I get asked all the time about the people/nonprofit founders who inspire me the most. While I am truly inspired by all who serve and I do not have “favorites.” The answer is people who have lost children and take that unbelievable grief and pain and recycle it into good. Those are the people that I will never forget. Their stories and their children’s stories stay with me. These people are my heroes and their love for their child becomes their love for others. It is the ultimate recycling of pain to purpose.
Today’s guest, Mary Fagnano is one of those remarkable humans. When her young son Nick was struck by lightning on a summer day at the beach, her life and her husband’s life were forever changed. Nick was their only child and a remarkable young man heading off to college. His life and legacy of service lives on through the beautiful foundation his parents created called the Thrive In Joy, Nick Fagnano Foundation. Join us today for an inspirational conversation that you won’t want to miss.
Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Thrive IN Joy Nick Fagnano Foundation does?
Mary Fagnano: At the Thrive In Joy Nick Fagnano Foundation, we encourage young people to discover their character strengths and the joy of service through programs inspired by the life of our son Nick.
Charity Matters: What were some early influences on your giving back?
Mary Fagnano: My mom volunteered a lot in school. She had a drama and speech background and would go into schools and do creative dramatics and music. I would tag along with her in those early days. My father was always volunteering. He adopted a family from Afghanistan through our church and brought them into our family. I did grow up seeing my parents doing outreach and giving of themselves in my own life.
I look back and the first thing I remember is when I moved to Los Angeles, and I was trying to meet people. I moved here and the church I was going to had a program where you could go to juvenile hall and you could volunteer and talk to young people who were incarcerated. It was a really powerful experience and the first time in my life that I had really put myself out there.
Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start The Thrive IN Joy Nick Fagnano Foundation?
Mary Fagnano: Nick always inspired me. He always inspired me to be a better person. He did this baseball equipment drive for kids in the Dominican Republic when he was going from Little League into high school. He loved baseball, and he had rallied his friends because he saw something on TV about how kids in the DR love baseball, but can’t afford the proper equipment. As a result, he put this drive together.
Another influence in my nonprofit journey was this guy named Greg Buzek, who I was in the advertising and marketing world with. He had started an organization that brought executives together for a common good to help vulnerable children around the world, and they would make these service trips. Nick was 20 when he passed.
Well, the signs that lead us. I was having a tough time and said, “Nick, I need to feel you. I need to know you’re here.” And at that moment, my phone rang, and it was Greg Bucha. And it was that call that really changed our life and started Jay and I to have a purpose. That phone call from Greg came only about four or five weeks after we’d lost Nick.
Greg remembered that I had said that we were going to go to the Dominican Republic. And he said, “Maybe we’ve got this trip coming up. We’re going to install a computer lab at this school, and maybe you and Jay would want to go on this trip, because you never went with Nick” There were just so many signs on that trip that Nick wanted us there.
Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?
Mary Fagnano: We came back from that trip and did an extreme makeover in one classroom at this school in the DR. There was something that just told us we can do all ten classrooms. And we came back and we had a fundraiser, and we did have a great community so we raised $30,000.
The Foundation started in 2016 when we got our 501, c3. In 2016, we had a board that was focused on this little project in the Dominican Republic, helping out at an orphanage in a school and taking two trips a year to go there and do work. Then the board said to us, “This is great. You’re doing this in the DR, and we’ve seen how this has really been something that’s helped keep Nick’s memory alive. But if we’re really going to be a legitimate nonprofit, we want to have sustainability. We need to look local, and we need to find something local that we can do. “
Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?
Mary Fagnano: Nick. Our board did some background research and found this Values in Action organization. We aligned the descriptive words of Nick against 24 character strengths that Values in Action defines through their scientific studies. And they have a survey that every student can take, every adult can take. It gives you this lineup of your top 10 character strengths. This is where we realized, okay, we do have something here.
Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?
Mary Fagnano: It’s the people we’re serving and the people who serve alongside of us. No nonprofit can operate without volunteers and but it’s the stories.
Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had and what your impact has been?
Mary Fagnano: Our impact is what happens through the young people that are part of our programs. We’ll talk about impact right now with our C 11 program. The young people involved in our program have a project called an ESIP. It stands for entrepreneurial social impact project. At each school where we start with these foundational kind of modules to get that handle on character.
Every year, in the spring they have to do a they have to produce an ESIP. What they produce and how they’ve grown and how they activated their entire campus is what gives me such impact. This group of students started out with a little leadership team, and then they recruited a club, and now they’ve got like 30 members. Those 30 members had this positive impact on their entire campus with discussions on body positivity or whatever subject.
The students brought together community resources, and they invited their whole campus and everybody could talk to these different organizations. Everything from financial security, to safety, to riding public transportation, to health and safety. All are the students’ ideas. I measure the impact. I count how many you know people did this small group of students bring together? Each school that we partner with creates its own little mini nonprofit and picks a cause they believe in as long as it aligns with mixed values, that were things that were important to Nick.
Charity Matters: If you could dream any dream for your organization, what would that be?
Mary Fagnano: I would like to see the C 11 program go global. That would be the big dream. I want to see that. Just continuing that everybody who wants to have the C 11 program and that every school feels that there’s a value to this in their school. We can provide it, and the dream is that we’re constantly able to improve it and update it and make it more exciting and more engaging.
Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?
Mary Fagnano: People say when you have a child, it changes your life. When you lose a child, it changes your life. Absolutely and I have changed by carrying a lot more about a lot of things that I think are more long lasting than the things that I cared about before. Nick was only always number one. Everything about being a parent for both Jay and I, it was great. And so losing that and losing all of that purpose, and being able to find a different way to channel it has been a gift.
After Nick died, we found an essay that he wrote when he was a freshman in college. The title of the essay was the reality of heaven. The essay was a five page essay about all the different world religions and what they believe happens when people die. Nick concluded in this essay that his Christian faith tells him that when he dies, he will be finally reunited with the loved ones that he’s lost on earth. And he wrote, “I believe that when I go to heaven, I expect to feel joy, gratitude and excitement. I don’t believe that people should say rest in peace. Perhaps a phrase such as thrive in joy better reflects how I want to spend eternity.”
Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?
Mary Fagnano: I would say the biggest lesson that I’ve learned is never to take a day for granted. Every day is precious. Every relationship that is important to you is precious. There’s never enough hours in the day, and you can’t beat yourself up about that. You try to get in everything you can in a day.
I don’t want to live an easy life. I want to live a meaningful life.
CHARITY MATTERS.
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