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Charity Matters Inspiration December 19, 2024

Episode 81: Pave the Way

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

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

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

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

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

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

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

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

Charity Matters: Where did your philanthropy begin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

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

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

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

CHARITY MATTERS.

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

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Charity Matters Inspiration October 30, 2024

Mom to More

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 8 is coming soon amazes me. Being a guest on the Mom to More podcast 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:

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Causes June 29, 2023

Episode 61 : Dignity Defense Institute

It’s been a minute since we have put out a new episode of Charity Matters and it’s hard to believe we are already at Episode 61! Thank you to all our amazing subscribers and listeners. It is so fun meeting new people and telling their stories. More than that, learning what interesting ways people are changing the world.

Today’s guest, Nicole Smith is the founder of the Dignity Defense Institute, a nonprofit that is setting out to educate humanity on human value. Their mission is to become an amplifying force for the defense of human dignity. Join as Nicole shares her story about working on the PR side of human crisis and how that work and the birth of her daughter inspired her to use her voice to help create change.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Dignity Defense Institute does?

Nicole Smith: Our primary focus is on educating on the foundation of human value. In order to transform culture so that the offenses that we see within cultures across the world, typically is found within this idea that we can measure human value by another criteria other than simply being human. So if we were to educate culture on the inherent value of the human person, we change the course of offenses against the human person.

We base our organization around action committees. So these Action Committee committees are in all the different what we call symptom industries. So trafficking, disability community, orange culture, drug culture, those are different, fronts to the human person, they’re all really interconnected.

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

Nicole Smith: Yes, my father by trade was an entrepreneur and inventor. But by service, they were youth ministers that founded churches across the US. So I grew up with a lot of at risk youth in our home. My mom was a counselor for Judo, juvenile detention center for girls in our community. So exposure to a world beyond just four walls of a home that was very instrumental in forming what I would do in the future.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Dignity Defense Institute?

Nicole Smith: I got an undergraduate in political science and a master’s in law and public public policy. With the intention of going forth being an attorney in the public space. I ended up sort of landing on the communication side of the public policy world. It wasn’t intentional, but I graduated during the recession and attorneys were a dime a dozen. So I sort of took a different track.

I had a job at a constitutional law firm controlling their communication, and we called it the court of public opinion. We had a lot of affiliates across the world, in which we would advocate on their behalf of different cases. For example, it could be a child bride of Uganda, or a sex slave of Afghanistan. We did a lot of cases of imprisonment in prison. Religious minorities, Turkey, Sudan, like Iran, we did a lot of different varying cases.

I was going into places in the world in which justice wasn’t often seen. So if you were going to go into Iran, justice is not what you would come out of the court systems finding. So we would go to the court of public opinion, we had one of the cases where he was a joint American Iranian citizen, but we advocate on his behalf. We got over a million signatures on his behalf, Obama included him on his Iranian deal.

In January of 2020, I got to DC to sort of launch this concept with a group of individuals. It was interesting to watch the world at that time. By consequence, I was pregnant with my second little daughter. And she would be born in distress and sustained brain injury during that process. And she now has cerebral palsy as a result.

I mentioned her birth because I say it’s when the mission was given flesh and bone. So I had to help these little girls across the world, and I could never hug them, I could never give them a kiss and say they were special, like they deserved. But now I could do that to my own daughter.

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

Nicole Smith: I call it the short term and the long term goals. You have to be focused on that short term, because that’s the climax, the shift and perspective of the impact for that individual. And then to be patient enough for what that long term goal is beyond it is really important. It takes time to change culture and it’s not going to just be overnight. So we have to look at those metrics, and internally of the impact that we’re having. I say the epiphany point is where the individual that you speak to gets it. I can’t tell you the rewarding feature of that, where the light goes on their eyes.

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

Nicole Smith: Increase our reach obviously. We want to have a greater reach within our communities so that we can really creatively educate through stories and thought provoking ideas of questions. That’s the big dream is just the growth and influence because that’s how we educate people. We want to have more of those stories of victory with people that have had their climax moment. And they’re on the other side of it and they’re living their new normal.

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

Nicole Smith: The funny thing is my 10 plus year career has been around nonprofits and nonprofit leaders and nonprofit volunteers. But it’s a different perspective. When you’re on the other side of that it. I’ve grown millions of dollars and donor money. But I’ve never been on the other initiating part of that journey where I’ve always built amplified off of a starting point. And to take responsibility for that has been just really very challenging. We’re still a new organization, we’re still running and there’s been more delays and I ever wanted to because my daughter is my priority. There is victory in those lessons that I can’t and would never want to take back. Even if this didn’t grow into this massive idea that just changed the face of our world. I can’t take back the lessons that I learned and I’m a different person because of it.

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:

www.Charity-Matters.com
On IG @Charitymatters
Post a screenshot & key takeaway on your IG story and tag me @heidijohnsonoffical and @Charitymatters so we can repost you.
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Copyright © 2023 Charity Matters. This article may not be reproduced without explicit written permission; if you are not reading this in your newsreader, the site you are viewing is illegally infringing our copyright. We would be grateful if you contact us.

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Causes March 8, 2023

Episode 55: Grass Roots Grocery

If you have been to the grocery store recently you know how insane food prices are these days. When eggs are $8.99 something isn’t right! When one New York school teacher realized that his students were going without food he decided to step up in a very big way. It turns out that 1 in 4 New Yorkers who are experiencing a food emergency can even access a food pantry.

Join us today to hear the inspirational conversation of one man’s journey from the classroom to major food distribution to serve thousands of meals to his neighborhood. Dan Zauderer is an inspiration for us all in his mission to get all of us to be neighbors helping neighbors.

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Grass Roots Grocery does?

Dan Zauderer: Our mission statement is to advance food justice by cultivating a community of neighbors helping neighbors. What that means in action, is it means neighbors coming together, in grassroots service. Making sure that their fellow neighbors have enough food to eat.

There are two different programs that we do that do but it’s really just founded upon the notion that we all need to come together to to take a bite out of food insecurity. This is not something that big food pantries can do alone. It’s not something that we can just leave up to the policymakers. The problem is so big, that the only way to really shift it is for everybody to be involved.

Whether it’s by people roping in their corporate workplace, reaching out to their local girl scout troops, taking a couple of hours out of their week to help make sure that their neighbors are nourished and fed. That’s what this is about. It’s kind of a narrative shift focusing on on bottom up direct action from the people. it’s just basically about operationalizing this notion of neighbors helping neighbors and applying it specifically to the realm of food justice.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Grass Roots Grocery?

Dan Zauderer: It kind of begins with me having a career in the startup world, doing sales in New York. So I set off into the startup world and I loved the element that involves working with people but I just hated the things that I was selling. I decided that I was going to stop everything, move out to Costa Rica, take a life break and teach English. I fell in love with teaching.

So I went back to Columbia University to get my Master’s in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I started working at a school called the American Dream School, in the South Bronx. The student population is the children of mostly undocumented Central American and Mexican immigrants. One day, I am walking home and I see one of my students on the sidewalk. Next to my students, I see that there’s this elderly woman who’s digging through trash can dumpster diving.

So, I reached out to my student the next day and I asked him to share about what I saw. He told me that the woman was his grandmother and then this was something that was a normal activity. When Covid hit, I thought how can I rally my family and friends around something that would be helpful to my student community? I decided that we should just raise a bunch of money because I knew it wasn’t just this one student and there were other families who had to deal with food insecurity. We then found out that one out of every four families were cutting down on meals a few times every week in my school community.

Then I learned about community refrigerators, the idea is literally a fridge on the sidewalk put down by an organizer. You place a refrigerator into a local store and you get people to donate food that have extra. Then we rallied together staff, my own family and friends and said, “Alright, let’s start a community fridge in Mott Haven”. That’s the way that this was started as a teacher’s passion project that ultimately was renamed Grass Roots Grocery.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Dan Zauderer: Funding is was a huge challenge.

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

Dan Zauderer: A couple of things, one is my amazing girlfriend, my mom, my dad and family. Having great people in my life is one thing. Another is the amazing community of volunteers. We’ve recruited over almost 3000 volunteers to help out with this work and they light me up. Whether it’s little kids, or high schoolers engaging in some kind of direct action to support their neighbors with food justice.

Every Saturday, we have what I call it produce party. Where we come together with over 100 volunteers in a parking lot in the South Bronx. We unload a truck filled with excess surplus produce that we’ve picked up from the Hunts Point produce market, which is the biggest produce market in the country. Then every Saturday, we work together as volunteers to unload that truck and to sort through all the food. After that, we load it up into the vehicles of our volunteer drivers. The drivers who come and bring it to our network of community liaisons.

This past Saturday, I think we had 36 volunteer drivers. Wow. Over 100 people I want to say, and we delivered to I think it was 32 or 34. communities. So far, with not everybody reporting their numbers, we reached over 1000 families in that one Saturday. And I mean, that fuels me.

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

Dan Zauderer: For example, all of our volunteers that came out this past Saturday, they got an email saying that you moved about 10,000 pounds of excess produce to 34 different communities throughout Harlem, the Bronx, and reached over 1000 families through community leader liaisons. Those liaisons gave out that food to their neighbors in need in the way that they thought best. So that’s something that every volunteer received. That happens every weekend.

This crew of community leaders, I call them grassroots grocers and they all have stories of their own. They’re all doing this work for free because they’re leaders in their community. They want to give food to their people in need and so they’re volunteers.

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

Dan Zauderer: The real dream is to end food insecurity. But that’s not going to be in my lifetime, although it would be amazing. My dream is for this mindset of neighbors helping neighbors to promote food justice becomes ingrained into the the habit of people’s lives. And it’s already happening. We have families that are that are making sandwiches or that are taking leftover meals and putting them into Tupperware containers and filling the community fridges. People taking time out of their Saturday once a month to join us in a produce party.

If it just became commonplace, right? It’s this idea that we all need to come together. We can’t just rely on these big food rescue trucks, big nonprofits and the policymakers. It’s up to all of us, even if it’s just a couple hours a month. That’s really my dream is for that mentality to just wash over the world.

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

Dan Zauderer: The life lesson that I learned and that is just so important is to have meaning in the work that I do. It’s really important for me to do something that this that that feels meaningful. I’ve been sober for 12 years, and you know, starting a nonprofit is even harder than getting sober.

I’m just so lucky that I created that this amazing community of neighbors helping neighbors. The fact that I can do this work and light people up and get people’s kids involved and spread this message. It is just what fills my cup. Centering on meaning and finding a way to remember all of the blessings of the work that you’re doing is what it’s all about.

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:

www.Charity-Matters.com
On IG @Charitymatters
Post a screenshot & key takeaway on your IG story and tag me @heidijohnsonoffical and @Charitymatters so we can repost you.
Leave a positive review on Apple Podcasts
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Copyright © 2023 Charity Matters. This article may not be reproduced without explicit written permission; if you are not reading this in your newsreader, the site you are viewing is illegally infringing our copyright. We would be grateful if you contact us.

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Charity Matters Inspiration December 28, 2022

The Heroes of 2022

As we say goodbye to 2022 and look ahead to the New Year, it seems like a good time to recognize some of the extraordinary heroes from this past year. Each one of these people has dedicated their lives to helping others and to service. They have committed to a purpose driven life. Many of us are using this week to think about what we want for ourselves next year, well these folks are a good place to start for some inspiration. So if you missed an episode or two or if you are new to Charity Matters this might be the perfect thing to listen to as you put Christmas decorations away and prepare for the year ahead.

Disclaimer: Everyone I interview is miraculous and inspirational but these were some of our extra special conversations this year…enjoy!

Miracle Messages

I have had some pretty amazing conversations in the past ten years. Conversations that really make me think and look at the world around me in a totally different way. The conversation I had a few months back with Kevin Adler, the founder of Miracle Messages was game-changing for me. It’s my hope that it is for you as well. I will never look at the homeless the same after this eye-opening exchange.

Kevin shares the story of his uncle who lived on the streets and how his uncle’s death inspired the creation of Miracle Messages. A nonprofit that not only reconnects the homeless to their loved ones but also provides a social connection through a phone buddy system and provides cash for rent once the unhoused person is ready.

Roots For Boots

Roots for Boots is a nonprofit that serves those who serve, our veterans. Christy Lucus, founder of Roots for Boots is an inspiration and was beyond fun to talk too. Christy’s journey from a school principal to a nonprofit founder will amaze and inspire you. You will see why her official title is Chief Enthusiasm Officer!

If you love Veterans, teachers, and all who serve then this hero episode is for you. Christy reminds each of us that we all have something to give, even if it is a positive attitude and a smile.

A Place At the Table

When you think about hunger and homelessness the first thing that pops into your mind is rarely a restaurant. Instead you probably visualize tents, soup kitchens and a host of images. Maggie Kane has created an amazing community and a wonderfully unexpected solution for homelessness. Her nonprofit, A Place at the Table, provides community and good food regardless of means. Her delicious Raleigh, North Carolina cafe is a cozy, warm, friendly cafe with great food and everyone is welcome.

Like Maggie this is a fun, high energy and inspirational conversation about food, community, hunger and the unhoused. Maggie’s warmth, passion for making a difference and southern hospitality will make your day! So join us for A Place at the Table.

Free Wheelchair Mission

Did you know that there are 75 million people on this planet in need of a wheelchair? Can you imagine being disabled and not having access to get around? That is only one of the amazing insights I learned from Don Schoendorfer. Don is the founder of Free Wheelchair Mission. His story is incredible, as is his work in providing over one million wheelchairs to people in need.

Learn how a MIT Biomedical engineer changed his life and millions of others. You won’t want to miss this amazing conversation. Don Schoendorfer is a truly special human who is an inspiration for all with his journey of service.

Drink Local Drink Tap

One of the questions I always love asking our guest is did you grow up helping others? It is always fascinating to see where and when the seed of compassion took root in all the incredible people who do nonprofit work. Erin Huber has an incredible life experience of serving others that started at age 12. She founded her first nonprofit at 16 and continues to this day with her award winning nonprofit, Drink Local Drink Tap.

Join us for an inspirational conversation about what one person can really do to change the world. Erin Huber has been changing it for decades. Her work ethic, passion for helping others and amazing life journey is an inspiration for us all.

I hope you have enjoyed meeting so many heroes this past year and re-visiting these special few today. As you look ahead to 2023 and ask yourself what kind of life do you want? What will your legacy on this plant be? These five people and everyone we interview at Charity Matters are outstanding examples of kindness, compassion, empathy, love and service. At the end of the day isn’t that really the legacy we all want to leave?

Wishing everyone peace and joy in the New Year! Happy New Year!

CHARITY MATTERS.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please connect with us:

www.Charity-Matters.com
On IG @Charitymatters
Post a screenshot & key takeaway on your IG story and tag me @heidijohnsonoffical and @Charitymatters so we can repost you.
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Holidays and Holiday Giving December 7, 2022

Raising Philanthropic Children

I am always so amazed that is the same time each year that I find people asking for suggestions on raising philanthropic children. Once again, it’s worth sharing.

While my sons are far from the poster children for philanthropy, they certainly do a lot to help others. I am proud that each of our sons has found different ways to give back and share the gifts that they have been given. Now in their twenties their giving is changing yet again. Time is now a rare gift so the older two are giving funds while our youngest is still involved in volunteering for his favorite cause.

Each year at Thanksgiving, we sit down as a family and decide what our family will do this season to help others. We have adopted soldiers for a year, adopted families over the holidays that could not have Christmas, we have wrapped gifts at local Childrens Hospitals and voted on which non-profits we want to support. Each person trying to convince the others why their cause is most worthy.

The reality is that there is no simple answer to this question and that raising charitable children is an ongoing process. A study from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University said, “the research showed that talking to children about giving increased by 20 percent the likelihood that children would give.”

Here are a few tips to remember as we approach the season of giving:

Six Tips for Raising charitable children:

Start early, as early as 4 or 5 years old. Giving becomes a habit.
Talk to your children about what causes interest them and bring causes to their attention.
Be intentional by involving your children in your own charity endeavors.
Use online tools to research organizations to involve your children
Be consistent. Make charity a part of your traditions, the holidays and birthdays.
Emphasize the joy because giving feels great.

Benefits of raising charitable children:

Opens children’s eyes to the fact that others are not as fortunate as they are
Develops empathetic thinking
Fosters an appreciation for what they have
Enhances self-esteem
Correlates to improved performance in school

While this topic is relevant for the holidays, it is important to remember that giving does not just happen once a year. Teaching the gifts you receive from giving should become a way of life not seasonal. Once your children feel how great it is to give, their lives will forever be altered in wonderful ways.

Charity Matters.

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Uncategorized June 25, 2020

COVID, Caterpillars and Courage

“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”

Plato

As the world opens and we all slowly come back out of our cocoons like caterpillars who turned to butterflies navigating life from a somewhat different perspective than ninety days ago…I find myself flying above my former self in search of my mojo. The metamorphosis has happened to us all. A mere three months ago I was high functioning, multi-tasking, get it done sort of person. I could be on a conference call while emptying the dishwasher, texting, and juggle a multitude of tasks all of which made me feel successful, productive, and most importantly busy. Always busy.

COVID

Every pre-COVID moment from the 5:45 am wake up until 11 pm at night was scheduled, programed, crammed full of tasks, meetings, calls, and to-dos. Then after March 13th all of that changed. The first few weeks of quarantine were rainy, cozy, and almost felt like a holiday break with everyone home. I have always worked from home so that wasn’t anything new to me.

However, having the whole family at home working and going to school remotely was new. Making fifteen meals a day again was new. No early mornings at the gym and navigating new ways to manage exercise and stress were different. And as each little piece of my previously scheduled life eroded so did my mojo. Like sand in my hand, it just slipped away one grain at a time.

Caterpillar

The early morning dash to the gym became coffee in bed until seven. The online workouts became less about exercise and more about noticing every home improvement needed in the room. Once the “workout” was over, I stayed in my workout clothes until late in the day. Why not? There was nowhere to go.

Lip gloss and makeup were reserved for Zoom meetings only. The days to do list became shorter and shorter until they didn’t exist. Time and urgency seemed to disappear. The cocoon became a safe harbor from all of the chaos outside.

Courage

Then suddenly, the announcement came that the world would begin to reopen. Little by little our cocoons were broken open. Now that we were “free” to go, I wasn’t sure that I wanted too. My former self, the one that made the cozy and now organized cocoon, would have boldly dashed out into this new world without fear and a to-do list a mile long. However, my post-COVID self was a fragile butterfly that came out ever so slowly was not the same creature pre-quarantine. The mojo and courage were nowhere to be found. A metamorphosis had occurred.

The fear lingered and my fragile wings slowly began to flutter outside of the cocoon. Ready to explore but there was no urgency or speed. Time had dissipated, what mattered before no longer made sense. Schedules, planning, and lists all seemed like things of the past.

The courage came to be, and stay in the present. Slowly, the new butterfly saw all the beauty around, the faces of her family, and the beauty of each moment. The mojo was gone and replaced with what matters….health, family, love, security, and faith. The butterfly’s voice said, “What good are wings without the courage to fly?” Ever so slowly the butterfly fluttered out into a brave new world.

CHARITY MATTERS.

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Causes May 28, 2020

Faces In Between

There has been much conversation about the future of our country and the challenges that many of our young graduates are facing in these uncertain times. If ever there was a bright light that gives us all hope for humanity, it is Danielle Levin, the President, and refounder of Faces In Between. Danielle literally graduated from Columbia with her Masters in Public Health the day before our conversation last week. She is remarkable in what she has accomplished in 25 short years and I know the future is bright with compassionate leaders like Danielle changing our world through her inspiring work serving youth, families, and the homeless.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Faces In Between does?

Danielle Levin: Faces in Between is a community outreach and support organization. We focus on developing different programs that increase the well being of our community members who are experiencing different forms of economic disadvantage. We primarily work with youth and families as well as youth who are experiencing homelessness. Sometimes there are overlaps between those, sometimes there’s not.

For our homeless outreach, we distribute care packages and we’re in New York City so in the winter that looks like sleeping bags, blankets, hats, gloves, scarves, and things like that. We have a speaker series where we bring individuals who are currently experiencing homelessness into different settings to share their own stories and advocate on behalf of themselves and their community. There’s nothing more powerful than hearing it directly from the source and being able to truly ask the questions that many of us have and don’t really know who to ask or where to go to find the answer.

We also have an after school program called SNACC, which stands versus Stainable Nutrition And Community Connection. It teaches economically disadvantaged youth how to prepare healthily, but affordable meals with items that are available in their local grocery stores. We bring different New York City chefs in to teach students and then we incorporate different social, emotional learning components into each session that we have. However, with COVID, we have not been able to run our programming as we had planned. So we pivoted what we do while keeping our mission exactly the same.

We have developed a COVID relief food program, and we are currently delivering daily meals to over 200 people. We are working with a local farm to table catering company who’s bringing boxes of food directly to the doors, the homes, the shelters of elementary age students and their families. So that’s been our new way of connecting with the community. We are in the process of launching a Chef’s Table page on our website. We’re having chefs send us in video recordings of themselves doing cooking demos for the kids. The chefs are going to show the students and their families how to create healthy and affordable meals with the ingredients provided in the boxes. So we’ve really been creative in our approach and are just trying to meet the community where they are.

Charity Matters: You are 25 years old and have already accomplished so much, You literally graduated last week with your Master’s Degree in Public Health. have you always been philanthropic?

Danielle Levin: I’ve always been someone that wanted to be a changemaker; I wanted to be an agent for change. I would spend my summers interning for refugee resettlement organization or running a health clinic and interning for HIV AIDS facilities abroad. I just always knew that I wanted to do something to increase well being and to help people be able to live their best lives.

Homelessness and economic disadvantage have always been something that’s of particular interest to me. Especially focusing on youth because kids have so much to look forward to and so much potential. When I moved to New York, I had the opportunity to just really get to know my neighbors who didn’t have homes. There are over 65,000 homeless individuals in New York City on any given night. I had the opportunity to really understand, and to sit down on the street corners and talk with my neighbors who didn’t have homes, get to know what their needs were, learn their stories, and that’s kind of where the speaker series developed from. Also, all the items that we deliver aren’t because I think that they should be delivered, it’s because I know it from hearing directly from the source.

Charity Matters: Tell us how Faces In Between began?

Danielle Levin: It’s kind of an interesting story and series of events, and it’s all just so meant to be. In 2016, I was moving to New York, graduating undergrad, and I was going to work in a corporate healthcare job and wanted to really do something in my spare time working with homelessness and poverty. I came across this woman who had posted something online about how she started this organization called Faces in Between. Her name is Kendra and she filed the paperwork and set up the organization. She was a psychiatric ER doctor who worked around the clock and didn’t really have the opportunity to actually launch the organization in the way she had planned.

I reached out to her and she brought me onto the team. In 2018, I kinda said, Hey Kendra, nothing’s really happened with the organization in like a year and a half. She said, “Actually, I am going to shut it down. It’s not the right time.” I said, well if it’s going to shut down now and fail now, why don’t I just take it over? I’ll rework it, I’ll rebuild it, I’ll flip it and keep the general mission exactly the same, but the approach to it will change. I thought it either fails with me, or doesn’t, but let’s see what happens. So she passed it over to me. And so I’m kind of like, the refounder.

Kendra remains as my incredible mentor and she looks at what we’ve done with such pride. She had no idea that it would then turn into this and she’s watching it from afar and just seeing all the things that we’ve accomplished and the thousands of people that were touching daily.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Danielle Levin: I think our biggest challenge is also our biggest strength, the challenge is that we are 100% volunteer-based. Every donor dollar goes directly to the community. I am a full-time volunteer for the organization. I think that it’s our biggest strength but it definitely poses challenges because we make decisions on maximizing community impact versus a business model. I think that it is something so special and I will keep this model for as long as I can. It’s working for us. Upon graduating I’m going to be working full time for another corporation so that I can maintain this model. I think that it’s our strength, but it’s a challenge to figure out how to maximize and how to stretch every dollar to make sure that it’s truly making a difference in the lives of our community. I think it’s also the most beautiful part and it’s what makes us us.

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

Danielle Levin: I have so much passion for the work that I do that I don’t mind late nights and early mornings and weekends. For me, it doesn’t feel like work, I truly get so much pleasure out of it. Challenging myself to reach the next limit and figure out how many more thousands of people can we feed or how many more meals can we deliver by tomorrow or next week. To me, it’s time well spent.

I think that I have a unique skill– I am really good at creative problem solving when it comes to real-life issues and coming up with effective solutions. I mean, what fuels someone to want to finish a puzzle? There are things that I can contribute, and if I don’t use it, then it’s kind of going to waste. If you have a gift, you might as well share it with the world.

It fuels me to see the recipients, people who are receiving our services, and their reactions to it. When it’s going to be zero degrees out, and someone is handed a sleeping bag, and they know that that’s their lifeline, it fuels me. When kids learn a new recipe and they’re taking home nutritious food to their family, but they might have had pizza for breakfast yesterday, it fuels me. I love learning from other people, strategically collaborating, picking people’s brains, kind of figuring out how to accomplish things that could have at first seemed impossible. But, when you break it down, you realize it’s all within reach.

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

Danielle Levin: I have two answers. One is in terms of the work we do with homeless outreach. Those moments look like people reaching out who have spoken at our speaker series and saying,” you changed my life, you reminded me that I’m human, you made me feel human again” and to help someone realize that they are who they’ve always been, is a really powerful moment.

With our youth and families, I think that, honestly, through our COVID relief is how I’ve realized our impact because when you’re teaching kids how to cook, you’re not home with them. You don’t see what they’re doing outside of the program. So you don’t know what type of impact you’ve truly made. But I think that seeing how we can so quickly jump into action and pivot to support the community because of the infrastructures that are there was powerful for me and the team. Unfortunately, our list of in-need families is growing as the crisis evolves. This week, we officially took every single person off of our waitlist. That’s a really powerful moment to know that every person in this community who’s expressed the need for food, we are able to provide it for them.

Charity Matters: If you could create a billboard that showed your impact, what would it look like?

Danielle Levin: I think that it would be a picture of our community members, smiling, being part of the community. I think that it would have some kind of message about the individuality of everyone that we serve, and the personal stories– kind of meeting the community where they are. We’re not just providing kids with a meal and saying we changed a life. What we are doing is much more than that.

I think that in all the work we do, it’s important to give people resources and tools, and we can’t expect that they’ll use it in a certain way or receive it in a certain way, or that they even want it but equipping people with resources and tools is so important. I think that meeting people where they are and understanding that one kid might act like they hate our after school program, but we don’t know what’s going on at home. So meeting people really where they are, and letting them participate in the cooking when they want to, let them serve, letting them take extra servings if that’s what they want, or skip out on the servings– I think that it’s really about understanding that we might be serving a community, but within the community, each person has their own story.

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

Danielle Levin: That there’s no longer a need for us, that we have to go out of business because everyone has the resources that they need to live their day to day lives, and thrive in whatever way that means to them.

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

Danielle Levin: I’ve learned a lot. Every single day I learn something new. I think the biggest one is to take risks because everything I’ve done is a risk. I never knew if any of it would work. I’m 25 years old and I launched an after school program at a New York City public school. We just pitched it. We just went to a school and said we think that we’d be a good fit for your school and we pitched it because we had nothing to lose. If we didn’t take that risk, we would have gained nothing, they would have gained nothing, but we’re now providing their students with these meals during this crisis. I think that one thing is to just take risks and think outside the box.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Danielle Levin: I think that my entire perspective has changed. If you told me something, I would question where you learned that from, where you heard that from because to me, I’ve become so used to going to the source and saying to someone who’s experiencing homelessness, I heard this stigma, how do you feel about it? How does that make you feel? I think that hearing the story from the source and learning the facts from who they come from has definitely changed me and my perspective, rather than kind of just accepting what we as a society tend to believe is true.

I’ve always been someone who loves connecting with others, but my ability to do so has become much more well rounded because you might think you have nothing in common with someone who doesn’t have a home and is sleeping outside on the street for the last 10 years, but learning how to connect with someone who seems different, but then finding commonalities with them really changes you. I have become a lot more flexible in my life because when you’re working with individuals who don’t have as much structure as let’s say you and I might have in our lives, you have to learn how to be flexible and adaptable.

I think the biggest thing is knowing how to push limits and knowing that where I am now isn’t the end. There is so much more to do and so much more I will do. It’s easy to stick to the status quo, but to push the limits and see what happens has only led to success and has changed my perspective on how I live my daily life.

CHARITY MATTERS.

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Charity Matters Quotes May 10, 2020

Life lessons from my mom

“Mom, when thoughts of you are in our hearts, we are never far from home.”

Author Unknown

Today is Mother’s Day and it’s my 18th Mother’s Day without my mom. While it gets easier each year, it is still a bitter-sweet day for me. Our mothers are our life anchors, they ground us in ways we never imagine until the anchor is pulled up and we are adrift. Then we must find a new footing within ourselves by becoming the anchor and the circle of life continues. In that process of becoming the anchor, we need to know what our roots are in order to become rooted for another. Roots are something my mom taught us alot about.

I was raised by a midwestern mother, something she reminded the three of us regularly. She was smart, proud, practical, fun, gracious, hospitable, frugal, full of love, and joy. She was raised in Michigan by her single mother and grandmother in the 1940s and 1950s. After college, she and a few girlfriends headed for California in her early twenties and never looked back. When I think about the multitude of life lessons she taught me, I can’t help but think of the time that she grew up and how that shaped the role model she was to me, my sisters and so many.

A college degree in 1963 still meant that she could hope to become a teacher or a secretary, which she did. She met my dad and was married at 23 with my arrival to follow. I remember her bringing my dad a drink and the paper as a little girl, the dutiful 1960s housewife. Then in the late 1970s, I remember her announcing to us that she was becoming a realtor. A mom who worked? We were stunned.

She told us, “You always need to be able to take care of yourself.” When times got tough and she became the breadwinner and my dad pushed a vacuum for a year, I watched a shift in both my parents as they gained a new respect for the other’s role. Through it, all my mom smiled, worked hard, brought everyone together, and always found joy and gratitude.

If there was one phrase my mother repeated to me most of my life it was, “Young lady, life is tough, toughen up.” She was strong but not hard. She was loving but firm. She loved her family, her children, and her friends so deeply and showed us all regularly with huge smiles, big gatherings, being present, and Sunday night dinners. Always finding a place at our table for someone without a place and making our house full of joy. She sang show tunes full volume and we did too, bad voices and all. She didn’t care.

Sadly, my mom left us too soon. Gone at 60 with a legacy that impacted so many. I met a group of young women at her funeral who came up and told me what my mother meant to them. She had taught them to, “know their worth and not take @#%* from anyone.” She had been a mamma bear and mentor at work for women who shared story after story how she had graciously and firmly stood her ground with workplace injustices.

There is a phrase that I think of often when thinking of my mom, and it is “The greatest gift you can give the world is a life well lived.” If there was one lesson that is her legacy it is that. Life is short, it is precious and we have to live each day to its fullest. Sing loudly, smile big, and often. Be kind, be strong, be good, be frugal, be proud, be gracious, have fun, and most importantly be grateful. These lessons are the gifts I treasure most every day and especially on Mother’sDay. The circle of life continues and we can all only hope to leave such a legacy.

I think of her everyday and know she is with me, guiding me and smiling down on her grandchildren. Her legacy lives on in all of those whose lives she touched. As we celebrate Mother’s Day, I celebrate my mom and all the amazing mothers who teach us how to love and how to live. The greatest gift of all.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Charity Matters.

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Charity Matters Inspiration December 18, 2019

Raising Philanthropic Children 2019

” You are never too young to change the world.”

Author unknown

This past weekend I attended Once Upon a Room’s holiday fundraiser, where my youngest son has been Santa for the past few years. I couldn’t help to be proud of all the work he has done for this organization but more importantly who is because of his service to others. Our goal as parents is to plant that seed of compassion in our children and continue to nurture and cultivate it.

As parents today we have many challenges, especially during the holidays. We all walk the fine line of asking our children what they want, realizing that they don’t really need anything and all while trying to explain to them the real meaning of the season.

So the question becomes, how do we raise philanthropic children? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Start young, the earlier the better. For little ones (4 or 5), keep it simple, perhaps canned food for a local shelter or blankets, something that they understand.

2. Be age-appropriate. Don’t overwhelm young children with world hunger but rather something relatable to them, perhaps something local in your community.

3. Engage your children in the process, especially the older they get. Find out what they care about? Perhaps they love animals and want to support a local shelter? Have them use their passion to make a difference. Catch them where they are and meet them there. Your children’s service choices will evolve as they do so be flexible.

4. Research together and suggests a few choices. With 1.7 million non-profits it can be overwhelming for all of us. Our family usually picks 3 or 4 ideas and then we vote on a holiday philanthropy project. We have adopted soldiers, fed homeless, adopted inner-city families for Christmas. Ultimately it is the kid’s vote that decides. Utilize tools like Project Giving Kids for age-appropriate ideas.

5. Be intentional with your own giving. Teach by example. Discuss what causes you care about. Let your children hear and see your volunteer efforts or participate in them if possible.

6. Make giving habitual by being consistent. Whether its part of your allowance structure, a holiday tradition or something you do at birthdays, be consistent and establish giving as a tradition and habit. It’s no different from any sport, the more you participate the easier and more fun it becomes. Ultimately it becomes a part of who they are.

7. Emphasize the joy and the experience of giving rather than money. Philanthropy is about being a part of something bigger than yourself. Giving is so much more fun than receiving. Make it a joyful experience for your family and something you share in together. Perhaps, start with entering a 5k walk or charity run or volunteering together.

The benefits of philanthropic children:

Opens children’s eyes to the fact that others are not as fortunate as they are
Develops empathetic thinking
Fosters an appreciation for what they have
Enhances self-esteem
Correlates to improved performance in school

Like everything we do with raising our children, it takes time, patience, consistency, and love. Chances are you already do most of these things and don’t even realize it and your children do too. This holiday season, enjoy the process of giving in whatever way you decide to participate. You and your children will experience the real joy of the holidays….together.

Charity Matters.

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Causes November 18, 2019

Moving Day:Parkinsons Foundation

People who move change the world. That is the slogan for the Parkinson’s Foundation and this past weekend that is what our family did, we moved. We are a family of action but this weekend our movement was different. On Saturday, we moved to support my stepmother, Nan, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease ten years ago. This year alone another 60, 000 people will be diagnosed with the disease. So when my sister-in-law reached out to everyone and said let’s walk for Nan, we were all in.

Over one million Americans live with Parkinson’s Disease and every nine minutes someone new is diagnosed. There are ten million people worldwide living with Parkinson’s disease. While we think that Parkinson’s affects older people, ten percent of the diagnosis are for people under the age of fifty.

So before we began our walk on Saturday we each grabbed a ribbon to walk with. The blue ribbon was for the person with Parkinson’s disease. The gold for the caretaker living with someone with the disease and the silver ribbon for those of us that supported a loved one with Parkinson’s.

What exactly is Parkinson’s Disease? It is a chronic and progressive disease that at its most simple definition is a movement disorder that affects the ability to perform common daily activities. Parkinsons is often characterized by its most common motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness of the muscles and slowness of movement.

The American Parkinson’s Disease Association was founded in 1961 and even google could not help me find out who founded the organization, so that will have to wait for another post. What I do know is that since that time the organization has raised over $185 million dollars to help research, educate and help us to find a cure for this disease.

So on Saturday, we carried our ribbons and walked for Nan and for my dad and for all of those who love and care for someone with Parkinson’s.

We raised money, sent emails and did social media to get the word out and my sister and brother-in-law even sponsored the porta potties for the event. This isn’t our typical family photo….

As the Parkinson’s Foundation says, “People who move change the world.” There was simply nothing better than seeing Nan and my dad moving together, our family and hundreds of people supporting one another to change the world and the face of this disease one step at a time.

Charity Matters

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Charity Matters Inspiration November 6, 2019

How do you measure a year in the life?

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.
five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
How do you measure,
Measure a year?

In daylights?
In sunsets?
In midnights?
In cups of coffee?
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife?

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
How do you measure a year in a life?

This past weekend we celebrated my Dad’s 80th birthday. It was a fantastic celebration of a man who has lived many lives, faced death more than a few times and never thought he would be here to talk about it eighty years later. Like all birthdays it was a time of reflection, a moment to pause and to assess what really matters…family, friends, health and love. Our celebration was all of that and then some. As my dad spoke to everyone, he talked about how grateful he was to have such a life and reminded us all that none of us get out of here alive….which if you know my dad speaks to his humor.

My dad is one of seven children and all of the siblings rallied from near and far to be with him for his special day. The only one missing was my aunt, the firstborn of the clan who had passed away a week before. So, on Monday we had her service and celebrated my aunt’s life in a different sort of celebration, a celebration of life. The juxtaposition was palpable and yet both events were joyful times honoring my amazing family.

I came home from the service and couldn’t help but take a pause for the legacy my grandparents created in their seven children. First and foremost, they (my aunts and uncle) are a team. Always one hundred percent there for each other and every life event. Years ago when my parents were in their car accident and my dad was in a coma, his siblings came from everywhere and took turns sitting by his side 24 hours a day for weeks so he was never alone. They are always there for one another, no matter what.

All of my aunts and uncles have incredible faith and each has served others in a variety of ways. They have all been either teachers, champions for those who struggle with addiction, volunteers, board members, community leaders and above all humans who are kind, generous and who use their time to make others’ lives better. As I drove my family to the airport I followed a car that’s license plate said it all, GRYTFUL or grateful. …..beyond grateful to measure two amazing lives with love.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.
five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
How do you measure,
Measure a year?

In daylights?
In sunsets?
In midnights?
In cups of coffee?
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife?

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
How do you measure a year in a life?

Charity Matters

YOUR REFERRAL IS OUR GREATEST COMPLIMENT, IF YOU ARE INSPIRED, PLEASE SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.

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Causes September 12, 2019

The Birthday Party Project

photo via: today.com

We all strive to use our gifts for the greatest good and purpose. We spend a lifetime honing our crafts and talents and usually putting those skills into our careers. For many of the nonprofit founders I have interviewed there is a moment when they realize that their skills and gifts can be used for a bigger purpose, one beyond their job. That is exactly the story of Paige Chenault the Founder of The Birthday Party Project. Paige spent her career as a high end party planner, organizing extravagant weddings and events to create lasting memories for her clients. Last week, I had the opportunity to meet Paige and attend a fantastic party to help support her beautiful mission of bringing joy to children living with homelessness.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what the Birthday Party Project Does?

Paige Chenault: The Birthday Party Project is a nonprofit that throws birthday parties for children who are experiencing homelessness. The Birthday Party Project partners with homeless and transitional living facilities and we host birthday parties for the kids that are staying there.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start The Birthday Party Project?

Paige Chenault:I was on an airplane reading a magazine article about kid’s birthday parties and for almost a decade I had been in the party planning business, so I was getting excited about my daughter’s upcoming birthday and the party I was going to throw her. As I flipped through the magazine and saw images of these picture perfect parties thinking that I could totally do this for my daughter Lizzie.

Then I put that magazine down and picked up a Time Magazine with an article about children living in Haiti and the extreme discrepancy between the party that I had envisioned for my daughter and what I saw this child in the article living in every single day. That was the moment that it hit me that I could do more with the gifts and talents I have been given. There were children that were out there that would never know the power of a celebration of people coming together. In that moment I knew that I was the one to do something for these children.

I do believe that we are called into service and absolutely do feel that I was called to this.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Paige Chenault: Some of the biggest challenges that we face has everything to do with the amount of interest we have for people to get involved with our mission and the kids that we are serving and celebrating. Knowing that so many people realize that these children are human beings going through things that are incredibly difficult and traumatic. These are families that are truly experiencing crisis and whether they are in sex trafficking rehabilitation programs or if they are chronically homeless or in a domestic violence agency trying to get help and to stay alive. These families are facing things that we don’t have to face.

In knowing that there are measures in place that allow children and families to feel safe and because of that we have worked really hard on the way we celebrate with kids. Treating people with dignity is our ultimate goal and we have worked very hard with our birthday enthusiasts which is what we call our volunteers to do this. There is a tremendous opportunity for people to get involved with our organization. Yet, we still can’t seem to catch up with the excitement around our mission. We have scaled incredibly fast in these past eight years and to celebrate in fifteen cities is incredible for us. What we do know is that we do things well and unless we can do them in honoring our agencies and shelters and continue to keep up with the excitement and enthusiasm can be a challenge for us sometimes.

I think as founders I think it is really important that we stay true to our core values and that we let those be our guide post. I can see where it could be very easy if someone wanted us to do this and that moment that we begin to do things that don’t align with our values that is the moment when there are tension points. We have worked very hard to honor our core values, be good stewards of the dollars we have been given and that we are serving our kids and families well. These are hard lessons to learn as a young entrepreneur.

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

Paige Chenault: Our core team of volunteers, our party coordinators, these are volunteers who host parties on our behalf all around the country. For me, those are the people that fuel me the most because when I am so tired and can’t take one more call or email or whatever it is…I have the opportunity to look online and see what they are tackling for us on our behalf and it is so powerful to see the way that they are giving of their time and resources to serve our mission. We are extraordinary in that way because we have 150 party coordinators around the country who show up on our behalf. Some of these people have been doing this work for almost eight years with us.

Our retention rate is really high and we have worked really hard to care for those people because these are the folks on our team who are doing the work. I have a team in Dallas and we call ourselves the support team because we need to support our volunteers/party coordinators.

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

Paige Chenault:I get really energized when my team comes up with great ideas solve a problem, when we get it right and everything goes really well or when I get emails saying that this was the best experience I have ever had volunteering. Those are the moments for me that I am most proud of the work that we do.

We do have stories of impact and the ways in which our kids are impacted. I would say those moments are extraordinary and incredibly special. We have immediate impact with our work but the ripple effect takes ages to come back. Recently, I had the opportunity to truly run into someone who she said to me, “Do you know you celebrated my 14th birthday with me when I was living at a shelter?” I had never met her before and I was at a speaking engagement and she came up to me and she was now the youngest intern ever at this company and for me it was incredibly special and this was my moment. It was everything for me.

For me that was a four year gap before we saw her again and she still spoke so fondly of her party in such detail and to me that speaks volumes to level of work that we are doing making lasting moments that help me over come those hard days of the grass roots building of this organization. We are leaving lasting effects on the children that we are serving and that is what matters. These moments are the greatest gift that have been given.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about some of the successes you have had?

Paige Chenault: We have celebrated 10,000 children’s birthdays in eight years and we have done that alongside 50,000 children. So we have celebrated 10,000 birthdays with 50,000 children there with us celebrating. We have done that with the help of 38,000 volunteers which we call our birthday enthusiasts, which is extraordinary to me. That is a lot of kids reached, a lot of birthday cakes.

We have done that with our agency partners or transitional living facilities or homeless shelters. The Ronald McDonald House is a prime example of a transitional living facility. Covenant House is a teen living facility and there we celebrate children 17-23 and often these kids revert back to their childhood because they never celebrated a birthday before. We partner with domestic violence agencies, sex trafficking rehabilitation programs and then we have homeless shelters and emergency shelters which are typically 24 hour facilities .

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

Paige Chenault: I think there is an opportunity to go big and give people an opportunity to have experiences that they would never otherwise have the opportunity to be a part of. Yes, I want every child in America to feel celebrated and yes I would love to take The Birthday Party Project internationally but in addition to that there is always room for us to do more for others. I want to partner with people who dream really big. Allowing kids to experience Disneyland, or a movie lot or having a larger than life birthday party in the middle of a field. I just want them to see how creativity can bring people alive.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Paige Chenault: I think I am more sure of who I am as a wife and a mother and a leader. I have always been empathetic, compassionate and a giver and I have always expended most of myself for others. I now realize that I don’t have to do it all or be the hero of the story. So for me, the narrative that has switched since this endeavor. It doesn’t have to be about me but it really can be about more and everyone together and thank goodness for that because there are plenty of others who can share in the joy of this. It is like taking off the cape and the in charge mentality and saying people there is plenty to go around.

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

Paige Chenault:I think for me the biggest lesson for me is that we gain people’s trust when we operate from a place of authenticity and vulnerability. If I were to continue along this journey with all the answers or needed to be the person with the first and last word, we would have crumbled by now. I think for me it was incredibly important as we brought people into the fold that I was incredibly honest from the beginning that there was a lot that I didn’t know but that I knew we needed to it.

By sharing just who I was and what my strengths and weaknesses were and by being able to share that with the people around us we created a movement. People realized that I didn’t have all the answers but maybe they had a piece of the puzzle and by allowing them to do what they do best and to get out of the way, we were able to build this incredible community of these magic makers that I trust and that trust us.

That has probably been the biggest take away from this experience. When we get out of our own way and rely on the expertise of others that is where community is built and that trust exists in those moments and when you are able to do more. I believe strongly in the power of people but allowing others to find out what they are capable of is even more rewarding.

Charity Matters

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Charity Matters Inspiration February 13, 2019

Love, life and Valentine’s Day

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and the entire world is talking about love. The pressure is on the buy the obligatory card, try and get a dinner reservation, flowers, check all the boxes….you know the drill. My thoughts on Valentine’s Day this year are a bit bigger. I’ve been thinking about how we love one another in our lives every day, not just February 14th. Don’t get me wrong, any chance to celebrate love is always a happy wonderful event but shouldn’t we be loving, kind, and thoughtful everyday? I know it is a lot of work and we are all busy but it is good to have goals, right?

I ran across this poem that made me think more about love and life than just Valentine’s Day. I hope it does the same for you…