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 Outwhere 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.
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“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.
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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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 Matteris 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.
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Have you ever picked up an old photo album and come across memories and before you know it you have been transported down memory lane? Last week that happened to me when I went looking for interviews to include in my book. Before I knew it I was years into Charity Matter’s post and it felt like finding old friends.
This post from 2018 struck me because the past few weeks, I have been speaking to hundreds of school principals for TACSC. My message for all of these schools is that when we tie a child’s shoe, we don’t help them, as intended. Instead, we tell the child by our action that they can’t tie their shoe. That they are not capable. Our mission at TACSCis to empower these students and tell them they can be anything and do anything they set their mind to. So when I came across this old post it felt just as relevant and worth a re-share. I did update the numbers served, so those are current.
A few years ago, a young lady that has helped start and run a local nonprofit asked me to write her a recommendation for The Barron Prize for Young Heroes, which I happily did. This high school girl is extraordinary and I was thrilled to help. More than that, I was excited to learn about this incredible award and nonprofit that inspires and encourages students between the ages of 8 and 18 to use heroic qualities like courage, compassion and perseverance to make a positive and significant impact on the world.
The prize was started by New York Times best selling Children’s author, T.A. Barron seventeen years ago and named after the author’s mother. His hope was to inspire children that could make a significant difference in the world. The founder’s fear was that perhaps, they wouldn’t be able to find these children. However,it was just the opposite, hundreds and hundreds of applications would begin to come in.
Twenty-three years later,the Barron Prize for Young Heroes has honored over 575 young heroes who have all done remarkable things. One prize winner is Alexa, who created a nonprofit called Bags of Books,which she started at age 10. Her organization distributes gently used and new children’s books in free pop-up stores in underserved communities. She has donated more than 120,000 books and inspired hundreds of volunteers to distribute books in homeless shelters, children’s hospitals and after school programs.
One young prize winner founded NY is a great place to Bee! to educate the public about bees about the importance of healthy bee populations. She built a team of volunteers and they have educated over 14,000 students about ways to protect bees through her advocacy.
Another inspiring change maker, Jahkil, founded Project I Am to help the homeless in Chicago. In one year Jahkil and his team distributed more than 3,000 Blessing Bags filled with toiletry items, towels, socks and snacks through his drop off sites and bag stuffing parties all at the age of nine!
While I could go on with hundreds more of these incredible young nonprofit founders and budding philanthropists, these 575 Barron Prize for Young Heroeswinners have combined raised over 28.5 million dollars for their causes in the past twenty-three years. The real winners of this prestigious award are the incredible communities served by these extraordinary young leaders and their enormous compassion to serve. Each of them give us hope for a brighter future of kindness, caring and service.
charity matters.
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Before Autism Awareness Month comes to a close I wanted to make sure that we are highlighting incedible work that so many are doing for Autism. I’m so excited to share today’s conversation with you. I’ve known and admired Cathy Gott for a very long time. We both raised our sons in the same small town outside of LA. A small city where everyone knows everyone and supports one another. Cathy has always been a bright light, someone with amazing energy, and a person who makes things happen. She and her husband, (legendary baseball pitcher) Jim Gott have two sons, Danny and Nick. When Danny was diagnosed with autism Cathy and Jim went to work.
Cathy is the co-founder of Education Spectrum, a social skills, and community integration program that supports children and their families with developmental needs. Cathy didn’t stop with Education Spectrum, she kept going to found Danny’s Farman amazing nonprofit that is so much more than a petting farm. It is a place for the community to come together while employing adults with developmental differences.
Join us today to learn about Cathy’s journey, the challenges she faced as the mother of a child with autism, her journey of service, and to learn about the incredible work she is doing today for adults with developmental needs. She is a true inspiration!
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Danny’s Farm does?
Cathy Gott: Danny’s Farm is a labor of love, no doubt about that. It is a petting farm, that employs adults with developmental differences. We provide a lot of volunteer opportunities and vocational training. In addition, we go out into some of the most underserved communities and special needs communities in Los Angeles, either through our mobile petting farm and visit groups of kids who sometimes never even seen a farm animal.
I mean, it’s remarkable and is a really interactive, lovely experience. Then we also have hours at the farm where we host field trips and tours and individual visits depending on the needs of the individual. So it’s an inclusive nurturing loving place. We share the property with another organization called Special Spirit which provides therapeutic horseback riding. So, it’s hard to separate because you know, you can’t pass up a pig pen when you’re going over to ride your horse or a sheep or a goat or a bunny or you know, it’s just really fun. So we share a lot of that.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Danny’s Farm?
Cathy Gott: Well, when Danny was little as with many people with autism, there’s a number of sensory issues and in particular, sound sensitivity. And lots of different ways to take in the environment tactfully from touch to you know, just how we move in our body and space. He had a lot of difficulties navigating things like amusement parks or baseball games or things that a family would typically enjoy. It would be very overwhelming for Danny.
One of the few places that he loved to go, were petting farms, wherever we were because they’re quiet and they’re peaceful. He got a lot of tactile input by petting and holding and squeezing and hugging and loving all those animals. Danny has always had a tremendous affinity for animals. So that’s the background story.
Then somewhere in the early to maybe 2010, something like that Danny was a teenager. I was attending a conference at this taskforce Blue Ribbon Commission for autism in California. I learned about some grants that were available to fund micro-enterprises or small businesses. That’s when the light bulb went off, you know because a lot of parents as their kids are about to exit high school or thinking what’s next? What is my child going to do and have meaningful employment in life? And it just all clicked together. That’s what we decided to do and it truly is Danny’s Farm.He has a lot of pride and works very hard.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Cathy Gott: We had some location issues but you know, they all turned out great in the end. The first location we opened was an Altadena at a beautiful little horse stable. We used a lot of the grant money to build a barn that served a number of wonderful things.
What happened is we were a victim of our own success because once the word got out about Danny’s Farm we were very busy, very fast serving kids in and around Los Angeles County. And this poor little neighbor. Bus after bus come in and out and the neighbors were not happy. So we politely had to close our doors there and that was devastating.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Cathy Gott: I have learned so many lessons. I think the one that comes to mind is the saying, “Man makes plans and God laughs.” I used to be such a planner. I had planned where Danny would live and work and I learned to let it go. We adapt to do the best with what we have. We learn to manage our expectations and disappointments. Being able to pivot is extremely humbling.
I feel closest to God now when I just listen. It is such a privilege to simply listen.
CHARITY MATTERS.
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Did you know that there are over 13 million children in the United States who live with hunger? One in five children does not know where or if their next meal will come. Those facts are shocking to anyone who hears them. However, it is the rare person or people who actually act when hearing those numbers. Today’s guests not only experience food insecurity they have acted to create a nonprofit called Filling In Blanks.
Tina Kramer (left) and Shawnee Knight (right) Founders of Filling In the Blanks
Join us for an inspirational conversations about two next door neighbors who are changing lives and the face of hunger.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Filling In the Blanks does?
Tina Kramer: Shana and I started Filling In the Blanks 11 years ago. And what we do is we provide food on the weekends to children that are struggling with food insecurity. So we provide a bag of food for the kids ages preschool through high school, that receive meals during the week at school, but don’t have anything over the weekend. So we’re covering that weekend meal gap.
Charity Matters: Did Either of you grow up in families that were very involved in their communities?
Shawnee Knight: My family was always thoughtful of other people, but we didn’t do a lot in terms of being out in the community as much as Tina and I are now. I grew up in a single family household and so I kind of understood. I was on the free and reduced lunch and so I understand the pressures that these families are facing. I think that really was kind of one of my main motivating factors for starting Filling In The Blanks. Being in Fairfield County, CT there’s so many different volunteer opportunities and ways to give back.
Tina Kramer: I grew up in a similar household as Shawnee with a single mom who works all the time. My grandmother pretty much raised me. So there wasn’t really an opportunity to give back to the community at that point in time. When we moved to Connecticut, there are so many volunteer opportunities and that’s where I really learned about volunteering. We decided that we wanted to do something together and that’s how we founded it Filling in the Blanks.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Filling In the Blanks?
Shawnee Knight: We were riding with a friend into the city, and we were just talking about sports and our kids. And my friend was saying,” The other students on the opposing team don’t often have snacks. So they would bring snacks for the other team.” I was kind of like,” Wait a minute. There’s kids in Fairfield County that don’t have food. Like how I don’t understand that? That can’t be possible. Look at where we live?”
I think Tina and I were at the age where our kids were getting a little bit older. So we were both trying to find something to do, we were next door neighbors. We did some research and learned that there really are food insecure children in our community. And for us, the thought of a kid going without food is just shameful. It’s just wrong.
Tina Kramer: So we saw an article in a magazine about a nonprofit that was a national organization that provided food on the weekends to children. So we became program coordinators. That was our first step and we did the fundraising. We did all the purchasing, but the national organization was more of the parent company.
We would give them our fundraising efforts and they would reimburse us. And we are very type A, we are very gung ho about projects we work on. We decided after probably two or three weeks to use the information from the national organization structure on how to run a nonprofit because neither one of us had ever run a company or any kind of nonprofit before. So that was our stepping stone to the blank.
So we learned how to incorporate our trademark, our logo, articles of incorporation and bylaws. We surround ourselves with good people to help us structure all these things. We started packing bags in my house for 50 kids. We’re tying grocery bags, going to the dollar stores, Costco and loading our Suburbans up which we’re dragging on the floor. And we just learned as we went, and it was so very grassroots in the beginning.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Shawnee Knight: I think definitely finding food suppliers and finding families. and reaching more families. We needed to get a warehouse because we had outgrown Tina’s living room. We had too many kids, and you have to store these bags. We just needed more of a structure for that. And so I think there were challenges, just in doing and getting things done. Realizing people don’t get things done as quickly as we wanted them to get done.
Some of the biggest challenges we face now are reaching more parents. There’s definitely still a lot of parents who don’t know about us and our services.. And I think procuring food, and food costs rising because we purchase all of our food. So we’re fundraising to buy food and with food costs going up, we have to fundraise even more.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Tina Kramer: I don’t think we mentioned this earlier but Shawnee and I are both volunteers. We don’t get paid to run Filling in the Blanks. We have a real desire to help the kids because we both at some point in our lives dealt with food insecurity, one of us in our childhood, the other in our adult life. That really fuels us because we know what these parents are struggling with, and how hard it is. Just to wonder, can I feed my child today? Or do I have to pay the electric bill? So it’s really ingrained in who we are.
We have a great staff that surrounds us and a great group of volunteers. We have a leadership committee of about 10 people, mainly women. Then we have 11 full time employees that really help with the day to day. Besides the bags were packing, we have 7000 volunteers come through our doors on a yearly basis. Wow. So it’s not just Shawnee and I, and our desire, it’s our community. We’re all lifting up our community and the surrounding communities. And that’s really what fuels us.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Shawnee Knight: We do a lot of surveys, to the families, the children, parents, the social workers and teachers at the schools. So we’re able to measure some of those outcomes for students. Then we track the number of meals and we’ve served over 3 million meals. Every week we have 7500 kids that get our weekend meal bags. We’ve launched our Mobile Food Pantry, fresh food on the move. We’ve been distributing about 20,000 pounds of food at each site, which they operate twice a month.
We’ve partnered with Stanford Health to provide various health and wellness wraparound services, so we’re able to see how many people they register for or how many flu shots they gave out. It is really hard because we don’t have access to kids grades, so it’s hard to measure that. But we do measure things like the teacher saying that the child is less disruptive in class.. We’ve had a teacher tell us a story of this. One child she had that just was out of sorts at school and she kind of made him in charge of helping her with the backpack club as they call it, which is when they get their bags. And she said, that she noticed a change in his personality and his self confidence was improved. So we hear little antidote or things like that. Then from our pre-programmed surveys and post-program surveys, we see an increase in happiness or of the child’s well being.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
Tina Kramer: It’s a simple concept that everyone should have access to food and healthy food items. Our volunteers are little kids to adults. We make sure that we can create volunteer opportunities for them to create an impact within Filling in The Blanks.. We’ve created snack bag programs, in addition to our regular weekend meal program. So the younger kids can have a packing event at their home and pack little snacks in a little brown bag that gets distributed to the kids too. So we’re trying to make sure that our volunteers feel the impact that they are creating.
As Shawnee mentioned, we just started a mobile pantry back in October, and we’re serving 1000s of families through that initiative. Through that we’re able to communicate directly to the families and the parents. They tell us the impact that the 50,000 pounds of food they get at the mobile pantry has on their family. Many turned around and now want to know how they can volunteer with us, and how they can give back and how they can help. And that’s just so rewarding. It comes full circle.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Shawnee Knight: For us to be out of business.
Tina Kramer: This year alone we will serve over a million meals and the need is not not going away. We’ll probably serve about 10,000 kids this year, every weekend. We created a year round program for all. Our big dream is potentially it’s on the back burner but I’ll put it out there. We would like to franchise to other states or communities, or do some drop shipping/fulfillment centers to have food delivered directly to the schools. We would take away the need for additional trucks and drivers. We’re trying to figure out how do we replicate or duplicate our program outside of our like immediate area.
Charity Matters: Do you have a Phrase or Motto that you live by?
Tina Kramer:One of our board members always said, “If you can, you should.” And that kind of really encompasses Filling in the Blanks. Because really, anyone, a little kid to a senior citizen can make a difference here, it’s packing the bag, spreading the word, liking something on social media, it doesn’t have to be dollars, it could just not just it can be your time, even if it’s five minutes.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Shawnee Knight: I think so. I think we were nervous when we first started this. We didn’t know what to expect. You never know how much pressure you can take or how much weight your shoulders can hold. So I think we’ve grown a lot in that sense. I mean, we’re running a really big nonprofit with a big operating budget and expenses. You never know how much of that stress you can take and I think we’ve learned to stomach quite a bit of it.
Tina Kramer: We’re the perfect ying and yang. I think it’s given me a lot more confidence than I had before. I never thought I could run my own business and didn’t know how to read a spreadsheet. And now we’re dealing like Shawnee said, with a multimillion dollar budget. It’s given me confidence in who I am, not only here, but in normal life and at home. It’s just been a great learning experience over the past 11 years.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Tina Kramer: That people are good. And they want to do good. I come from nothing and I’m not used to being encompassed or embraced by our community. This community that we’ve created together, really has shown me how good people are and how they’re always willing to help. It’s just a beautiful thing.
Shawnee Knight: If you build it, they will come.
CHARITY MATTERS.
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Working with young people everyday I know that they are capable of great things and are often underappreciated for all the good they do. Today’s guest is a perfect example of that. Sofie Lindberg started a podcast at age 17 to help her deal with challenges she was facing in her life. What she didn’t expect was young women beginning to reach out for more and more support. As a result, she turned her popular podcast, Claim Your Potential into a nonprofit.
Join us today for a fun conversation about what one inspired young woman has done to use her challenges to help serve others.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Claim Your Potential does?
Sofie Lindberg: Claim Your Potential is a women’s empowerment organization. We serve primarily women between the ages of 15 to 24 years old, across the US. We have a bit of a different model, because we operate 100% virtually. All of our programming is focused on four different pillars; academic, emotional, financial, and professional empowerment. Currently, we have three active programs.
Charity Matters: Did you have a mentor or role model growing up that was philanthropic?
Sofie Lindberg: My mom was definitely my role model growing up. She was a single parent who did everything. She would participate in whatever the community was doing, whether it was a fundraiser concert that she was singing in, or it was a clothing drive. My mom was always just in this community mindset of what can I do to help my community.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start your nonprofit organization?
Sofie Lindberg: When I entered university, I was going to go into politics. My first job was at this local DC nonprofit that does capacity building for other nonprofits, focusing on organizations that served impoverished children in the DC area. I had no idea what the nonprofit world was and I fell in love with it.
Around that time, I had my very first relationship which was very turbulent. Looking back on it was something that I shouldn’t have been going through, that was by any textbook definition, emotional abuse. I remember getting out of it and the amount of days I would just sit on my floor and cry and not know what to do. I wondered why I waited so long to get out.
And from there, I said, “Alright, I need to share this with people.” Claim Your Potential started as a podcast with me sitting in my college dorm room, sharing stories, connecting with guests about everything from navigating grief, to financial wellness, to getting your first job, and even dealing with toxic relationships. All of these things that I was going through in my own life, I got to share and also be able to listen to experts tell me that everything I was doing was not right and how to fix it.
Then about a year into podcasting, all of these people were pouring out on social media saying, we want more. How can we get more from this podcast? So we started slow, and pushed out articles, stories, and workbooks. Still people wanted more. I sat down one day and said, “You know what? I should probably use my nonprofit experience for something. So let me see what I need to do.” A week later, I was interviewing founding board members. It was quite the process from we’re a podcast, too, all of a sudden, holy moly, we’re filing for 501 C 3. I was 17 when we filed for our 501C3.
Charity Matters: What Have been your biggest challenges?
Sofie Lindberg: I would say the biggest one was getting that 501 C3 status. For a little bit of context here, we had operated under what DC has is called nonprofit corporation. So you’re a registered business. They register you as a nonprofit corporation, but you’re not federally a nonprofit.
I would say our biggest hurdle was waiting for that to come through because you can’t do it but you can’t do anything to fix it. There’s nothing and you just can’t take on all of the stress of I have 25 different things that I need to get done. But I can’t do any of them until I have money. And I can’t do that until I have my 501 C 3, which I can’t get because the IRS has to approve it.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Sofie Lindberg: I love everybody that I work with my board and everyone that’s on staff. The time and love they’ve put into everything just kind of makes the stress disappear in a way. I would say the other big piece is when we do workshops and collect feedback after.
When I get to read people’s responses and someone had said that they had no idea that they could even get a job. Then they went to our workshop, then they realized that wait a second, all of these other experiences that I’ve had, I can get a job. I know that I can do it. Reading those responses just makes you want to keep going, it makes you want to change someone’s life every day.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Sofie Lindberg: I think I definitely would say we’re not in this stage where our impact is measured in numbers. I see our impact in the stories. And for me the story is our pilot program The Empowered Women’s Network, which is our mentorship program.
I’m still part of that program, where I get to mentor someone. My mentee leaves the sessions feeling like they can take on the world, get a new job, they can go to university, and figure out what they want to do with their life. All of our programming is so tailored to the individual. I feel like that’s kind of been my big success story to tell people is that people say, “I don’t know where I’d be without this program.”
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Sofie Lindberg: Claim Your Potential is our launching a career coaching program with career coaches, so that is super exciting. I am also really pushing for getting financial advisors to come on to have one on one individual sessions with clients to make sure that they can build a future.
We are in the process of building out our content writing team. We are bringing on young women to essentially write what they see the world as. Opinion pieces, research based pieces, advocacy pieces, it will be a digital magazine. My big vision is to always give space for young women to think and to lead.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Sofie Lindberg: I’ve learned three really good ones about myself and how I lead. First, don’t let age get in the way. When I started, I was so nervous to go into my own meetings, talking to my own staff, and talking to the board. Because all these people are 10, 15, 20, sometimes even 30 years older than I am. I learned to embrace it. I’m the perfect person for this job, because I’m in the demographic that we serve. It’s easier for me to connect and I get it. It might seem to be a weakness, but for me that has become my biggest strength. Exactly what I always was so insecure about.
My other lesson was that nothing was going to happen overnight. I really had to get reminded from my mom, when she said, “Sophie, one day at a time, nothing is overnight success. It’s those incremental everyday steps that get you there. So focus on the bigger picture.” Being able to put it in perspective of if I do it right, we could be in a very different place a year from now. What if everything goes right?
I would say the third piece is really understanding when it’s time to let go of something. I’ve found that founder syndrome of I built this and want to hold on to this for dear life. But then there’s a time where you have to ask, “Is this actually serving people? ” It took me a very long time to get there because I wanted everything to work perfectly. So being able to make those tough decisions was the hardest lesson of them all.
Charity Matters: Do you have a phrase or motto that you live by?
Sofie Lindberg: I think I saw this when I was maybe 10 and it never left me. It’s an Audry Hepburn quote and she said, “Nothing is impossible.” And I feel like in the nonprofit sector especially, you get told no a lot from board, from donors from grant makers, pretty much anybody. But I feel like being able to be in the space where you can say,” Alright, this might not be possible now. But it is possible, right?” We are going to find a way to implement this or to advocate for that. I think that’s always stuck with me that nothing is impossible, because the word itself says I’m possible.
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:
Did you know that there are over 10 million survivors of domestic abuse in United States and that one in three households of those survivors have a pet? When a person is making a decision to leave an abuser often times they stay because they do not want to leave their beloved pet.
Join us today for inspiring conversation about how Orazie Cook came up with a solution to help both our furry friends as well as survivors of domestic abuse heal with her nonprofit Praline’s Backyard Foundation.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Praline’s BackYard Foundation does?
Orazie Cook: We house pets of domestic violence survivors anywhere in the country, be a pet boarding facilities and pet foster homes. One of the barriers for a survivor leaving an abuser is lack of housing for their pet. So we want to eliminate that barrier. So they do not they have to worry about housing for their pet and they feel secure.
What a survivor does is really try to assess what resources are available to them when they do leave. One thing the person is trying to assess is what services are available for their pet. We recognize that one in three households have a pet. What that means is that almost half of all survivors have a pet as well. When they enter into a situation where they need to leave an unhealthy living situation the victim wonders, do I leave my pet with this abuser? We recognize that a person who abuses a person often will abuse a pet as well.
This person battles with the dilemma am I going to leave my pet with this person who may harm the pet, or do I stay because I want to protect my pet? Pets are a huge source of comfort to a person trying to leave an abuser. We want to eliminate that conundrum that a survivor has to go through. We hope to empower them by knowing that when they’re ready to leave their pet will be taken care of when they are ready to leave.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Praline’s Backyard Foundation?
Orazie Cook: I couldn’t have told you five years ago that I would be leading a nonprofit. Ten years ago, you couldn’t have told me that I would own my own company either. This all started with the idea that I wanted to have a facility to foster dogs. I had volunteered with domestic violence shelters and at the Humane Society. I knew that I always wanted to house pets of domestic violence survivors because of my experience at the shelter and humane society.
When I was at the women’s domestic violence shelter a lot of survivors would go back to be with their abuser because they want to be with their pet, not to be with abuser. The shelter I had that I volunteered at did not house pets or make any level of accommodations for pets. I have a graduate degree but I never thought about how do we solve this problem?
I volunteered at the Humane Society and saw survivors come and relinquish ownership of their pet because they were going into a living situation that did not accept pets. However, that’s not what they wanted to do so they made that a very difficult choice. I knew there there has to be a better way but just didn’t know what that way was. During COVID we saw the rise of domestic violence. I started sharing pet fostering stories on social media and then was trying to build a pet facility at the same time. People started saying, you should become a nonprofit. I ended up applying to become a nonprofit and we became a nonprofit.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Orazie Cook: The biggest challenge I faced and I continue to face it is raising awareness on this issue. Honestly, I feel like if people knew that lack of housing for pets, keeps us a domestic violence survivor with an abuser, they would help. In my experience, people are so generous. People would open their hearts, their minds and their wallets to assist a person because we either like people or we like pets.
My goal is to educate 10 million people, hence why I’m on your podcast to really educate 10 million people. And I feel like that 10 million represented 10 million people each year who experienced domestic violence in the United States alone. We recognize that less than 20% of domestic violence shelters make accommodations for pets. So we need more resources available for survivors with pets. I don’t want any survivor today in 2024 to leave their pet with an abuser when we have provision for them through pet boarding facilities and pet fosters across the US.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Orazie Cook: When I first started this, I would get so entrenched in people’s lives. I had to really, almost disassociate because I would just get so emotionally wrapped up into this person’s life. Especially when they didn’t leave an abuser, it just hurts. But I had to recognize people move at their own pace. I want to support them in that movement because I don’t want them to go back. We are at the beginning of their journey. That’s when I recognized I really needed somebody to debrief with this, so I could keep making this happen.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Orazie Cook: In terms of impact, there is the survivor, their children and their pets. There are multiple levels of our work. We can put a pet into a pet boarding facility to provide emergency housing for a pet for seven days until we find a long term Foster. So that’s a level one level of impact.
We currently have 47 pets right right now that are being fostered. And there are about 20, something that are currently being boarded across the US. Those are small numbers. These 70 families that have left an abusive situation. And they’ve got the empowerment to know that their pet is okay. And they can seek safety and assurance for themselves at a shelter or during this transition period without their pet.
We’ve changed I’ve helped change the destiny of that person’s life. They have left an abuser, that their children have left that abuser so their children are less likely to become abuser. The real impact can never be measured in a sense, but to know that I’ve impacted that just one person is enough.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Orazie Cook: I would love to have a mobile app where survivor could go into this app and say, My name is Susie and I have a 50 pound lab and someone that’s in Susie’s area can say oh, we’re available to house Susie’s pet. The app would provide resources for that survivor in terms of what shelters are available, what other resources they may need as they leave their abuser. And so if I had an app, it’ll make it it was a really a succinct process on your phone. They will get alert that somebody in their area needs a place to for a pet or wants to help someone in their community.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Orazie Cook: I believe in the community and I believe in partnership. I’ve worked around the world, I worked in public health for over 20 years. I think I’ve continued learning about myself. I never thought I would be this leader or thought I would be on a podcast. I wasn’t a social media person before the foundation. My life is pretty private.
However, my goal is to raise awareness to 10 million people. So 10 million people will eventually see my face. When I see the number of followers, and I hate the word followers, because I’m not God but its my job to be a messanger and get the word out and help.
CHARITY MATTERS.
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Welcome to Season Seven! We are SO excited for all of the amazing conversations we have scheduled for you this season. This is our 71st podcast and there is nothing we love more than introducing you to remarkable humans who use their lives to improve others. Today’s guest, Debbie Bial is no exception, she is simply remarkable. Join us as she shares her journey as a 23 year old nonprofit founder to what she has built today with her national organization, Posse Foundation.
Debbie is a ray of sunshine who for the past thirty plus years has been on a mission to identify and train gifted young people who might be missed by elite schools. Posse Foundation places these scholars in supportive multicultural groups of ten students or posses. These students are mentored, prepared and positioned for success. After listening to Debbie’s passion you will understand why.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what The Posse Foundation does?
Debbie Bial: We started in the 1980s when a student who had dropped out of college said, “I never would have dropped out if I had my posse with me.” And we thought, well, that’s a brilliant idea. Right? Why not send a team of kids together to college, back each other up?
The idea was that if you send people together in a team, they can not only back each other up when times get rough, but they can begin to form critical mass. Send ten students in every class, you get 40 students on a campus. That’s a model of integrated diversity, a catalyst for positive change in a community.
We are a national college success and leadership development program. The ultimate big goal is that we’re building a Leadership Network for the United States that more accurately reflects the real diversity of the American population. So Posseis trying to contribute to a more diverse leadership.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start The Posse Foundation?
Debbie Bial: I was 23 years old, I was only out of college for a short amount of time. And here I am with this big idea. It wasn’t my idea but I was helping to bring it to life. Vanderbilt University was the first university to take a chance on this idea. Luckily, there were people at Vanderbilt, who saw that this could be a really valuable thing for their institution. Right in the 1980s. Vanderbilt was very white, very southern, very wealthy, and all the women wore dresses to the football games. How are they going to get kids from the Bronx to want to go there and stay there? So they tried it.
Charity Matters: What Were some of your earlier challenges?
Debbie Bial: I think people devalue the work that goes into creating a nonprofit that’s trying to do good in the world. For some reason, we don’t see it as an enterprise that you would invest in the way you would invest in a for profit business. If you want to succeed you have to do everything well which includes building a board of people who are experts, building a network of donors and building an infrastructure that makes sense.
What I always say to other people who are starting a nonprofit is know your non-negotiables. And if you can stand behind your mission, and not compromise, understand where you draw the line. What are your non-negotiables? Then you’re much more likely to succeed. Honestly, I think that’s about integrity. If you just follow the money, or you’re not strong in front of people who have big opinions about what you’re doing, then you end up diluting the work.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Debbie Bial: Every day that I walk into the office, I walk past a row of posters that are just our graduates on the day they graduate. They’re in their caps and gowns, it’s portraits, one after the other, and they’re smiling. And they’re the most beautiful photographs that I’ve ever seen. And it makes me so happy every day that I walk past those photographs. I know all their names and I feel like this is why we have Posse.
They’re becoming doctors and CEOs, they’re running for office, they’re in government, they’re starting their own nonprofits.And that motivates me now.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
Debbie Bial: I always tell this story because it’s an important origin story. And it gives you this sense of Oh, there’s the impact. It’s a story of somebody who is in the very first Possethat we ever had in 1989. Her name is Shirley, and she was this Dominican kid from Brooklyn. Her dad drove a Yellow Taxi and she was going to be the first person in her family to go to college. And she goes to Vanderbilt University. She graduated with honors, she got her doctorate in clinical psychology from Duke University. Then she becomes the Dean of the college at Middlebury, and my god, she becomes the President of Ithaca College. She is the first Dominican American to be president of a four year college in the entire United States.
I tell that story because it captures the idea of impact. Right here, you find a student who maybe never would have thought of going to Vanderbilt, maybe ever would have shown up on their radar screen. And yet she goes, and now she’s a first. She’s building something that’s making our world better for all of us.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Debbie Bial: Since 1989, we’ve sent over 12,000 students to college. They have won $2 billion in scholarships from our partner schools, with graduation rates of 90%. Our students go on to be the leaders that we so need. What makes them different as leaders is that you’re thinking about equity and inclusion in a way that we sometimes miss in the boardroom, or in the rooms where decisions are being made. And we have a very polarized society right now where all we do is fight. We can’t agree we were attacking each other. And how valuable is it to have someone walk into the room? Who knows how to have conversations that are productive? Who knows how to build community? We don’t have that and we’re trying to do that.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Debbie Bial: We’re already a national program. We operate out of 10 brick and mortar cities, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York big cities. We expanded when the pandemic hit, and we all went home. Our staff, who is amazing, turned the program into a program that we could deliver on Zoom. So now we have a virtual Posseprogram. I woke up one morning and I thought, oh my god, we just interviewed 17,000 students on Zoom. And I thought, we could expand our reach, in cities that we’ve never been able to be in before. And so The Posse Foundation more than doubled the number of cities from which we now recruit students. We have 92 partnerships, all taking 10 students a year, which means 920 new students a year. We’re going to get to 1000.
If you really want to know my dream, my dream is that one day, I can create a fund like a half a billion dollar fund. It will generate enough money so that I could provide grants to 100 college and university partners every year in perpetuity for Possescholars. We’re calling it the century of leaders fund. If every year we had 1000 students, and every decade 10,000 Posse scholars, that’s 100,000 leaders for America over the course of a century. This would be supporting 100 of our best colleges and universities in the United States. That’s what I want to do before I leave. I think I can do it.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Debbie Bial: A number of years ago, I was in a room with the CEO of Deloitte, Cathy Englebert. She was speaking to 50 Possealumni about her life and her career. And one Posse scholar raised her hand and she said,” You’re a woman and you’re a CEO. How did how did you do it? How did that happen?”
And Cathy said, ” There’s three things you need to know. One, you need to work really hard. Two, you need to find great mentors. And three, there needs to be someone who will pound the table for you. And let me tell you what I mean by that.” She said, “I worked hard and I had great mentors. But there was this one executive who when the door was closed, would say to his colleagues, have you thought about Cathy? You know, Cathy’s pretty amazing, Cathy’s great, Cathy’s outstanding. Cathy, Cathy, Cathy, Cathy.” Well Cathy became the first female CEO of Deloitte, not because of that person, but in part because of that person. We have all had someone who’s pounded the table for us. But more importantly, can we pound the table for someone else? That’s what I do, and if we all did that, even just for one person…that makes the world better for all of us.
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:
What does a private equity firm, a role in President Jimmy Carter’s White House and philanthropy have in common? The answer, today’s guest. Larry Gilson had an exciting career, instead of retiring he founded a nonprofit, Focusing Philanthropy. His organization is taking his skills of investing in people and businesses to the nonprofit world and changing the way we look at philanthropy.
Join us, for a really interesting conversation about investing in people, making a difference and hope. Larry is pure inspiration.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Focusing PHILANTHROPY does?
Larry Gilson: We start with the observation that Americans are the most generous people in the world philanthropically. Our experience is that philanthropic activity hasn’t always been the most fulfilling, rewarding or confidence inspiring. People have the impulse to be generous, but they also want to be confident that what they’re contributing actually makes a difference.
The more people give, I think the more they have a series of questions that are in their heads. But I think they want to know, if I give dollars to such and such an organization, can I be confident that it’ll actually be used in the way that I intended that they promise? Will I get good feedback on what’s actually happened? Will more dollars just result in more activity, but not necessarily more meaningful impact? How do I choose among organizations that are all announcing themselves as being active in a particular space?
These are challenging questions. But the answers take quite a bit of time and effort to come up with and most people are busy doing other things. So we’re trying to fill that gap to answer those questions. We want to give people the confidence to make informed choices, and to have the sense of satisfaction that comes from getting good feedback. So that’s the niche that we’re trying to fill.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Focusing Philanthropy?
Larry Gilson: After 20 years of having founded and run an investment firm, I sold the firm. My wife and I both felt that that was a moment when we had some more money and also some more time. And we wanted to be more thoughtfully philanthropic than we had the time to be previously. So I thought, with all of the philanthropic activity that takes place in the United States, there will be lots of resources available that we could tap into that were identifying compelling, giving opportunities in a professional confidence inspiring way.
So I spent almost a year looking for this hypothetical resource. And I kept looking because I couldn’t believe I wasn’t finding it. But my expectations were high, because I was looking for something for the same lens as the investment decision making tools that my firm had built over a span of decades. And when I wasn’t finding what I was looking for, I started asking friends who were in a similar situation. And they had a similar lament about their own experience and asked, ““Can we ride your coattails and get the benefit of their research?” And so I said, “Okay, maybe I should do something more ambitious. And that became the genesis of Focusing Philanthropy.“
For the past 11 years we’ve been a version of what it was I was looking for. We now have a team of eight people that do they research, the exploration of potential giving opportunities, the ongoing monitoring, the crafting of giving appeals and an accurate and timely reporting. What we do for our own family, we now do for about 450 other families around the world, most of them in the United States.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
Larry Gilson: We have only 14 or 15 nonprofits in our roster at any one time. About half of our nonprofits are domestic and half are international. One international partner is called One Acre Fund. half of the world’s extremely poor people have something in common aside from poverty, and that is they’re farmers. They’re planting their crops, they’re harvesting what they plant and their family is mainly eating everything that they harvest. So they’re really not even creating a surplus that allows them to, to sell into the market and generate cash profits.
When we started with them, in 2012, they were working with about 40,000 farmers in Western Kenya and they had jumped the border into Rwanda and Burundi. Now, 11 years later, we’ve been a catalytic partner of theirs for all the intervening period, they’re now working in nine countries, working with one and a half million farm families, where the average farmer has six relatives that they support. They’re doing the hard work and they’re learning the skills. We’re giving them the tools, the support and the network of resources that enable them to be successful. So you do the math, that’s 9 million people who are permanently out of starvation, poverty as a result of this impact.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Larry Gilson: We’ve been at this for 11 plus years. During that period, we raised and deployed about $135 million. That’s not the most important scorecard, the most important thing and the reason why we’re all doing this kind of thing is to help people. And we conservatively estimate that we’ve changed the lives through the programs, we’ve supported over 13 million people around the world. Wow, for the last 11 years, and the trend is great. So that’s year over year, significant growth in people helped, dollars raised, and donors participating. All of the metrics are encouraging.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep going? This isn’t always easy work.
Larry Gilson: I really appreciate how incredibly fortunate I am. To be born into the family that I that I grew up in, in the United States. And I had nothing to do with any of that. I hope I’ve capitalized on the opportunities that have been available to me. I’m alert to the fact that the opportunity set for most people in the world doesn’t look like mine. And, the ability to be helpful, not to solve everybody’s problems, not to deliver the results, but to create the opportunity for people to be able to maximize their potential, and to pursue things that are interesting to them and worthwhile and rewarding, and to see a prospect for a better future for themselves and for their families and their communities. This is pretty motivating.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Larry Gilson: Reading the morning newspaper can be a little bit discouraging than a typical and it can affect your worldview, and your sense of your place in the world. So a very important antidote to that, I think, is what comes from my involvement in the philanthropic world. There’s a couple of quite dissimilar populations of people who I now interact with who I wouldn’t have otherwise, that give me a basis for genuine hope.
I don’t mean a bunch of wishful thinking. I mean, evidence based basis for seeing some real upside. One is the people who are being helped. These are not folks who are sitting back looking for a handout. They are people who want to work, to prove themselves, and want their children to be able to go to school. They want to be safe, they want to be healthy. Those are traits which I see evidence of every place we go. So as a population that is hopeful. The other group of people who I find motivating and encouraging are the young people who founded but often run these nonprofits. These are people who could be successful in anything that they chose to do. And they are not choosing to maximize their personal income. They are choosing to serve.
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:
One of the things that I think has changed over time is our belief in teenagers and what they are capable of and I mean that in the best of ways. When I was growing up our parents barely knew where we were but with that freedom came responsibility. Teenagers had jobs, got themselves to work and rode their bikes to appointments on their own. These experiences gave them confidence to try and do new things. I am lucky to be reminded daily from my work at TACSC at just how capable and amazing these young students are.
Today’s guest, Rachel Doyle, started her nonprofit in high school and twenty years later has over ninety chapters nationwide connecting teens and senior citizens through GlamourGals. Join us for an inspirational conversation about what we can do for our seniors, ourselves, the power of connection and coming together over something beautiful.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what GlamourGals does?
Rachel Doyle: For over 20 years, we’ve been empowering beautiful connections between generations. We do this by organizing teen volunteer chapters in high school and college to visit local senior homes to provide companionship, conversation and our signature programming of complementary beauty makeovers. Our real vision is of course to end elder loneliness. Sadly, over 50% of seniors in care are not visited.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start GlamourGals?
Rachel Doyle: I created GlamourGals When I was a teenager. It was an idea to honor of my grandmother who had passed away and I wanted to do something that honored her. Being a teenager, I wanted to do something I enjoy. I think where the success comes in, is this idea of tapping into what’s relevant to your audience. I loved fashion, beauty and makeup, so I thought why not? Take the things that I love, my friends love and use it as a tool to make someone smile.
I remember it was August of 1999 that I was thinking of the idea. In January of 2000. I held my very first GlamourGals makeover and I invited or begged two friends from home room. Basically saying, “You need this for college, don’t you?” And I dragged them into the senior home that day. And I remember I was unprepared for the next question, which after the experience, they turned to me and said, “Hey, when are we coming back? “
So the GlamourGalsmakeover experience, it’s just a vehicle for conversation that’s familiar. When you can tap into things that are relevant and provide opportunities for teens to do something and put their own spin on it. I think that’s what I’m most proud of is how we built the organization through this chapter system.
Yes, it starts with the manicures and makeovers the GlamourGalssignature programming, but then we give the team leadership of the chapters, flexibility through our chapter creativity fund. There they have an idea and we encourage them to pitch us their idea. Then we’ll give you the materials to go and do that. As a result, they can own a little bit of their local ideas.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Rachel Doyle: I think, in any entrepreneurial journey, they’re consistent. You always need resources, but you need the right resources at the right time. You need the right people at the right time. I think it’s not necessarily the challenges. It’s how you move through them. Because challenges will come up daily.
I think that as a person, I’ve discovered that I don’t mind a challenge. I lean into it, I see it. There’s a positive to it, even if it’s not the outcome that I want, it keeps you moving forward. You can manage your way through them or your reaction to them. And that is the entrepreneurial experience where you have fires all the time. It’s that firemen model. How do they get out of a burning building? They look down at their feet and they go one step in front of the other and before you know what you’re out.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Rachel Doyle: In our leadership model for our teens, we give them the opportunity to reflectively journal. The idea is that they go out and do this incredible intergenerational experience and they come back and get training and mentorship from us. Then we give them the chance to write about it and reflect about it. We prompt them to do that all the time and we’ve collected over 10,000 reflective journals.
We share them as an office, on social media to inspire others. Receiving those is really what drives me. On the days where I’m like, “Am I doing something that still makes an impact?” When that girl in Ohio or that guy in Texas, writes about how much GlamourGals has transformed their life, personally and academically. Our alumni who write professionally about it, or come back to volunteer . It is all these stories that we amassed that it’s not my journey anymore. It’s thousands of other people’s journeys. That is just so cool and just so inspiring to me.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Rachel Doyle: GlamourGalshas always been about creating human connection for 20 years. During the pandemic, we had an AI group, run all these like fancy technology tests on the Reflective Journals and look for key words and we found actually the most popular word in the selective journals was hope. To us this signaled something really incredible is that during the largest mental health crisis for teenagers, they were coming onto our site and talking about hope. And I think there is something really transforming there. Going back to the core of our program, is human relationships, creating for teens transformations that inspire their personal, academic and future professional success.
The last couple months we have started 20 new chapters. We’re in a growth period right now with 89 chapters across the country. When everything shut down one of the programs we launched was called My dear friend. It was a kind card writing program that allowed us to write cards to the seniors in the senior homes and for them to receive something tangible, slipped underneath the door, because there was 100% isolation. Since the launch of that program, we have distributed 100,000 cards around the country and even in foreign cities around the world. This holiday season we hope to reach 30,000 seniors isolated seniors in all 50 states. We hope that everyone will go online to helpus send cards to seniors for the holidays. The Winifred Johnson Clive Foundation is going to match what we send.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Rachel Doyle: I think the big dream for me and the thing that would make me the proudest for GlamourGals is having the vision realized in rooms where I’m not present. I think you know you can talk about growth or replication or that you want to be in all 50 states or you want this to be there. But it goes back to the people who are building it and meeting those goals. And when those people can perform their their tasks or their goals in a way that embodies your belief system and your vision without you and without your direct direction.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Rachel Doyle: I think I had to recognize that it’s okay for my role to change. I’ve done this for over 20 years. So I started off as a volunteer doing the direct service as a team, going into multiple senior homes going and to different classrooms to convince other students to do the same thing. Later on in college having other chapters of young people replicate the service in different communities.
I remember sitting in a professor’s office. And she said, “This is a moment where your role has changed and you have to accept it. And you either have to move forward in it. Just reflect on this for a moment. You are allowing maybe a thousand other people to do the service by your actions. So you’re one action of going into the senior home, by not doing that you’re putting the time towards inspiring and organizing a thousand others. You have to see the value in that .”
So it was then that the next evolution of leadership came along and it wasn’t just me alone. I had to welcome other people in and be okay with sharing that delegation of power and responsibility. Again, it was allowing and embracing those changes in my leadership role and understanding how I fit into the organization each step each step of the way.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Rachel Doyle: I’ve learned is how to build a team or building the right team. At the end of the day, if something went right or wrong, you can blame it on me. When you want to grow, you have to bring people on who have expertise you don’t have and not be threatened by it. Bring in people who complement you that are different from you, that challenge you. So being able to build a team because at the end of the day if you want something to grow or make a larger impact, you can’t do it alone.
The most important lesson is to be a good listener. As a founder I’ve been at plenty of meals with people who just talk about themselves. Who wants to be around somebody who just talks about themselves? I think I learned it from when I volunteer alongside my volunteers to remember to sit down and listen to someone else. Whether it’s a senior citizen, a volunteer, a peer colleague or a friend you just sit and listen to someone else. And get to know what they need. When you can understand the needs around you, you can better serve those needs.
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:
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and a terrific Giving Tuesday! I’m so grateful to have today’s guest to remind us why we call this the season of giving. Join us as Cindy Witteman shares her journey from fleeing domestic violence, becoming a single parent then a nonprofit founder, author and tv show host of The Little Give.
Cindy is a bright light, a survivor and someone who will inspire you with her purpose for giving back and the incredible story of her nonprofit, Driving Single Parents.
Cindy Witteman: What we do at Driving Single Parentsis we really get people back in the driver’s seat. So since being a single parent is one of the hardest jobs you can possibly have, and doing so without a car can be very difficult. So our mission is really to get those single parent families back in the driver’s seat.
We actually give single parents a free vehicle at no charge to them, including tax on license. Everything is taken care of the only thing that single parents are responsible for is to obtain and maintain car insurance. And that’s not our role.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Driving Single Parents?
Cindy Witteman: I came from a single parent home. We had a lot of challenges financially, my mom was disabled, she was unable to work. So we were limited by some child support, government assistance and my mom also got a disability check. So we really didn’t have a lot of fun growing up.
I decided to escape that situation and start a family my own with a white picket fence. Well, unfortunately, that didn’t happen the way I had planned. I ended up in a domestic violence marriage. That was a really hard time. The hardest time was feeling trapped. Being a single parent was the last thing on my list of things to do. Well, I thought since the abuse was only happening to me, that I could make it work. I could cook a little better, clean a little better and do things a little better. And if I did those things, then everything would be beautiful and wonderful. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
One day, I was a stay at home mom folding a load a load of laundry and Dr. Phil came on and he said, ” It’s better to come from a broken home than it is to grow up in one.” The minute I heard those words, it was almost like as if he was speaking directly to me. I literally stood up, I got a basket of clothes, a bag of diapers, my daughter’s and we escaped that situation. I distinctively remember strapping my daughter into the car seat, who was five months old at the time, and thinking, “Wow, am I really going to do that? How am I going to do this? This is going to be so hard.” I did it. I worked two jobs myself through college.
I had this nagging tug on me to give back and I always thought, one day when I get a better place, I’m going to find a way to help single parents succeed. And I went through a lot of struggles with childcare. It’s just really hard to be a single parent especially when you don’t have that support from the other parent, that child support, or any financial support. If a kid is sick at school, they don’t have anybody to go pick them up but yourself which means you miss work. So I just really had this passion to really want to give back.
Once I was in a little bit better place, I got out of school and had a stable job. I said okay, now I can start thinking through how I’m going to give back. So I thought I’ll start a nonprofit. At first, I wanted to focus on childcare. I wanted to do childcare. Well, I ran a poll here in San Antonio, Texas where I live, and nobody could get excited about a nonprofit that helps with childcare. There’s this misunderstanding that it’s government assistance already takes care of that. There’s lack of funding, there’s long waiting lists. And so it’s not not the easiest thing to get.
But again, what is a good nonprofit if you don’t have anybody to donate to it, right? So I knew I had to pivot. So I started to think what was my second need? And I distinctively remember, I was actually at dinner one night, and I literally stood up at the table, and I was like,” That’s it! I’m gonna give away cars to single parents.” My fiancee said, “Oh, Cindy, now sit down, you are not giving away anything. Are you crazy? That the liability is just like outrageous.” I listened very intently to all of his concerns. And then I woke up super early the next morning, I wrote a business plan. applied for nonprofit status, built the website, and we’ve been giving away cars at Driving Single Parents ever since.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Cindy Witteman: Who would have thought it’d be so hard to do something so good? Well, it can be pretty challenging. So me being somebody who didn’t have any background in nonprofits. And I didn’t know anybody else who had founded a nonprofit. In fact, I don’t even think before that I had much money to give to a nonprofit. So I didn’t really know a lot about it, or how to do it. So I had to read audible books, I read a lot a lot of books and figured it out
Oh wait, I need a board of directors? Wait, I need to pick a name? So many things that I didn’t know that I needed in order to really get myself in a position to where it wasn’t gonna fail. You talk to a lot of people who have founded nonprofits, and they fail, oftentimes. It’s a small percentage that actually can keep it going long term. So I knew I had to find ways to make sure that driving single parents wasn’t going to be one of those. I worked really hard to learn everything I needed to know, and gather all the people around me who were able to get on board and really helped me grow it.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
Cindy Witteman: The very first car we gave away was less than a month after I had the idea. The person who received the vehicle was actually a single dad named John Cano. He was unfortunately, hit by a drunk driver. In that accident, not only did he lose his car, but he lost his wife, and he left lost his right leg. He really became a single dad overnight, and then also had these major handicap needs that he had to overcome.
The vehicle really served as that tool he needed to not only help him get his kids to and from where they needed to go, but also himself to get himself back in the driver’s seat and get that independence back. Because when you end up losing a limb, you’re reliant on everyone else. To be able to have healed enough to get behind the wheel of your own vehicle and to have that freedom can be really transformative. He has sent me pictures of his kids, graduating, doing band practice, or him and that was six and a half years ago. He still drives it to this day to this day, that very same vehicle. He’s just doing wonderful and his kids are flourishing. And so I’m just so grateful.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Cindy Witteman: I want to amplify our efforts, to help more people and to expand. I think a lot of misconception out there is that a vehicle is a luxury item. It maybe in some places but I’ll tell you here in San Antonio, Texas, it’s not. Oftentimes I get applications from individuals who have lost several jobs because they have to rely on public transportation. That public transportation doesn’t get you there where you need to be in a reasonable amount of time. It might take two or three hours for them to get on all the bus transfers, to get their kid to school, to get their kid the babysitter and then to get to work. It can really put out the single parents who ended up being unemployed. Dispelling all of those misconceptions are really one of the big missions
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Cindy Witteman: Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. That’s a quote by Henry Ford and it’s so true. Because if you believe you can do something you can and if you believe you can’t do something you can’t. And it really comes down to you and your beliefs. I’ve learned that I am not a product of my circumstances. I’ve learned that my past doesn’t define me. Sometimes I didn’t have groceries or food when I was a kid but that didn’t define me. I ended up in a domestic violence situation situation. And I realized that I could easily just say,” Oh, poor me.” Or I could say when nothing goes right, go left. As a result, I could build a life that was everything I ever wanted.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Cindy Witteman: I think I change every day. You know, I think every single day I wake up, I don’t compete against anybody else in my life. I compete against myself. And I want to be a better person today than I was yesterday. And that’s something I work on every day. So I’m constantly changing. I’m constantly learning, I’m constantly growing. I’m constantly expanding my impact in whatever ways I possibly 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:
today is National Philanthropy Day and it seems only fitting that it is also my ten year anniversary as the Executive Director of TACSC, a youth leadership organization. It is amazing how fast a decade can fly by when you are having a great time. These past ten years have gone by in the blink of an eye. It is hard to fathom that our sons were in middle school when I started at TACSC in November of 2013 and today they are grown men who are launched. More than my actual children, it is awe-inspiring thinking of the 22,789 students that I have been privileged to serve over the past decade. Students who were also in middle school in 2013 and today are in their twenties. To witness these young leaders’ development has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.
My first summer at TACSC, I sent our youngest son to Summer Conference as a 7th grader. To be honest he went kicking and screaming saying that he wasn’t going to go to “Crazy Catholic Council Camp.” What he wanted to do instead was to go to surf or lacrosse camp that summer, not a leadership camp. Well, he went, and within five days he identified himself as a leader. Once he did that, he truly became one. The transformation I saw as a parent was unbelievable. That experience and so many others had me hooked at the beautiful positive and transformational experience TACSCis.
It is this same transformation that I see year after year, generation after generation, leader after leader of young students changing the world that has kept me doing this important work for ten years. It gives me hope to see our students learn about goal setting, communication (the old fashioned in person kind with real handshakes), becoming mentors and serving others. It all sounds so simple and basic, but it is so much more.
Each student inspires the next generation of leaders and does so much good for our world. As I wrap up this decade at TACSC, I am grateful for the gift of this work. It has been a gift to witness kindness, empathy, faith, compassion, and leadership. We have never needed kind good moral leaders more. I continue to be grateful for the tens of thousands of TACSCleaders making a difference in our world each day.
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:
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 
