of guidance and we’re doing wonderfully.  We brought a new child into our life. We have a four year old, Cody and he is just the best thing that we could have done for our family. 

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Susie Shaw: it’s hard to quantify, because what we’re trying to do is such an emotional experience. We don’t have a program where we’re hiring therapists to execute with immeasurable results. However, I do think about success in getting feedback from a family who spends a week at our house and telling me that it was transformative, that it was healing and that it was important. I also think about those families than telling their friends about it, and maybe those friends then donate to us. That, to me, is a measure of success. Or those guests that come to our house and tell their grief support groups about their experience and create a referral system. That’s a measure of success. The fact that people are recognizing that this is a needed service within the grief space is success as well.  

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Susie Shaw: if we had a network of grief retreat homes for families.  That would be beyond my wildest dream. Then we could serve double and triple and quadruple the amount of families. With one house, we can serve 52 families a year, if we were to have people there all year. 

Judy’s house is a grief support group out of Denver and they partner with New York Life Foundation.  Both are responsible for sort of quantifying data around bereaved families. Their newest report has just come out. They have found that one in 11 children will suffer the loss of a sibling or a parent before they turn 18. Wow. That is so many families!  52 families to me, sounds like an amazing feat, but that’s barely scratching the surface of how many families need grief support.  If we can have more, let’s have more!

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Susie Shaw:  I’m grateful for every moment.  There’s no rush in any of this. Let’s just be really intentional about what we decide to do today or this week or this month, and that’s really helped me slow down in everything.  I just feel like I’m a better human being.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Susie Shaw: When William died, my entire life changed 100%.  I am a mother and I have two living children as well.  I identify as a bereaved mother. Sometimes first, because it has changed me so much more than even becoming a mother. Losing a child has changed me more than giving birth to three children.

I think I’m a better person. I really do. And I talk a lot with other bereaved moms. There’s a similar sentiment among many of us. I mean, we were just cracked open.  Everything just came pouring out….The good, the bad, all of it and I guess I just feel like I’ve grown so much in my empathy and for all types of people. Especially with my little four year old, I am so much more patient because I view motherhood in a new way…… that we all just need to slow down.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

Copyright © 2025 Charity Matters. This article may not be reproduced without explicit written permission; if you are not reading this in your newsreader, the site you are viewing is illegally infringing our copyright. We would be grateful if you contact us.

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Causes

Episode 85: The KinderSmile Foundation

Did you know that students miss 53 million hours of school each year due to oral disease? I did not but thanks to our amazing guest today I have learned so much about what our underserved communities around the country are facing with a lack of proper dental care. I am so excited to introduce you to the amazing Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes. A full time dentist, a mother and a nonprofit founder on a mission to change all of that with the KinderSmile Foundation.

Join us for an incredible conversation that will inspire you in unbelievable ways. If you don’t think one person can change the world then you haven’t met Dr. Nicole!  Dr. Nicole is pure sunshine in a bottle and will definitely give you something to smile about!

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what The KinderSmile Foundation does?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes: KinderSmile Foundation is a 501, c3, non profit organization whose mission is to increase oral care access and oral care education for low income children and Perinatal mothers and their families. And our vision hopes to eradicate the number one preventable disease, which is oral disease, and that every child has a chance to see a dentist.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about Growing up? Did you have any philanthropic role models?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes: Growing up, I can identify multiple role models. My mother, of course, was one. She was an immigrant from Jamaica, West Indies. My mother worked very hard, and she poured into us giving back, giving back, giving back in her own way.  I noticed as a young child, I always had an affinity to serve and to give back. Either I was taking some young children to the park or babysitting or helping the elderly. It was always part of my fabric and my soul. And so I think that’s where that philanthropic part of me started as a very, very young child. 

When I completed dental school 1991 I was this black, successful dentist in northern New Jersey, Montclair, New Jersey, I checked off all the boxes you have, your home, your children, so forth and so on. But my whole soul was still craving or yearning for something. I had a hole in my soul despite checking off all the boxes. And then you realize that there’s a difference between providing a service, like what you do in dentistry or serving your community. What I was missing was serving my community. 

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start The KinderSmile Foundation?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes: That moment was in 2007 when I decided to open up my private practice to children at a local Head Start in Montclair, New Jersey.  I asked the Executive Director of that program to please bus children to my office. I wanted to treat them for free as long as they have the consent from their parents. One evening I received a phone call from my receptionist. She said, ” Dr Nicole. There is a five year old little girl here in the office now. They need help. They need an emergency exam.”

 And so I leave my children, I go to the office. There was this little five year old black girl,  we’ll call her Z,  and she leaped into my arms. She literally had an abscess the size of a golf ball. And when I saw that, my heart stopped after leaving my children, because my son was almost that age.  I knew that it could potentially be deadly. So I spoke to the grandmother, and I said, “Look, this is serious. We gotta get on some antibiotics. Do you have any insurance? ” And she said, ” Well, we live in Union County, we live 30 minutes away. We could not find a dentist in a 35 mile radius to treat her because we have state Medicaid.”

So that night, I went home, and I could not sleep. I fell to my knees, and I had a long conversation with God.  I literally said,” if this is my purpose, confirm it. The next morning, I was reading the ADA quarterly news, about a 12 year old,  black boy from Prince George’s County, Maryland, who died from that same toothache, infection that little Z had. He was 12 years old. His mother was burying her first child because no one wanted to treat him because he had Medicaid. All it would take was two minutes of writing a prescription. 

It was at that was that moment, November 2007 that I started KinderSmile Foundation. I knew nothing about a nonprofit, absolutlely nothing.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes: Some of the early challenges were juggling a family, a private practice all while starting a nonprofit.  Some of the challenges as a woman entrepreneur you’re balancing family life because you’re driven by your passion. You’re driven by the fact that there’s a problem and I can solve it, or I can contribute to the resolution of this issue.

 Then  trying to get other people in my profession to understand why I’m doing this and the necessity. That was very difficult, because public health dentistry is not necessarily viewed as a successful entity of the dental profession. And if you don’t know that 53 million hours in school are missed every year due to oral disease, you don’t know that. I had to educate my colleagues, not to get offended, but to educate them. So the education took at least seven to 10 years. Now we have a list of volunteer dentists who are willing to participate, who are willing to open up their doors and to treat our children and our patients. So it’s worth it. The persistence paid off.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes:  I tend to look at it qualitatively. Education to me is the key. And for me, success is if I can educate a child, one family at a time, the extractions, the fillings, the dental services,  that is the icing on the cake. But if you can really meet them where they are, to edify and encourage them that you know what? Your child doesn’t need to have a cavity. This is the way you go about it. That’s what makes me sleep at night.

Yes, the grants that you receive, or the $16 million worth of in kind services, or the 8000 patients we see annually, yes, those numbers are impactful. But the lives that you save through compassion, educating, and letting them know that I Care Dental Homes that we built, not dental clinics, which has a negative connotation, but the Dental Homes that are beautifully decorated and clean and organized. When they walk in, they say, “This is for me,. whether I have dental insurance or not.” That is success. They know they can always come back to a KinderSmile community for quality, comprehensive treatment. That to me is success.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes:  The big dream would be the expansion of our KinderSmile dental homes and our KinderSmile community oral health centers. I would like to see that in other areas in the country. A dental home that opens the door to the underinsured. Replicate our model and have it in other indigent areas because we know the model works. We know the mission and the vision is so impactful.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes:  I learned that first of all the word obedience blares out right when you’re called to do something trust and have that faith. But I also learned  that persistence wins and humility connects God. Persistency wins and humility connects because when you’re humble, you realize it’s not about you. When I’m speaking to my colleagues, and you’re humble, regardless of what they’re thinking, your humility is going to connect.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes:  This has been a wonderful journey. A wonderful, wonderful journey. One thing, I could definitely say is that I get less offended. I think in the early years, when colleagues would say insensitive things like, “What’s it in for me?”  or “I don’t treat those.” I would take it just a tad bit personally. When you step back and you realize that it’s bigger than you, but most importantly, it’s not about you.  Then you get less offended. Then you say, let me use this platform to educate my colleagues, to educate people, regardless of your socioeconomic status or your color or your race or your religion. This is my purpose. This is my journey. So let me educate because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Dr. Nicole McGrath Barnes:  To be very honest, what fueled me was my faith and that I was brought here for a reason. This is my purpose. And when you know that, you know that. You know this is a purpose, there’s no such thing as giving up.  You understand that there will be dark times and there will be light times, but you still persist, because it’s bigger than me. It’s serving a community and it’s creating a legacy.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

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Causes

Episode 84: Thrive in Joy: The Nick Fagnano Foundation

I get asked all the time about the people/nonprofit founders who inspire me the most. While I am truly inspired by all who serve and I do not have “favorites.” The answer is people who have lost children and take that unbelievable grief and pain and recycle it into good. Those are the people that I will never forget. Their stories and their children’s stories stay with me. These people are my heroes and their love for their child becomes their love for others. It is the ultimate recycling of pain to purpose.

Today’s guest, Mary Fagnano is one of those remarkable humans. When her young son Nick was struck by lightning on a summer day at the beach, her life and her husband’s life were forever changed. Nick was their only child and a remarkable young man heading off to college. His life and legacy of service lives on through the beautiful foundation his parents created called the Thrive In Joy, Nick Fagnano Foundation. Join us today for an inspirational conversation that you won’t want to miss.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Thrive IN Joy Nick Fagnano Foundation does?

Mary Fagnano:  At the Thrive In Joy Nick Fagnano Foundation, we encourage young people to discover their character strengths and the joy of service through programs inspired by the life of our son Nick.

Charity Matters: What were some early influences on your giving back?

Mary Fagnano:   My mom volunteered a lot in school. She had a drama and speech  background and would go into schools and do creative dramatics and music. I would tag along with her in those early days. My father was always volunteering.  He adopted a family from Afghanistan through our church and brought them into our family.  I did grow up seeing my parents doing outreach and giving of themselves in my own life.

I look back and the first thing I remember is when I moved to Los Angeles, and I was trying to meet people. I moved here and the church I was going to had a program where you could go to juvenile hall and you could volunteer and talk to young people who were incarcerated.  It was a really powerful experience and the first time in my life that I had really put myself out there. 

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start The Thrive IN Joy Nick Fagnano Foundation?

Mary Fagnano: Nick always inspired me. He always inspired me to be a better person. He did this baseball equipment drive for kids in the Dominican Republic when he was going from Little League into high school. He loved baseball, and he had rallied his friends because he saw something on TV about how kids in the DR love baseball, but can’t afford the proper equipment. As a result, he put this drive together.

Another influence in my nonprofit journey was this guy named Greg Buzek, who I was in the advertising and marketing world with.  He had started an organization that brought executives together for a common good to help vulnerable children around the world, and they would make these service trips.   Nick was 20 when he passed.

Well, the signs that lead us. I was having a tough time and said, “Nick, I need to feel you. I need to know you’re here.” And at that moment, my phone rang, and it was Greg Bucha. And it was that call that really changed our life and started Jay and I to have a purpose. That phone call from Greg came only about four or five weeks after we’d lost Nick. 

Greg remembered that I had said that we were going to go to the Dominican Republic. And he said, “Maybe we’ve got this trip coming up. We’re going to install a computer lab at this school, and maybe you and Jay would want to go on this trip, because you never went with Nick” There were just so many signs on that trip that Nick wanted us there.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Mary Fagnano: We came back from that trip and did an extreme makeover in one classroom at this school in the DR. There was something that just told us we can do all ten classrooms. And we came back and we had a fundraiser, and we did have a great community so we raised $30,000.

The Foundation started in 2016 when we got our 501, c3. In 2016, we had a board that was focused on this little project in the Dominican Republic, helping out at an orphanage in a school and taking two trips a year to go there and do work. Then the board said to us, “This is great. You’re doing this in the DR, and we’ve seen how this has really been something that’s helped keep Nick’s memory alive. But if we’re really going to be a legitimate nonprofit, we want to have sustainability. We need to look local, and we need to find something local that we can do. “

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Mary Fagnano: Nick. Our board did some background research and found this Values in Action organization. We aligned the descriptive words of Nick against 24 character strengths that Values in Action defines through their scientific studies. And they have a survey that every student can take, every adult can take. It gives you this lineup of your top 10 character strengths. This is where we realized, okay, we do have something here.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Mary Fagnano:  It’s the people we’re serving and the people who serve alongside of us. No nonprofit can operate without volunteers and but it’s the stories. 

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Mary Fagnano: Our impact is what happens through the young people that are part of our programs. We’ll talk about impact right now with our C 11 program.  The young people involved in our program have a project called an ESIP. It stands for entrepreneurial social impact project. At each school where we start with these foundational kind of modules to get that handle on character.

Every year, in the spring they have to do a they have to produce an ESIP. What they produce and how they’ve grown and how they activated their entire campus  is what gives me such impact. This group of students started out with a little leadership team, and then they recruited a club, and now they’ve got like 30 members. Those 30 members had this positive impact on their entire campus with discussions on body positivity or whatever subject.

The students brought together community resources, and they invited their whole campus and everybody could talk to these different organizations.  Everything from financial security, to safety, to riding public transportation, to health and safety. All are the students’ ideas. I measure the impact. I count how many you know people did this small group of students bring together?  Each school that we partner with creates its own little mini nonprofit and picks a cause they believe in as long as it aligns with mixed values, that were things that were important to Nick.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Mary Fagnano:  I would like to see the C 11 program go global. That would be the big dream.  I want to see that. Just continuing that everybody who wants to have the C 11 program and that every school  feels that there’s a value to this in their school.  We can provide it, and the dream is that we’re constantly able to improve it and update it and make it more exciting and more engaging. 

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Mary Fagnano: People say when you have a child, it changes your life. When you lose a child, it changes your life. Absolutely and I have changed by carrying a lot more about a lot of things that I think are more long lasting than the things that I cared about before.  Nick was only always number one. Everything about being a parent for both Jay and I, it was great. And so losing that and losing all of that purpose, and being able to find a different way to channel it has been a gift.

After Nick died, we found an essay that he wrote when he was a freshman in college. The title of the essay was the reality of heaven. The essay was a five page essay about all the different world religions and what they believe happens when people die. Nick concluded in this essay that his Christian faith tells him that when he dies, he will be finally reunited with the loved ones that he’s lost on earth. And he wrote, “I believe that when I go to heaven, I expect to feel joy, gratitude and excitement. I don’t believe that people should say rest in peace. Perhaps a phrase such as thrive in joy better reflects how I want to spend eternity.”

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Mary Fagnano: I would say the biggest lesson that I’ve learned is never to take a day for granted. Every day is precious. Every relationship that is important to you is precious. There’s never enough hours in the day, and you can’t beat yourself up about that. You try to get in everything you can in a day.

I don’t want to live an easy life. I want to live a meaningful life.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

Copyright © 2025 Charity Matters. This article may not be reproduced without explicit written permission; if you are not reading this in your newsreader, the site you are viewing is illegally infringing our copyright. We would be grateful if you contact us.

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Cancer

Episode 83: Robin Cancer Trust

It is a lovely gift when people around the world reach out wanting to have their story shared with our Charity Matters community. With 1.6 million nonprofits in the United States alone, it is hard to even begin to share the stories we have here. It is a rare moment when we have conversations with our friends across the pond. Since cancer knows no boundaries and affects so many regardless of where you live, I wanted to share this amazing organization and family with you.

Toby Freeman’s family was living a lovely life until his oldest brother Robin was given a shocking diagnosis of cancer at the young age of 23. Twenty million people will also receive that diagnosis each year around the world but not all of them will act to serve others. Join us today for a beautiful conversation on the power of love, family, community and legacy. We all have the power to make a difference and Toby’s story is a beautiful reminder of what happens when we do.

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Robin’s Cancer Trust does?

Toby Freeman: The Robin Cancer Trust is the UK’s only testicular and ovarian cancer charity. We cover both of those cancers  and we do education, awareness and support in schools, colleges, businesses all across the country, delivering life saving awareness talks.

We’ll go in talk to the students and have all of our very funny and very big prosthetics, a really fun engagement tools.  We pull up the headmaster, make them check themselves in front of the class in a safeguarding way. They have a pair that they can check and then we go out to festivals and  universities reaching students and young people there. We also reach millions of people online with our campaigns. And then we do support for our community as well. So we do free Cancer Support packs for anyone affected by those cancers anywhere in the UK. Then we send out additional resources to support them during that incredibly difficult time of their life.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about your Family Growing Up?

Toby Freeman: I would say my parents are just so unbelievably selfless.  There’s a national charity called Bliss, and my mom headed up our local chapter.  I remember packing things and her talking to us about it and why it was so important. My dad used to help with loads of local organizations, and they’d always get really involved in anything we were doing.

I’m the youngest of three boys, so there was a lot to be done, but they were at everything we were doing sports and school wise. They were at theater productions, helping us. They we did Boy Scouts, which obviously a big part of that is giving back.  I just have this feeling of my parents selflessness was something I’ve always been very aware of. 

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Robin’s Cancer Trust?

Toby Freeman:  I always say experience breeds empathy. I think you have to go through something to be able to empathize with it. When these big, traumatic things that can happen in life, a lot of empathy comes out of them.

Rob was my elder brother.  Rob and I were very, very close when we grew up.  He was my best friend as well as my elder brother.  As we were getting older, he used to ferry me around and look after me and make sure I got to football on time. Rob was in his prime of his life.  He was 23, fit, gym guy, healthy clean eating, training all the time and looking after his body. He was very health conscious and he was diagnosed with a stage four mediastinal germ cell tumor.  He had a testicular tumor in his chest that got to the size of a grapefruit wrapped around his heart and his lungs. It just hit us absolutely out of nowhere. 

I just watched my brother go from the prime of his life to an absolute shell of himself both mentally and physically.  By Christmas time we were  thinking, what’s just happened to us? How has this just happened to us?

We were sat around the table, and we’d made a promise to Rob that we’d never let him just be a photo on the wall. It was never our intention to put him at the forefront of everything. What we did realize was, if someone as health conscious, as fit and active as Rob was could be diagnosed at that later stage and ignore signs and symptoms, then there was something to be done.

During that entire year, we couldn’t find any information about the type of cancer he had. We searched Google, and there was just nothing, and we just felt so alone and untethered.  We didn’t want another family to feel that way.  My dad’s a very pragmatic man. He said, “If we are going to do something, we need to research it thoroughly, understand what the problem is and how to fix it.  We need to create something that isn’t a grief reaction. Something that is actually needed and can outlast us.” So from day on we wanted to be able to step away from this at some point. We want other people driving this. There’s been a beautiful 12 years of seeing this grow .

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Toby Freeman: I think the biggest challenge was navigating the grief. I think two things saved me during that time. First, my now wife treated me with a lot of TLC and gave me the kick up the butt to go to grief counseling.  Second, the charity because it gave me something to focus on when that cup was empty. Actually doing something good, putting something positive out in the world, even if that’s just thinking about a project you could do. It just helps fill that cup up every day.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Toby Freeman:  A very patient partner. Everyone grieves in such different ways in a family unit, right? No one talks about how this is really difficult. We did have this unifying thing to be positive about during that time. So I think that was really powerful. My father’s still on the board, and he loves being involved. My mum, my brother have stepped away for various reasons over the years. This has been something that tethered us, because it’s so easy to become so untethered in how everyone’s feeling in those moments

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Toby Freeman: How do you measure awareness? We were education and awareness based. That’s why we started because no one was covering that. We listened to our community and realized they needed more support.  We provided that service. Awareness is ethereal. You don’t know we’re teaching life skills effectively. We’re asking a 15 year old say, check yourself and if you found something, go to a doctor. But that could be 20 years down the line.

We’ve seen a dynamic shift in the UK to fund as being much more amenable to anecdotal feedback. Real life stories having a tangible impact. We have feedback forms for all of our talks  I can track how many people are landing at certain places on the website. So if I am at certain events, you can have certain links and see 300 people from that event landed on that website. I know that’s an impact. What action they’re taking in the comfort of their own homes, in their baths, in their bedrooms? I don’t know. What we  struggle to track is what is the end impact? Because you can’t be a charity that goes to someone newly diagnosed and say, “Did our resource help you? “

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Toby Freeman:  Being unemployed, because if someone cures cancer, I don’t have a job. I’d be the happiest unemployed man in the world.   I would say the biggest goal for us is reaching every young person in the UK at school level.  That’s where we’re going to have our biggest impact because we are teaching life skills.

If we also work with all the hospitals in the UK to make sure that anyone diagnosed has access to our free Cancer Support packs and ongoing resources. Then from both points, from an awareness and a support point, I think we have done our jobs.  

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Toby Freeman: That’s something I reflect on quite often. We  have a podcast called Thrive Against Cancer,  where I get to interview people affected by cancer at all stages of their journeys.  I think that gratitude for life takes some people almost forever to understand, to just be able to step back and know what is important and what isn’t important.

How lucky am I to have a happy and healthy family?  So I’ve got no complaints whatsoever. And I think that’s the biggest lesson,  I am grateful to be reminded of at least every two weeks when our podcasts come out. You just get all of this information from everyone else and you can’t sweat the small stuff when you know how much big stuff there is out there in the world.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Toby Freeman: Someone once asked me in an interview, “Do you think Rob would be proud of us?” I don’t think he’d be able to recognize me in a good way.  I think when you lose someone, you want to take the best parts of them as well.  My brother was a very responsible man. He really focused on his health and fitness. And for me, over the last few years, that’s really become really important. Putting myself first.  I realized I couldn’t tell other people this without living it.

I’ve just taken it feels like a 180 the way I was. I was very young. I try not to beat myself up. I didn’t handle that year of Rob being ill, Rob’s death, I didn’t handle that very well. I am so lucky to have the people around me that got me out of that and put me on a good path. The charity has given me purpose, and that has defined me as a person that’s helped me be responsible.

Having soaked up so much life experience and being around people that have been through even more, is it just has completely defined who I am.  I’m so grateful for that and to have that opportunity to be who I am.  I’m really proud, and I think my brother would be too.  

Charity Matters.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

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Charity Profile

Episode 82: ICL Foundation

What does Clive Davis, Novak Djokovic and civic leadership all have in common? The answer is today’s guest, Kirk Spahn who is a dynamic educator and nonprofit founder. Kirk tells us his inspirational story of combining his passions of sports, his friends, education and a deep civic duty to create what is now the twenty year old ICL Foundation.

Join us for a fun and super interesting conversation to learn how one 23 year old set out to help in a small way and today is transforming education by teaching thousands of students how to learn and lead. One person can make a difference and Kirk’s story and passion are proof. If you are looking to be inspired this New Year this is the perfect conversation to get you going.

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what The ICL Foundation does?

Kirk Spahn: The ICL Foundation, stands for the Institute for Civic Leadership. The word civic had sort of become almost an antiquated, somewhat dirty word, where people think of civics class selling something. Yet, when you break down what civic leadership is the true definition it’s building a prosperous community. It’s about helping others, and it’s something that I’d felt has been lost for a long time. I think coming back to the roots of civic engagement and civic leadership should be a pillar and a cornerstone of all education for all youth. So that’s why the Institute for Civic Leadership was created over two decades ago.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about your early signs of philanthropy?

Kirk Spahn: My parents are teachers.. My father used to always say that when you support the next generation, you’re building the leaders of tomorrow. My grandfather coined an expression that I use all the time, which is finding the spark of genius in every child. Our job as educators was always to find what people are passionate about and sort of help support that and then make sure that there was always a purpose to giving it back. So I think at the same time, my mother  was always running nonprofits so my entire life was always about giving to the community. Her entire essence was just about selflessness and giving to others. 

I never said I wanted to run a school or found a nonprofit, but from very, very early it was, what can you do to help people? So I think it was ingrained. I had no idea when, how, why, where….

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start The ICL Foundation?

Kirk Spahn: My father said that after I graduated college, try to play your sport if you can become a professional great but look at the next couple years as your survey course and create experiences that you think will lead you to find what that is. And so I was in the strangest place when that catalyst for starting the ICL happened.

I was working for a record label, and I have no musical talents, but I love music. I was working for Clive Davis, we had had a lot of meetings with Tom Freston, who was the founder of MTV Networks, and he was running VH1.  I happened to be living in New York on my own with two NFL linebackers for the New York Giants.

The sad catalyst for ICL was actually the tragedy of September 11th.   I was in New York working a record label. After September 11th, there was a movement of like, what can we do? I was living with people that had a platform and I was in these meetings with these artists who were big time celebrities and I said, “What can these artists do?

  I met with my father and a reverend, and I brought in these people from Saudi and we had a round table and said, “How can we get youth engaged?” And everyone looked around, and said Kirk, “What do you think?” And I said, I’ve seen the power of celebrity but nobody knows what their journey was. No one saw the work they put in to become one.

The idea was, why don’t we put together a conference on Martin Luther King Day, and we’ll call it the Dare to Dream Conference. It’ll be supported by MTV and at the Museum of Natural History, where my mother was a board member.  The museum said, that sounds great. Because we were in education, we had a directory of 1000s of schools, and we said we’ll put on a free event. And the goal was just to share the journey of these celebrities, but to really show the common themes of sort of oneness of what we can do.  Youth can make an impact and helping them find a passion and a purpose.   Big words for us was always passion and purpose to help build a better world, and it has to be something that comes within. January 17, 2002 was the inaugural Dare to Dream Conference. 

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Kirk Spahn:  Looking back at the transformation and metamorphosis of the ICL Foundation, the spark and the mission stayed the same. Everything evolved in good ways. It was kind of going to be a one and done, and here we are.

The challenges looking back were very clear. 100% as most nonprofits will say, comes around funding. It is not fun to ask other people for money.  I can never go toe to toe and say this organization is more important than that organization.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Kirk Spahn: There’s no doubt that the greatest joy was just being with the kids.  It’s so cliched, but to see transforming kids lives forever and then it may come back. You may not know it at the time, because kids don’t say thank you. They’re not like, Oh, thanks so much for this opportunity. But the kids that we impacted, it happened fast, and the appreciation  we could see was the impact. So I think that keeps motivating the parts I didn’t know on the icky days.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Kirk Spahn: So impact is really hard to qualify and quantify, and that’s been a challenge for two decades. What I think is great about ICL is that we’ve created scorecards. We call them impact reports and we like to think of ourselves as a multiplier effect.  When you’re helping to fund an ICL fellow or a program that we’re doing.

We evolved from conferences into what we really saw was missing in education was a focus on service, leadership, and character. Today they refer to it as social emotional learning, there was no SEL in the early 2000s but we knew.  We could show that students that had gone through leadership training for others, character, self awareness, becoming kind of their own coaches, where they’ve tried to start their own nonprofits have started from an early age. They were performing better in school and had become school leaders. We could see pretty soon how these kids were having an impact on the rest of their schools.

So we started by creating an award winning curriculum, and that was the hardest thing to qualify and quantify, social emotional learning. We were very fortunate after that first Dare to Dream Conference to have access to celebrities.  I’m a big believer that when athletes, performers, business leaders, politicians, actually take the time off the record to share their journeys. It inspires kids, and just hearing the story and not the end result, gets them motivated. 

 That really became the idea that you promote engagement, application and mastery and to support these kids who would then become the leaders of their school,  leaders of their community and became the models that people wanted to follow.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Kirk Spahn:  My goal is to transform education.  The problem with a lot of nonprofits is you’re reliant on others. So I said, “Why don’t we create an accredited school?” It’s called ICL Academy. We have 1000 students that were doing their academics, but we were also giving the mentorship. We call it a pyramid. There’s physical, mental, emotional and academic. Are all parts of what feeds a great leader, and all of the pieces need to be fueled. Imagine you have if you’re a tennis player and Monica sellers and Novak Djokovic are actually speaking to you and inspiring you. What does that do to your grades? If you can relate what you’re passionate about to your curriculum, what does that make you more engaged? What about the idea of starting your own nonprofit young, or starting a cause? 

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Kirk Spahn: It goes back to being mission driven, and the idea that when you inspire someone, and someone gets inspired, you want to take action right away.

I have a concept in education that we use at ICL that says, respect tradition, but embrace tomorrow.  I believe that teachers and mentors are still what motivates people. But I think a great teacher and a great mentor is not just someone who makes a subject matter come alive to inspire you. It’s also on the flip side, someone that believes in you as an individual, that the world might see the potential in you, and that doesn’t have to be in the same person. So at ICL Academy, we started looking at how  we teach life skills? How do we get more engagement? How can kids apply things to the real world and things they’re passionate about to make a difference.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

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Giving is Selfish

The recent wildfires in Southern California have shown us the power of community . We have seen the best of people, even those who have lost everything, volunteering to help others.  Service heals in unimaginable ways and brings us together for good.  While I contemplated writing more about the loss and grief many of us are experiencing here LA and Pasadena I decided to switch gears keeping our regularly scheduled interview. The reason is that today’s guest understands and lives a life of service and giving as a major volunteer. She has a job, a family, a full life, a podcast and a book but she calendars major time to give back. I think with so much need right now in our communities. Jenn Klein is just the inspiration we need to remind us to get up and show up for one another.

Today’s guest is Jenn Klein who is truly a kindred spirit. Jenn is an author of the book, Giving Is Selfish, and has a blog and podcast called You are a Philanthropist. 

I am excited to share our conversation about the power of giving and how it can truly change your life for good. Jenn is amazing in how spreads joy, giving and kindness is all she does. I know you will be thrilled you got to meet her as well. If you have been overwhelmed from all that is happening from so much loss, this conversation might just be the cure.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about your book, Giving Is Selfish?

Jenn Klein: Giving is Selfish is about my journey to better understanding philanthropy and I wanted to broaden the understanding of philanthropy to be more than just, excuse me, wealthy individuals giving millions and billions of dollars like Bill and Melinda Gates and to really encourage the everyday person to go out in their communities and make a difference in ways that they can in small and large ways.

And I started to stay home with my kids, and I learned about the power of caregiving and I came to understand more about philanthropy, through being a mother. 

Charity Matters: What Role models did you have growing up that showed you the path to giving?

Jenn Klein:  I think my parents are my greatest inspiration and role models, even in their 60s. They’re involved with things such as Rotary International, and they started off just showing me about giving in my church.  Then I became involved with the youth group, and we would do service projects  in Philadelphia. When I became a teenager, I became a junior Rotarian, so I would go to rotary with my dad. Service above self is the motto of Rotary. And my dad has been involved with the rotary for probably 30 years now.

When I went to college, I graduated and did not know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to help people. This family I babysat for were very philanthropic and said,” Oh, you should you have an English degree and get into grant writing.” So I started volunteering for the YMCA in the Boston area, and that turned into a grant writing position after I graduated. 

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to Write this book?

Jenn Klein:  I was a teacher’s assistant for my college professor and she said to me, “What do you want to do after you grow up? She was very kind and she knew I loved to read. She took me up to the library, and I said, “You know, I want to write a book one day.”  It was definitely a God thing, because there was something in my heart 20 years ago that I should write a book, and it was really a 20 year dream come true.

I originally, just like you, started off blogging, and it gained some traction. Someone said, “You should write a book.” And it stuck with me for about a year and a half before I said yes that I will write this book 

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Jenn Klein: I think the challenges are getting the word out there. Like you said, there’s not a lot of people like you and I who are advocating to the general public for the nonprofit sector in general.  And like you said, there’s not a lot of people who are championing the health benefits, the all the physical benefits, mental and you know the reasons why it’s fun and exciting to give. So breaking through the noise of the negativity of the news is a challenge.  I like just chipping away at what I feel I should be doing today.  Some days that means doing the laundry and serving my family. 

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Jenn Klein: I started a gratitude practice that has been transformational.  There’s something transformative when we write down what we’re thankful for every day. It could be small things or big things. I like to ask my kids what they’re thankful for, and we always come up with different things together. So having a gratitude practice is really fuels me.

My faith in God obviously fuels me. My favorite quotes is by Mother Teresa, who said, “If you can’t feed 100 people, then feed just one.”  I like to think about the impact that I’m having in my everyday life, with my kids and with the volunteer activities I have. I’m their soccer coach, a parent ambassador and tomorrow am volunteering for the local food pantry.  I feel thankful that it all boomerangs back to me.  I like to say we’re hardwired to give. There’s something in me that enjoys giving.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your Book, what would that be?

Jenn Klein: One in four Americans volunteer, and recently I heard the statistic from AmeriCorps that it was raised to 28%.  I love to think about that number growing and growing with more people volunteering.  It’s going to get us healthier,  make the world a better place. and it’s fun. So I’d like to see more people volunteer.

Charity Matters: Do you have a motto or expression that you live by?

Jenn Klein: My life verse is Philippians: 413. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.  I believe I can do it all  because of my faith in God.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Jenn Klein:  I like to say that you have to have a balance. If you’re not giving to yourself, then you’re not going to have the capacity to give to others. You have to fill your own cup in order to pour into other people’s cups. I feel like I’m able to give because I have a balance and I know what my tipping scale is.

I try to prioritize my family first, and am really role modeling for my kids. Having them understand the importance of giving back is a high priority for me. So it’s really important for me to raise that next generation of do gooders and change makers, and they’re my priority.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Jenn Klein: I think I’m more passionate and excited and more optimistic through writing a book. I’m going to write a second book this year. I want to continue to get the word out there that this is fun, this is good for us, this is good for others.  I did put a statistic in my in my book, that of the folks who don’t volunteer, 90% of them say,” If I had more time, I would volunteer.”

There’s so many good nonprofits out there. Aligning your personal mission and vision with a nonprofit, and plugging you in with your time, talent, treasure. This is what is going to make the world a better place.  I don’t have millions to give and but this is my way of saying, “Hey, I know you don’t but let’s just do what we can and make a difference in that one person’s life.”

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

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Episode 81: Pave the Way

We have all heard of cause marketing. You know brands like Tom’s Shoes where you buy one pair and another pair goes to someone in need. Before such a thing even existed there was today’s guest, Joan Hornig. She didn’t believe in “using” kindness to sell something she believes that philanthropy is beautiful. So much so that she left her successful job in corporate finance to make a significant difference in the world and give it all away. She does that through her Foundation and business called Pave the Way.  A for profit business that gives one hundred percent of profits to nonprofits.

I was lucky to meet Joan in person last week in NYC and give this dynamic human a big hug. She is even more amazing in person! Our conversation  was beyond inspiring and to use Joan’s words it was a conversation of consequence. One I am thrilled to share. So please join us and you can hear for yourself why  Joan is beyond the real deal and you don’t need to see her  but simply hear her heart to know just how special she is.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Pave the Way Foundation and Pave the Way Jewelry  does?

Joan Hornig:  Pave the Way Jewelry and my foundation are really built on a concept called social enterprise, which I was very instrumental in actually creating almost 25 years ago. The idea behind that was it wasn’t just talk about doing good, what it really was about was making a seismic difference.

  I felt that women did a tremendous amount of volunteer work in the world. They devalued their time in part, although it was very valuable, but they didn’t put a dollar price on it. Nothing could be more valuable than a woman’s time and her time spent talking about what she cares about.  So I thought when someone would see a piece of jewelry on someone and they complimented that person wearing the jewelry. ” I liked your earrings.” That person could say, “Thank you. Do you know this supports children with autism?” And then the story would unfold that they were essentially advertising with their dollars what their values were, and they were having a conversation of consequence.

So to call it social enterprise is different. I ask every single person, when she or he makes a purchase or they make a purchase, what charity they want me to donate to in their honor? Then I donate 100% of my profit on that piece sold to the charity of the purchaser’s choice.

 I’m empowering them to have a conversation of consequence, to understand that they have money to use, and that when they walk out they are a billboard advertising who they are and who they care about. 

Charity Matters: Where did your philanthropy begin? 

Joan Hornig:  I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, to parents  who didn’t have a tremendous amount of means. There were some hard times, and nonprofits stepped in some time. What my parents taught me was that what you’re worth is not what you have in the bank, but what you’re worth is what you do tomorrow.  I never felt less than when the other kids went off to camp. I felt that I could do anything with my time and that I could make a difference.

 I spent a lot of time in museums, because my mother said, “You shop with your eyes and you take home as much as you can.” I listen to music. “You you shop with your ears, you take it home.” But when other kids were going to camp, I decided to be a candy striper because we  couldn’t go to camp. So I went to downtown Cleveland and I was teaching inner city kids how to read.

One of the kids said to me, “You know, I get food when I come here. We don’t have enough food at home.” And I was 14 years old.  And I said, “Really?” So  I decided I would put on my candy striper uniform, and I spent months going door to door in neighborhoods, raising money. I was able to raise enough money for 80 families to have  a complete Thanksgiving dinner. I think that was the beginning.

“Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Pave the Way?

Joan Hornig: I was 20 years old, I was walking down the aisle getting married. I made two promises to myself. One was that I was going to be George’s wife and be the best I could be. And two, because of the privilege I had through my education and I knew I was going to have a big life, I promised myself that by the time I was 50, I was going to give back everything, 100% so, that is where it really began.

I would say that 911 was an important factor, and that is because I watched from my apartment the Trade Towers go down. I  wanted to do something that was one step better than combining Paul Newman with Paul in the wall and Oprah. What I wanted to do was create the jewelry. Pay people fairly, put them to work, grow their business. But say to you when you buy something of mine,” What charity do you want me to donate to in your honor?” And from day one, I have donated 100% of my profit on each piece sold to the charity of the purchaser’s choice. 

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Joan Hornig:  I think that one of the biggest challenges was actually getting people to take me seriously. If you are doing anything associated with what is traditionally a man’s job people take you seriously. When you switch to something that might be fashion or jewelry, they think that what you’re doing isn’t necessarily important.  

This it’s not just about selling the jewelry. I have to design it. I have to make it. It’s not vertically integrated, right? To check it, I have to hire people, right? We have to do the accounting, we have to do the bookkeeping. And from day one, I decided that every single charity that I would donate to would be located in a place where other people could learn about it. So if you go to my site right click on all the different charities that I’ve given to local and national there are over 1000 and where you can leave my site and learn about those charities. So the challenge was people would say to me,” You’re not busy anymore.” I’d say I’m busier than I ever was. I’m working seven days a week. I said, “You’re not understanding.” So that was actually a challenge.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Joan Hornig: Those moments really are the people I meet in the nonprofit sector. Those are the people. What they do is so extraordinary. It fuels me when I get invited into a food pantry and I see people who do service are so extraordinary. I don’t hold a candle to them and they are the people who are so inspiring.  They’re all over the world.  I know what they’re doing, and I know that it’s harder than what most people do.  

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Joan Hornig: I measure impact several ways. One is if somebody hears the story of what I do and they tell somebody else, that’s impact.  All of a sudden, we started a conversation of consequence. I measure it when people say I’m going to give 5% or 10% on the business. Everyone cannot afford to give 100% right?  I’ve had an education and a great life but I don’t diminish any or anything anybody gives.

I do speaking tours sometimes, I was in Nashville, and a gentleman had sold his company. He was starting another one, and he decided he was going to follow my model, that’s impact. That’s a huge impact.  The impact is if someone who listens to this says, “I can do something.” Impact is defined in a context that matters, that is only relevant to what someone can do. When we have a community of people who use their muscle memory of giving and caring to pay it forward and inspire others. That’s impact.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Joan Hornig:  My dream has always been to collaborate. I like the idea of licensing fees that go to charity. I would love a fragrance company to come to me to collaborate to create a perfume. Can you imagine having something that’s called philanthropy lingers?

Most of all, what I want is institutions, retailers and everyone who sells my jewelry to understand that they should take the time to ask what their customers care about. Not tell them to care about something. That’s my dream. It is really about asking, because we learn a lot from other people when we listen.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Joan Hornig: I learned that everyone is interesting and worth my time. That your time is more valuable to you than my time is to you, and that I have to use it wisely. Actually, I feel we’re on the same team. If I respect what you care about and respect your efforts, we’re on the same team. You can feel it. 

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Joan Hornig:  I think that I am a more confident person because I’ve taken risks. I think that one of the things that I’ve learned is if something doesn’t work out, I can handle that risk of disappointment.  The way I make promises to myself and keep them, like the way I did when I was 20, and I walked the aisle and made those two promises. I keep all the things that I made that weren’t right, that didn’t work out. Then I go back to them a number of years later, and I learned that I can fix it. So I learned that sometimes you acquire  knowledge without even knowing it. 

What I want everyone to do is find themselves in a situation where they give one extra thing to someone that they don’t expect to give something to. That would be the way to find me in spirit this holiday season. I love to do one thing that takes a little extra effort that helps someone else.

 I really want people to understand how blessed we are. So many people can benefit, especially people we don’t know.  They’re not obligated, except to hopefully pay it forward in the future when they’re on their feet. So I believe in a hand up, not a handout.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

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Change for Good is here!

There is a lot of noise in our world. Lately, with the election our world has gotten a lot louder and somedays its as if there is a tension knob and someone is turning it tighter and tighter. I don’t know about you but I want to jump off the merry go round after too much noise and just turn it off. I have found myself unplugging more and being more mindful of what media I am consuming because it is just too much.

Too be honest, most of this year I have spent my spare time writing. There was very little time for extra noise. Every moment I could find was spent creating Change for Good: The Transformative Power of Service as the Ultimate Cure. I am so proud to say that the paperback was released yesterday on Amazon and is now available wherever you buy books and your book store. Believe it or not it is distributed in 13 countries, who knew?  This  has been a remarkable process of taking the squares of each nonprofit founder’s story and creating a quilt of life lessons learned these past twelve years.  To kick off the launch the publishers at She Rises created this launch on livestream this morning and you can listen or view it on youtube in the play the episode link below.

There are  so many reasons why I am grateful to SheRises publishing this book. First, they have created an incredible community of women authors who they inspire and life up. So much of what I write about is exactly that, creating social infrastructure and community. When we come together in any way we are stronger, better, happier, connected and we can make anything happen. Just like a nonprofit that creates change through community, She Rises also creates change through community. 
It makes sense because SheRises founder, Hanna Olivas is also a nonprofit founder. She is a living example of what and who we talk about every week on Charity Matters. Someone who was dealt a really crappy hand and used it to help others.  I will let Hanna tell her story herself in a hopefully upcoming episode of the podcast, so I won’t spoil it here. To say that she gets it and that She Rises gets it would be an understatement. As you know, I don’t belive in coincidences and I do not think it was one that I ended up with this amazing group of women. I am truly grateful!
So thank you to all of you who pre-ordered. The physical books come to me Novemeber 1st and I will sign and send them to you asap. If you want signed copies please order them through here and send me an email or reply to this post with who to address them to after you place the order, especially if you are buying for Christmas. For all our international audience here are the lnks for you to order as well. 

 

Lastly, thank you again for being a part of this movement to make our world a better place one small act of kindness at a time. Thank you for being part of that kindness and this journey. We are better together, always.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

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Strong Inside and Out

Thank you all for your amazing support with the new book, Change for Good: The Transformative Power of Service as the Ultimate Cure.  Writing the book was an isolating and often lonely process. There has been so much joy in connecting with like minded people to talk about the book and it’s mission.  Last weekend I was in Omaha, NE speaking at the National Christ Child Society was fantastic. Connecting with amazing women who work hard every day from across the country to make their communities stronger through service.

One of the other amazing women I have met on this journey is the remarkable Cheri Dixon. Cheri and I met through our publisher and immediately connected.  She has spent a lifetime in education as a principal and leadership consultant. As you know, my day job working with hundreds of schools and running a youth leadership organization, makes me a principal super fan. I love great educators and leaders and Cheri is definitely that! We more than hit it off.

In addition, to helping schools and business in leadership Cheri hosts an incredible podcast called Strong Inside and Out where she inspires women to lead. Cheri is an author and a true ray of sunshine. So if you get a minute to listen to our conversation, you can below.  Definitely  take a minute to follow Cheri for incredible inspiration and insight.

As I told the amazing women at the convention this weekend:

We decide how we use our time and choose to live our lives. People like to talk about balance. I truly do not care for that word at all. Life is not about balance. It is about choices. It is that simple. Yet, somehow after we get our work done, our laundry, make dinner, flip through our social media and realize that we put aside all of the things that really matter. It’s time that we change that script. It is time that we make choices that give us more joy, more gratitude, purpose, connection and physical and mental health benefits that we receive when we give. We are privileged to serve.

We know we can not lead unless we serve. Everyone in this room is a leader and serving your community. You are all bright lights in your communities who have been chosen and called to serve. Part of being that light is igniting it in others. Spreading the word of helping another.  It is easy to make this about us but it really about continuing to spread the light in an often dark world. 

It will take all of us to shine as bright as we can. I know we can.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

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Causes

One For All

“Believe with all your heart that how you live your life makes a difference.”

Colin Brown

I have always believed in angels among us and looking back at the conversation I had with nonprofit founder, Mari Rodriguez was proof to me that angels are here on earth. My dear friends have been involved with supporting Mari and her work to provide the most underserved children and families in her neighborhood of Inglewood.

Mari came to the United States at age 19 and taught herself English. She became a citizen and a nurse. She raised a family and people in the neighborhood were coming to her for help with their children. First, it was a few and then a few more and then a hundred and now hundreds. Mari is living proof that one person can change the world and one of the most amazing humans I have had the privilege of talking to.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what One For All does?

Mari Rodriguez: One For All encourages students to stay in school, graduate from high school and we give these students and families the supplies and guidance they need to accomplish that.  Our mission is to help build the character of our children through social programs that emphasize the importance of personal growth as well as develop the community as a whole.

We do back to school backpacks and supply drives, toy drives for winter, we have students bring their report cards and if they are getting a 3.0 GPA or higher they are rewarded for good grades and if not we get them tutoring, we do prom dress giveaways and whatever students need, sometimes its as basic as a pair of shoes for school, we find it and help. The biggest thing we do is give $500 scholarships for those students with good grades who are going to college.

We currently serve over 500 students a year between the ages of 5 and 18.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start One For All?

Mari Rodriguez: I lived in Inglewood and saw that the children in my neighborhood didn’t have guidance. So, in 2001 I talked to the pastor at our church on the corner and asked if we could use the church parking lot to help children and families. Then we started an event on our street to gather everyone together but our neighbors were so impacted and the neighborhood couldn’t accommodate everyone. I wasn’t sure what to do because I was still working full time as a nurse during the day and raising my children and helping all the neighborhood children at night and after work.

In 2007, I had a patient that kept telling me I needed my 501c3 and I had no idea what these numbers meant or what that was. While I was working in the doctor’s office a patient asked me about what I do in my free time and I told him. He said I needed my 501c3 and his wife would help me. She did and in 2007  One For All became an official nonprofit organization. 

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Mari Rodriguez: Donors. The hardest part is raising funds.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Mari Rodriguez: (Tears) The love of people. The love of people fuels me. Sometimes I want to quit and think I cannot go on and then people hug me and thank me for helping them. When families need me. This is my purpose in life to help others.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Mari Rodriguez: I think of all the people whose lives I have touched. From a five year old girl who died of cancer and whose funeral I did because her mother just couldn’t, to the young boys who were becoming gang members and we were able to get them to change direction, to the young man who was gay and thinking about suicide for fear his parents wouldn’t accept him.   I got involved and this boy is now a wonderful and happy young man in college with his family’s support.

When I close my eyes I see myself on a journey helping, going forward, helping, helping and not looking back just keep going and helping. I see the hugs, the smiles of all these people and that is my reward. I love this country with all my heart. I came to this country at 19 with nothing but dreams. I dreamed I was going to do something big.

I taught myself English and with the help of two angels went to nursing school. It was such hard work and my life has been so good. I have to give everything I have received. I am so grateful.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had?

Mari Rodriguez:We started with 25 kids in 2001 from my home. Then we had 100 and then 200 kids and we would close down our street to do our events. Our neighbors asked us to take our events off of our street and we moved our programs to the church in Inglewood. Today we help more than 500 children and families. This year we will distribute over thirty $500 scholarships for our students who are going to college.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for One For All, what would that be?

Mari Rodriguez: The dream I have is to find more supporters. We need more school supplies. I dream of finding someone who can donate backpacks. To me, the most important thing is to keep giving more scholarships to motivate these kids to stay in school and to help us really help them.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Mari Rodriguez: It hasn’t changed me, I continue being humble and treat everyone equally. I really do not like to talk about me. I would rather just help others. 

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Mari Rodriguez: I have learned that anybody can help somebody. Nothing is too little to help another. Each individual can help somebody. If you can not give money you can give love or conversation to someone who is lonely. Anybody can make a difference in the world. To start a nonprofit with an intention to help others is enough. I am just happy to help these families.

 

Charity Matters.

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Episode 79: Growing to Give

As most of you know I have spent the past few months wrapping up the book. In the process, the publisher is an amazing connector and loves to bring all of her authors together for weekly coffee connections via zoom. It is so great to meet other female authors and some of the most interesting and inspiring women. A couple months back I was in a zoom chat room when I met Siobhan Shaw, a fellow nonprofit founder.

I’m so excited to share  Siobhan and her husband, John’s, incredible story in the creation of their nonprofit, Growing to Give. Their story is a beautiful full circle reminder of following your heart, your roots and always thinking of ways to serve others.

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Growing to Give does?

Siobhan Shaw:  Our mission is to provide sustainable agricultural systems to small scale community farmers in marginalized and climate vulnerable communities. We help them grow more food with less resources, specifically water, fertilizer, space, labor, and increase their production and the quality of the food coming off their farms and gardens. So that when they’re giving the food they grow to food banks, or they’re selling it through farm markets to actually support the operations, their nonprofit operations, they are actually turning a profit in a nonprofit way. 

We want to free people from hunger, we have partners in Africa and 60% of the population of Africa is going hungry. There’s to be no one going to bed hungry at night, by choice.

Charity Matters: Did you grow up in a philanthropic family?

Siobhan Shaw:  I grew up on a farm. I was the lucky one. My mom was the farmer. My dad went to work. They had both served in World War II. Not only had my parents served their country, and sacrificed greatly. They lived through the Depression as young people and then they raised five children.

We took not only care of the environment, and we took care of other people. If you didn’t have something, somebody else had something. There was a lot of trading and there was always people coming to our home. We had this big dining room table, and it was full with family as well as with people that didn’t have a place to go.. Helping people was just in my DNA.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Growing to Give?

Siobhan Shaw: My husband John grew up on a farm as well. So we had already been together, almost a decade. I was in the film industry in casting and producing. John was in construction and our life was amazing. Then I got a call from John that he’d been rushed to the hospital. He just received a call from the doctor and he was told he had stage four cancer.  It was the moment in my life, where my entire world just collapsed.  This was out of left field and there was so much heartbreak and fear.

So oncome, the surgeries and the chemo rounds and then one day, he went up for a nap. When he  came down a few hours later he said, “I think I died. I saw the white light. There was a big glowing light. And I’m back, because I have something to do.” John didn’t know what it was but he was absolutely changed from that moment on. He had this profound near death experience and with it a renewed purpose in life. So he went traveling because he didn’t know what it was he was supposed to be doing here.

During his travels, he noticed that there was a lot of a lot of mention about farmers committing suicide.  What was happening around then was that the rain belt had shifted from the breadbasket of Australia.  So this was natural rain that farmers used so they didn’t need irrigation. Now their crops were being destroyed and the farmers were giving up. John came back and he just started tinkering and started cutting holes in pots. I had no idea, I thought he’d lost his mind. John learned how to write his own patents and he developed all kinds of different systems: water reduction systems for agriculture. 

We were ready to start manufacturing when John said,”We can get these units on the shelves at the big box stores, but I don’t feel that’s what I was called to do.  I feel like I need to give this away to the world and to people that really need our help. I want to find a way to help them and give it away to them.  If we can give somebody the tools that they need to have a productive farm, then they won’t need help anymore. That is how we started.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Siobhan Shaw: We received our nonprofit status on December 24th, 2019 and just months later the world shut down. So that was a challenge. We were just getting started. Like all nonprofits, funding is always a challenge.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Siobhan Shaw: I think John keeps me going. And then the fact that we both grew up in rural communities, we know what hard work is.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Siobhan Shaw: We’ve grown and given away over 100,000 pounds of produce to local food banks.  We will never know the impact from the people who received that food. We do see an impact with the community of volunteers who work on the farm with us.

In addition to our work here in Arizona, we partner with other nonprofits in communities around the United States, in the Caribbean, and Africa. These are three areas that really need our help. So we have about 30 partnerships and we’re working to write grants to help us give these people sustainable systems from The Crop Circle Farm and Garden Systems. 

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Siobhan Shaw: I don’t think when we had the idea of Growing to Give that we’d really thought about anything other than we just want to free people from hunger around the world. I guess that was the big idea, right? That was the moonshot.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Siobhan Shaw:  That you can turn adversity into opportunity. That’s beautiful opportunity for community. Because it’s not about you. There are lots of people who are self-serving. It was all about me and then life changed for me and for John, too.  We went from things being all about us, to what can we do to serve? How can we help? You know, and so we transformed. It’s taking that negative and transmuting it. So even if any negativity comes into your life, look at it as a divine moment. You can transmute that negativity into positive, life affirming opportunities that help everybody.

I just want to leave you with something John told me when he was really close to death. He looked at me and said,” Love is the only thing you take with you and the best thing you leave behind.”

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

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Causes

Episode 78: Words Matter

Many of us grew up with the childhood slogan of, ” Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Hundreds of years later we now know that they actually can.  Words can cause long lasting scars on our children as nonprofit founder, Jessica Bondy shares with us with today’s inspirational conversation about the power of our words. Join us for an enlightening discussion from across the pond about this amazing new nonprofit, Words Matter.

 

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Words Matter does?

Jessica Bondy: Words Matter is the first organization in the world focused solely on addressing the issue of verbal abuse of children by adults. It is so pervasive, it goes so unnoticed and not properly recognized. Yet it affects two in five children. And of that two in five children over half experienced verbal abuse by adults weekly, and one in turn every single day of their lives. Hearing words to blame, shame, belittle, criticize, and it’s not just shouting and screaming, it can be quite insidious, and subtle.

And I think that the thing that is most concerning about childhood verbal abuse by adults, is the life long damage it can do to children. Because words matter. They stick, they last a lifetime. They shape who we are and who we become. So we are on a mission to end verbal abuse of children by adults.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Words Matter?

Jessica Bondy: I set it up having spent decades in communication, and working for some of the biggest brands in the world Samsung, British Airways, FedEx, Procter and Gamble, working as director and MD of some big firms and then setting up my own agency.  I also coached and mentored a lot of young people helping them realize their potential.  I did a course all about women finding their voices and speaking up and I had a eureka moment. This eureka moment came on when we were given a topic to talk about with this group of women all on zoom from around the world. The topic was if you are going to die in the next six months, what do you want your legacy to be?

This thing came from me out of nowhere.  And I said, “If I’m going to die in the next six months, I don’t want my legacy to be that I am a good aunt. I don’t want my legacy being that I’m a communication specialist. And I don’t want my legacy being that I coach and mentor young people to help realize their potential.” I don’t want it to be on the good old, I’m a communication specialist, or mentor young people, even though all of those things don’t too many people would be hugely worthwhile and satisfied, right? I looked down the barrel of the camera on my Zoom computer. And I said, “If  I’m going to die in the next six months, I want to end verbal abuse of children by adults, because words matter.”

Wow. And I said this, because of my own lived experience and was getting so locked in my head. So many of the people I coached had been so impacted by what they’d heard when they were growing up.

I think what’s so fascinating with what I’m doing now, and Words Matter, it kind of all makes sense. Because there I was communicating on behalf of businesses and brands, then I was helping young people communicate, and market themselves. Now I feel I’m almost the voice of children say, enough is enough words matter.  I feel it is my purpose, I strongly believe that the only reason I’m on this planet is to do this thing.  I just don’t want it to be that way for the next generations and generations to come.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Jessica Bondy:  I think part of the challenge is when you believe something incredibly passionate yourself, and there are people that don’t necessarily believe in what your cause is.  And I found there’s a real dichotomy of people that get it. I’ve had people who’ve literally burst into tears and said, Oh, gosh, I haven’t spoken to my father since I was 14. It’s so brilliant, you’re doing something about this.

I think the other very challenging thing, given the environment we are in today is fundraising is very, very hard. Because particularly if you’re a new charity, because so many funders want to be reassured that you’re going to succeed. And if you’re new and different,  it’s hard. When I ran my own agency, and people were buying the services they were getting something in return. Philanthropy is very, very different. People are doing it because they believe in your cause. They believe that you’re gonna make a difference in the world.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Jessica Bondy: I think what fuels me is an absolute passion and belief in the need for this to happen in the world.  Actually, knowing  what I’m doing is changing people’s behavior. So that fuels me knowing that we can make a difference.

I think the other thing that fuels me is this incredible network of experts, supporters, and my fellow trustees, who have that belief, that you’ve cracked so many nuts, you’ll be able to crack this.  I feel like I’ve kind of got almost a rocket of support underneath me to try and make it a success.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been? 

Jessica Bondy: September 2023, our website went live.  We released the findings of our children survey and the most helpful and hurtful words that children said.  We have  three pillars, research and what we see is in terms of delivering outcomes, and outputs with data validation of the scale and impact. Then the next  pillar is about awareness. And that’s trying to change perception and increase understanding and awareness.

Then the other thing we’re developing is training, education and information. We developed some resources on how to talk to children, from adults, for parents, for teachers, those with lived experience.   We had the first international conference on childhood verbal abuse with University College London and the World Health Organization, we had over 1300 people registered to attend and actually 98% said it had made them they’d found it useful, and they would apply the information to their learning to their jobs. Over 90% said it would change their own their own behavior.

It’s called Words Matter, impact and prevention of childhood verbal abuse.  So we’ve developed this program, we’re piloting it.  Hopefully, it’ll be extended through our network of partners. So we’ve got a number of different leading charities supporting our mission, who are service providers, and we’re hoping to do the training through them and their networks.

Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?

Jessica Bondy:  if I could dream, any dream it would be that in everybody’s public consciousness, they would think about, be aware of, and acknowledge the harm that words adults say to children can have. They don’t understand it. What I think is so interesting is, as soon as you ask adults themselves to think about what they remember, when they were a child, so many, the vast vast majority can remember what was said to them that built them up. And what and who said it to them that knocked them down. But they don’t somehow apply it to their own lives when they are an adult. Right, that kind of disconnect. So I’d like widespread acknowledgement of it.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Jessica Bondy: So often in life one tries to mold oneself into something to be liked, approved or understood by someone and it just it never feels comfortable. One should  surround oneself with radiators, not drains.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Jessica Bondy: I’m somebody that is a survivor.  I think I’m quite a resilient person. And resilience is so important.  I just think it’s about somehow dusting yourself off if you have a knock back. It’s not easy to do. People who experienced verbal abuse or any form of abuse is that you just need one or two people in your life that really build a venue that really believe in you that you can talk to, and get that support for.

We all know it’s so important to have that connection and support from a very, very young age.  I’ve had a few people in my life who I feel have really been there for me and who really believed in me. At the end of the day, we all want to be seen and heard, for who we are and valued for who we are.

CHARITY MATTERS.

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

Copyright © 2024 Charity Matters. This article may not be reproduced without explicit written permission; if you are not reading this in your newsreader, the site you are viewing is illegally infringing our copyright. We would be grateful if you contact us.

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