I have to admit that God blessed me with amazing friends, truly incredible people that lift me up and have helped me in the darkest of times. There is really no greater gift besides good health than good friends. Especially my girlfriends, they are fun, kind, strong and many of them are wonderful connectors. Always saying, “Do you know so and so? You need to know them!” Through my friends, I am constantly meeting and making more friends. That is exactly how I met Sharon Macey. One girlfriend connecting another.
Sharon stayed home and raised her three fantastic now grown children. She realized that we all have second chapters after motherhood but there wasn’t a place to tell those second half stories. So Sharon decided to do it herself and in the process created her own second half and the very successful and popular podcast Mom to More. It is a place where we can tell our stories of being home with our children and how we ended up where we are now. I’m really loving being the guest these days and not the host. Please take a listen below to a great and fun conversation.
Most of you began following Charity Matters when I was a stay at home mom who had just co-founded a nonprofit with a group of friends. When I began Charity Matters, I simply wanted to find out why other people started nonprofits. It was curiosity more than anything. I really wanted to learn other people’s stories. Today, thirteen years later I am just as fascinated with people’s journeys to serve.
Sharon is telling a similar story of mothers who put their careers on the back burner for their children. For many that isn’t an option and no matter where you sit in motherhood, the grass is always greener. Trust me. I have sat in both sections. When I stayed at home, I dreamed of the career I had left behind. When I went back to work, I longed to be home with my boys. There is never an easy path. Regardless of where life takes us, it is important to know there is always something ahead for each of us. We never know what that is.
Thirteen years ago, I would sit home and write this blog before I picked up my boys from school. This is how little our youngest son was then. Never, ever did I dream when I was home with my boys what amazing young men they would become. Nor did I realize then how many incredible humans I would meet and interview. Never did I imagine how many thousands of people would become a part of this community of helpers.
I could barely copy and paste a link back then, and tech is still my biggest challenge, but a podcast? The thought that Episode 80 and Season 8is coming soon amazes me. Being a guest on the Mom to Morepodcast was really fun. Sharon reminded me of those days when the boys were young. If there is one thing we never regret, it is time with our children and how quickly that time passes.
Time slips through our hands like sand. We each have different seasons in our lives. Somedays it feels as if the season is never going to change, like its Ground Hog’s Day, again and again. Then, something happens and things begin to move and shift. The change and evolution begins. You have been here for all of it, when my boys graduated from high school, then college, well you know the journey. Sometimes looking back makes you smile. This conversation reminded me how far Charity Matters and I have come and that is a good thing. Because we are all here to Change for Good.
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:
There is a lot of noise in our world. Lately, with the election our world has gotten a lot louder and somedays its as if there is a tension knob and someone is turning it tighter and tighter. I don’t know about you but I want to jump off the merry go round after too much noise and just turn it off. I have found myself unplugging more and being more mindful of what media I am consuming because it is just too much.
Too be honest, most of this year I have spent my spare time writing. There was very little time for extra noise. Every moment I could find was spent creating Change for Good: The Transformative Power of Service as the Ultimate Cure. I am so proud to say that the paperback was released yesterday on Amazon and is now available wherever you buy books and your book store. Believe it or not it is distributed in 13 countries, who knew? This has been a remarkable process of taking the squares of each nonprofit founder’s story and creating a quilt of life lessons learned these past twelve years. To kick off the launch the publishers at She Risescreated this launch on livestream this morning and you can listen or view it on youtube in the play the episode link below.
There are so many reasons why I am grateful to SheRises publishing this book. First, they have created an incredible community of women authors who they inspire and life up. So much of what I write about is exactly that, creating social infrastructure and community. When we come together in any way we are stronger, better, happier, connected and we can make anything happen. Just like a nonprofit that creates change through community, She Rises also creates change through community.
It makes sense because SheRises founder, Hanna Olivas is also a nonprofit founder. She is a living example of what and who we talk about every week on Charity Matters. Someone who was dealt a really crappy hand and used it to help others. I will let Hanna tell her story herself in a hopefully upcoming episode of the podcast, so I won’t spoil it here. To say that she gets it and that She Rises gets it would be an understatement. As you know, I don’t belive in coincidences and I do not think it was one that I ended up with this amazing group of women. I am truly grateful!
So thank you to all of you who pre-ordered. The physical books come to me Novemeber 1st and I will sign and send them to you asap. If you want signed copies please order them through here and send me an email or reply to this post with who to address them to after you place the order, especially if you are buying for Christmas. For all our international audience here are the lnks for you to order as well.
Amazon Paperback Links for Change for Good: The Transformative Power of Giving As The Ultimate Cure – Heidi Johnson USA:https://www.amazon.com/dp/1964619459
Lastly, thank you again for being a part of this movement to make our world a better place one small act of kindness at a time. Thank you for being part of that kindness and this journey. We are better together, always.
CHARITY MATTERS.
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:
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.
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:
“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.
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:
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.
Sharing is caring, if you are so moved or inspired, we would love you to share this to inspire another.
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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Years ago when I lost my mom, someone said to me, “The greatest gift you can give the world is a life well lived.” Today’s guest is a fantastic example of just that. In full disclosure, I have known our guest Dana Bouton for probably twenty years. We have raised our children in the same community. Dana sent me an email explaining that her cancer had returned and was now terminal. She was determined to use the time she had left to leave a lifetime legacy to the City of Hope. The Dana Pepper Bouton Endowment Fund will help families financially devastated by cancer.
Join Dana and June Penrod from City of Hope to learn how one person can make a difference for so many living with cancer. Dana’s humor and insight will inspire you and make you think about how you live. She is a true example of the quote above and what really matters. During our conversation I made Dana a promise that I would re-publish her podcast on her birthday each year as a reminder and a legacy of her work, so Happy Birthday Dana! Cheers to another amazing lap around the sun. Thank you for reminding us all how to live.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what The Dana Pepper Bouton Endowment Fund will do?
Dana Pepper Bouton: The idea of the fund was set up to help families who are navigating the difficult diagnosis of cancer to have resources for support. They want world class care in hospitals and need to get transportation, gas, child care, groceries, and a multitude of other things. So this fund is set up to kick out money in the form of gift cards, to help these families get to City of Hope. More than having the best possible care but receiving some supportive care on the side of having to deal with their loved one being a patient.
June Penrod: What we do is provide state of the art treatment. So we are really the champion when it comes to precision medicine of being able to fight cancer. Not only at the cusp of when it’s worst in your body, but also in the beginning phases of helping our population screening for cancer. So we really did the entire gamut from A to Z on cancer treatment for all patients in Los Angeles and Orange County.
We are really proud of the impact that we are having on cancer patients in the nation. The role that I specifically play is acquiring resources for what we call our Department of Supportive Care Medicine. It is one of the unique elements of City of Hope that make it so special. Supportive Care is basically the emotional and spiritual arm that comes out of the cancer journey that patients go through. So while they can focus on the treatment with their doctors, Supportive Care medicine wants to focus on their emotional care journey. Then they are really focused on their cancer treatment and not having to worry about any of the external factors that might get in the way of that journey.Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start this endowment?
Dana Pepper Bouton: I was diagnosed with stage four non Hodgkins lymphoma in January of 2018. And here we are about five and a half years later. I’ve had multiple rounds of chemotherapy, back to back bone marrow transplants, a few operations, infusions, and transfusions. Now I’m terminal after all of those treatments. You know, I can’t can’t control the fact that the doctors say, “there’s nothing more we can do for you, except try to keep you alive a few months at a time.”
So I’ve lost the ability to kind of control how long I thought I would live. I came to the conclusion that I haven’t lost the ability to create a legacy for other people. Even though I’ve had basically what I simply call very bad luck because there’s no genetic component to how sick I’ve been. I’ve also been very blessed. And I’ve had multiple resources, in terms of financially supportive community to help me along the way.
After spending so much time in the hospital, and listening to June and others talk about the supportive care that City of Hopeoffers. I can create a legacy after I’m gone to help hundreds of people and that makes me feel really good. In fact, being terminal is really not that big of a deal in terms of how many people I can impact during the few months, maybe six months a year that I have left. This brings me such great joy and working with June and seeing her enthusiasm and the people around me who want to give. I just want to work as hard as I can to reach out to as many more people as possible. And I do have a tendency to accost people in the market.
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Dana Pepper Bouton: I would say number one, I’ve had incredible support at City of Hope.And I also think, knowing that I have very limited time left, I see and feel and touch and smell in here so acutely. But I’m just really inspired by my enhanced senses. And so I love to capture what’s around me from macro to landscape, and put that on my website and share that in the form of wall art or greeting cards, postcards, and sell them, and how those proceeds go to my fund.
I’ve laid in bed for sure, and had had some really hard days. But seeing, feeling, talking to people and really hearing and really listening just propels me to keep going. I know that when I am dying, I’m not going to regret being so tired. While taking pictures, or being with people, I would only regret that maybe I just stayed in bed and felt sorry for myself. After I die, I want my fund to continue. So I’m pushing to get the word out.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
June Penrod: Dana is a great example. I think she doesn’t mind being the dramatic story of philanthropy, of this woman who should be taking care of herself but instead she’s taking care of others. Even though she received a terminal diagnosis, I mean, look at what she’s doing now. We have folks who say, we have a great life that we’re living now, thanks to City of Hopeand we want to contribute more.
But we do also have folks who say, “My loved ones are not here with me anymore, but I love the compassion and the care they received.” And so we want to give. Then there are folks who have never stepped foot into the hospital but they know the great work that we do. And they want us to be their charity of choice. That blows my mind as well.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Dana Pepper Bouton: My dream is that after I die, I want this fund to continue in perpetuity. So my dream is to keep spreading the word as long as possible. Then have my family and other people give money once or twice a year, in perpetuity.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Dana Pepper Bouton: I appreciate when people talk to me out of just accepting where I’m at, and not trying to tell me that I don’t have hope. I have hope. And I also know that I’m going to die. Maybe within a few months, or perhaps, you know, a year. I think that the biggest life lesson is to listen to people in terms of where they’re at in their head. And don’t try to talk them out of something that might be their actual reality. I know that people have their own fear, but set that aside and try to put yourself in somebody else’s place.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Dana Pepper Bouton: There are two big changes. One is that I had the arrogance of aging, I thought I would live as long as my grandmother, who lived almost to the age of 102. I assumed it would be just like that. And that was very arrogant on my part. I’ve learned in the last six years or little over five years, I guess, that was just very presumptuous of me. And I’m quite humbled and I find that now to be a blessing. And I also think it’s funny.
I think my sense of humor has gotten quite rivaled. The other thing is that I’ve had to learn to slow down and not be busy, which I really liked. But I’ve accepted the fact that I can slow down. If I’m in pain, it’s okay to lay back down and listen to podcasts like your podcasts, and audiobooks and dream. My imagination has become so acute because I’ve been forced to lay down, forced to take a break. I willed myself to pivot and it took a while. And I’m proud that I had the strength although it took a long time to finally accept, don’t find it pivot. Find those blessings, and there’s new magic.
CHARITY MATTERS.
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A few weeks ago a friend reached out and said, “Heidi, you need to know Claudia.” She was right, I did. You do too. So I am excited to introduce you today to the founder of 4GIRLS, Claudia Copely. Join us for an empowering conversation about her amazing work helping young girls to identify themselves as authentic, confident and resilient preparing them for real life success.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what 4Girls does?
Claudia Copely: Our mission is to empower and inspire middle school girls so that they identify as confident, authentic and resilient. Preparing them for real life success.
Charity Matters: Did you grow up Giving Back?
Claudia Copely: I did not learn philanthropy or giving back in my household. I grew up in a household that was very dysfunctional, and there was a lot of trauma. It was more about let’s just survive, let alone do any type of philanthropic work. There was a piece of me that helping others is innate. I think all of us know to our core what is true. I think my one of my core values is generosity and connection. I love meeting new individuals and connecting. So I think for me it was a drive that was big for me.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start 4Girls?
Claudia Copely: So I was at a women’s conference and there were 100,000 people there. The central theme from the host, Maria Shriver, was what are you gonna do for your community? How are you going to be an architect of change? I was so inspired, empowered, and I left there driving home thinking what am I gonna do? I can be an architect of change. Then all of a sudden, this voice crept into my head, and it said, ” What are you gonna do? We’re gonna want to be part of anything you do.” It stopped me in my tracks.
I followed the thread. And I thought for me it was middle school, that tough time where I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I just felt lost, not just because of the trauma and dysfunction in my house but I just felt so alone. I’m the only one experiencing all this. Driving home from the conference, I thought why not have a conference similar to what Maria Shriver has done brilliantly? Lets focus just on empowering and inspiring middle school girls, just that target.
I polled all of my friends and everybody across the board said Middle School was the hardest time. I decided that I’m going to create a community. I had to read Nonprofits for Dummies because I was coming from the corporate world.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Claudia Copely: I think the biggest challenges were at that time and still are visibility and outreach. We are a 100% volunteer organization. With what I get paid I could not buy a loaf of bread. But I could light up a room. Being a 100% volunteer organization is a good really good thing, or a really bad thing
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Claudia Copely: A few things, first the communit. The connection to some really great amazing humans that are really talented, hardworking women that I’m surrounded by. It’s beautiful to see what we create for these girls. At the end of the two day workshop, we invite girls to come up to the stage and to share their empowering word. We have words all over the room, so they can pick one. But some of the girls that come up are thinking, “I would never come up and speak in front of a room full of people.
By Sunday, there’s a line to come up and share their empowering word. And we ask them to do that in order to give them a sense of identity. They can have this word that they can grow into and see how it feels. There’s been many girls throughout the 13 years. But there was one in particular, who said,” My word is valuable. Because before this workshop, before today, I didn’t realize how valuable I was. Now I know that I’m valuable.” It gets me every time.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Claudia Copely: You can’t put on a grant paper or proposal, a parent coming up to you and saying, “Oh, my gosh, what did you do to my child? They are a whole different person, they believe in themselves, they have more confident, they’re engaging with us. Thank you!” The mother will tell me with tears in her eyes. Thank you.
Then the second, which I’m seeing it right before my eyes. So we now have a few girls that had gone through the program when they were in sixth grade, seventh, and eighth grades. Then they became high school as mentors all through high school. Now they’re in their first years of college and they’re sitting with us at the board table. They are being part of the workshop team, which helps us to create the agenda, the curriculum, and stay relevant to what the girls need. They’re there with us in the trenches, creating this, this workshop and forming it to the next generation. That impact is that the seeds that were being planted are now going to be harvested.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Claudia Copely: I would say visibility and outreach. I think because we still are like considered a grassroots organization. I’d love that broader reach.
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Claudia Copely: I’ve learned that we are more common than we are different. That’s for sure. I’ve learned that we really want to be seen, heard and validated. Most of us really want to connect with other people. And I really enjoy making those connections and working with individuals that have different perspectives. I get to learn from all these amazing humans.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Claudia Copely: The journey has provided me with a strong sense of my purpose. I know I love empowering individuals. While my degrees are in international business, but I’m now trained and accredited as an empowerment coach. That fulfills me so much and fuels me. I’m definitely more purposeful, more mindful, more aware. Everybody gets to participate on this earth. We’re here at this moment and that’s all we got. Let’s give each other room to create and be who we want to be
In order to do this work I had to change my life. I had to let go of those limited beliefs in order for 4GIRLS to be born and to help it. If I would have stayed with those limited beliefs and my self sabotaging behavior this would have never happened. So I just I love helping individuals letting go of those beliefs. We all have them. Let’s do what we can get rid of them. When we can move the inside, beautiful, magical things happen.
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 get asked all the time, “How do I get my children involved in service?” It is a question that has more than a few answers because it is a process and not always a simple answer. I was so excited when my friend, author and college admissions expert Dr. Cynthia Colon, asked me to join her podcast to discuss the topic on her podcast Destination Youniversity about the topic. You can listen to the conversation below or share with a friend who has high school age students or anyone looking to volunteer and doesn’t know where to start.
Dr. Cynthia Colon and I met a decade ago when she was a high school principal after leaving her job as head of admissions at Vassar. During her years running high schools she watched many families being overwhelmed by the college admissions process and as a first generation college student in her own family, she decided to switch gears to help.
Since that time, she has authored two books on the process: Tips, Tales and Truths for Teens and Be Committed, Get Admitted.Cynthia is a dynamo who is on a mission to help families and students navigate the very challenging college admissions process. Today, Cynthia helps families, students one on one with their college applications and hosts workshops on the topic. If you are beginning the college search process definitly check out her website here.
Dr. Colon tells her families and students that one of the things that schools look for in applicants is volunteer and leadership experience. So I loved sharing a few tips on where to begin with your teens. Finding your child’s gifts and interests and pursuing those in the nonprofit space. We also talked about a number of amazing resources for starting out your volunteering experience and the best way to maximize those opportunities for your child and the organization they are serving.
There are so many resources today to connect you or someone you know to a cause they care about. It is just about knowing a few great places to get started. Connecting people and causes is truly one of my favorite things to do, so I’m excited to share this conversation and hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
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:
Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a joyous holiday and are ready to jump into 2024. While you are reading this on January 4th, I am writing for you on the last day of 2023. For me, I can not begin to look ahead at the New Year until I have taken that moment to look back and see what life taught me this past year. There have been more than a few lessons that I thought I would share.
Lesson one: Life can change in a moment. the only control you have is your attitude.
We all know that life can change in an instant. I learned this when my mom was killed in a car accident. In a split second life was never the same. As a type A person, realizing you have no control over life events but your attitude was a lesson that showed up again for me this year.
This fall, my husband had a serious health scare. While he was extremely ill for ten weeks, he is going to be fine. One moment, he was great and the next he wasn’t. Out of those horrible weeks, I was again reminded of the gift of health. In addition, it became clear that I had very little control over the situation except how I handled it. Finding strength, patience and grace in being the best caregiver I could was a lesson in itself. Knowing that my attitude was my responsibility and a good one helped everyone was a lesson learned.
Lesson Two: Fear isn’t fun.
I have never been a fear based person but this year felt scary. Again, type A with world and economic events out of my control, I felt fear for the first time in a long time. Fear is not fun and doesn’t feel good. The economy was a big trigger with out of control prices at the pump, the grocery store and the uncertainty that comes with all of that.
We were snowed in this winter and thirteen people died in our community as a result of being trapped. I had to defer to Lesson One above and know that there was little I could do to change the weather, world or economic events. However, I could choose to be kind, smile and be grateful for all the blessings rather than the fear.
Lesson three: Health is wealth
The first week of January we all are ready to hit the gym and change our bad habits from the past few weeks, myself included. Health is so much more than the gym. It is fueling our bodies with good food and choices. It is also managing stress. Making choices to do a digital detox, turn off the news and to go outside and play. Health is time with people you love. It is faith and making decisions, a hundred times a day, that put on a path towards joy. We only have one body, let’s cherish it this year.
Lesson four: Friends are everything
Why is it that we take everything that matters for granted? Food on our table, a warm place to sleep, our health and even our friends. We somehow think that these will be there everyday. That isn’t always the case per Lesson One. In 2023, that was a lesson learned. I also learned how truly blessed I am with incredible friends. I love my friends dearly and try hard to be a good friend. When you are on the receiving end of help it is a reminder just how valuable our friends are. Mine swept in like angels to the rescue and blessed me a thousand times over this year. A most precious gift and lesson, friends are everything! Treasure them.
Lesson five: Keep Moving Forward towards your purpose
Sometimes when you have a tough year it can feel as if you are reacting to everything and not driving your destiny. The hard part is reminding ourselves that we have this beautiful gift called choice. We can choose to dream, to make plans, to act. Every choice has a consequence. Even when things feel dull, repetitive, or out of our control we can choose a positive thought. During some of the dark times this year I journaled about what life looked like when things were better. Today, I looked back and can already see light at the end of this 2023 tunnel. So don’t give up, keep moving forward towards your dreams. There is a rainbow behind the storm clouds.
We are all here to learn. There is such a short time to do it. I am incredibly grateful for the challenges 2023 brought because of the lessons that came with them. Each week the nonprofit founders that we met reminded me what resilience, kindness, grace and purpose look like. They have enriched my life in so many ways with their wisdom. Thank you for cheering me on to continue this work and mission. You inspire me everyday to move forward towards my purpose.
So Goodbye 2023! Hello 2024! I am ready for you and all the lessons, joy and gratitude you have waiting for us!
Happy New Year!
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 am a planner. There is nothing I love more than making a plan. Along with that comes the joyful process of looking back at all that was accomplished in the past year before looking ahead to make plans for the next. Each day we all get into our routines and habits and some days and even weeks feel like the movie Groundhogs Day. You know the one, where every day feels the same as the day before.
However, when we look in the rearview mirror we see that each small step lead to something bigger. That is exactly how I feel about 2023. There were so many days that felt isolating, repetitive and flat and yet, when you look at the amount of work our team produced ….well, it is pretty impressive. When you look at the small steps the year breaks down like this: 826 minutes recorded, 14 hours, 19 episodes and 48 post. It’s that rearview at this time of year that makes me proud of our work.
I don’t think of this as work but a mission and a movement towards good. Each week we to continue to show the world the best in humanity. I thought we would look back at some of the amazing humans we met this past year.
We met so many incredible people and all of them are amazing. These are just a few of the conversations that were fun, insightful and memorable for me, so if you missed them, make sure to listen or read their story.
Susan Axelrod: Cure Epilpsy
I loved meeting Susan Axelrod, the founder of Cure Epilepsy. Susan shared her remarkable journey of raising a child with a diagnosis know one really understood. More than that, she was determined to change the trajectory of the disease for others and she has done just that. What Susan has done and how many people’s lives she has changed is truly beyond inspiring.
Dan Zauderer: Grass Roots Grocery
We have all seen food prices go up and up and up. Have we thought about what that means for so many children whose only meal comes from their school lunch? One New York school teacher did when he realized 1 in 4 students were going hungry. Join us for the incredible story of a teacher turned nonprofit founder of Grass Roots Grocery. Dan has become a food distributor, motivator for thousands of volunteers and teaches each of us what really matters.
Kurt Kandler: 410 Bridge
Kurt Kandler’s story is one of resilience, passion, and dedication to improving the lives of those less fortunate. His organization, 410 Bridge, has faced numerous challenges in its mission to provide aid and support to communities in Africa. But despite these obstacles, Kurt’s unwavering commitment to the cause has led to tangible changes and a glimmer of hope in the lives of those who have been forgotten by society.
Ian Sandler: Riley’s Way
Ian Sandler is not your typical nonprofit founder, not that anyone who sets out to make the world better is average. It is unusual for most of our guests to have a full time day job in addition to a nonprofit. When you hear his remarkable story and his mission to create the next generation of kind leaders honoring his daughter’s beautiful legacy, you will understand. Riley’s Way is a magical example of turning loss into love.
Rachel Doyle: Glamour Gals
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.
As we get ready to say goodbye to 2023. Remember all of the good. As we look ahead to 2024, look at some of these remarkable leaders for inspiration to put towards your New Year’s resolutions. Wishing you a joyful, healthy and very Happy New Year!
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:
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 
