Three nights ago, I was sitting on a stool in my kitchen. The turkey was baking for the next day’s Thanksgiving staff luncheon. My coffee cup was warm in my hands – cup number 30 for the day. In the quiet midnight brings, my mind was racing.
I wanted to be happy about the results of a recent study on the civic health of metro Atlanta. It found that in 2011, half of all metro Atlantans gave at least $25 to charitable causes.
I’m an optimist, but when I look at a glass that’s half full, I wonder what can be done to fill the other half. I want to know how things can be improved. I want to get the other 2.75 million metro Atlantans to give.
During the holiday season, most people have shopping lists, but do they have a giving list? How many have decided what they are going to give to help their community?
As president of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, I work with hundreds of metro area donors who connect their passions with philanthropy to improve our region’s quality of life.
I think about parents like Chip and Shawna Patterson who want to instill a passion for philanthropy in their four young children. In 2008, Chip and Shawna established a donor-advised fund with us and joined our Center for Family Philanthropy. Our staff works with the family to explore what matters most to them, and to turn their personal passions into philanthropic action. Now, five years later, with a daughter at college, the family still comes together around philanthropy, giving both locally and abroad.
I think about our donors with innovative ideas on how to improve our region, like the fund advisers for the Kendeda Fund. Born out of a conversation around their passion for sustainability and a desire to create a healthier metro region, a partnership between the Community Foundation, Southface and the Kendeda Fund created “Grants to Green.”
This program provides assessment and implementation awards for regional nonprofits to make operational changes and building improvements that increase energy, water and economic savings that are reinvested in the nonprofits.
That’s big. But philanthropy can start small.
I think about the middle school kids at the Philanthropy Store at Junior Achievement’s Discovery Center in downtown Atlanta. Here, thanks to our partnership with the United Way of Greater Atlanta, 30,000 children a year from multiple counties are learning how to turn their passions into philanthropic action through gifts of their time, talent and treasure.
For example, they learn they can give their time at a local animal shelter; their talent by teaching a senior citizen how to use social media, or their treasure to a nonprofit helping children with cancer.
So, whether it’s giving $25 a year to a nonprofit, teaching Grandma to use Facebook or creating a regional grant program that’s poised to go national, the point isn’t whether your philanthropy is big or small. The point is turning your passions into philanthropic action.
I urge you to start your giving list. Be one more drop in the glass.