Davidson and Davidchen Joseph were biking to karate practice, but tragically, only one of them would make it there alive.
As young boys growing up Harlem in the 1990s, the fraternal twins spent much of their time at the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), mostly after school. Their single mom sent the pre-teens to take karate classes, get homework help and do art projects.
One day, on the way to a karate practice, the 15-year-old boys were biking through a local park when they were confronted by several youths. It escalated quickly, a gun was drawn and Davidchen was killed.
The organization rallied around Davidson and his mom, providing both love and consistency for them, a gesture that Davidson would never forget. He continued coming to the HCZ, eventually became a junior community organizer and eventually, an AmeriCorps volunteer, working in the local public schools, where he learned of his talent for working with children.
Years later, after obtaining his bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in education, Davidson returned to the Harlem Children’s Zone and became a middle school teacher. He now spends much of his time helping children, like he once was, through their middle school years.
When Hurricane Harvey slammed Southeast Texas, Heather Harrison booked it from suburban Sienna, Texas to downtown Houston to help her fellow Texans as soon as she could.
After hearing the Houston Food Bank was in need of volunteers, Heather spent an exhausting 86 hours volunteering over 10 days.
Based on an estimate from the Houston Food Bank, Heather alone provided an incredible 5,160 meals in just 10 days.
Though the Houston Food Bank received gifts from over 40 countries and from all 50 states, Heather’s heroic effort caught the attention of the Food Bank’s Chief Development Officer, Amy Ragan, who says Heather is a true giving hero.
Heather recounted her experience on Facebook and said to her friends, “Houston we’re strong. Sienna we’re strong. Let’s keep going with that strength. Let’s do it all year round. Not just when there’s a disaster. Find where your place is, and let’s give back.”
While she’s back to her regular job, we’re pretty sure Houston Food Bank hasn’t seen the last of Heather.
When seven-year-old Ed Rappa walked with determination into the Harriman Clubhouse in 1948 and slapped down a nickel for his Boys’ Club of New York membership card, he knew he was choosing to be part of the solution to the city’s challenges, rather than joining the riff-raff causing problems.
Still, even Ed had no idea that, 60 years later, he’d be leading the charitable organization out of the country’s worst financial crisis in modern history.
There was a thin line between joining a gang and joining the Boys’ Club. “Both offered security and community and kept you busy,” Ed said, “you might end up in a very different place depending on which path you choose.” Lucky for the hundreds of thousands of boys who followed him into one of its clubhouses, Ed chose BCNY.
In 1986, Ed was asked to join the board of trustees. After 20 years as an effective and charitable board member, he was elected President, the first alumnus to hold the position. During his 10-year tenure, Ed successfully helped guide BCNY through the 2008 financial crisis. He is now Chairman of the Boy’s Club of New York.
Ed has no doubts he will always be a Boys’ Club boy, and he will continue opening doors to programs that will cultivate positive qualities in the young men of New York for years to come.
When an “encore” career leads to a second act of giving
When retiree Elissa Garr embarked on her “second” career through the website Encore.org, it was meant to be temporary. A former elementary school teacher, Elissa decided to use her skills, honed over a lifetime of teaching, to help shine a light on the issues affecting children most in need.
Elissa volunteered to be the executive director for First Star, an organization dedicated to addressing child neglect and abuse, the nation’s foster care system, and helping youth succeed in education and life.
Elissa soon became the president of First Star’s Greater Washington Academy, providing skills and education programming to ensure foster youth can succeed at high school, and eventually, college. But her work evolved into more than just a college preparatory program. Even after students embarked on their educational paths, Elissa kept in touch with students, teachers, and parents, helping to answer some of the most pressing issues these students faced.
After years of hard work and dedication to helping foster children in her area, she then turned her attention towards helping her peers. To date, Elissa has helped guide eight seniors through high school and into college. Three of them even received scholarships to four-year universities.
Elissa’s latest endeavor is the launch of First Star Institute, which builds on the organization’s effort to reform the foster system for children in Maryland.
Truly exceptional philanthropists are about as common as four-leaf clovers. So when you find a whole family full of givers, it is like stumbling across an entire field of the green good luck charms. One case is Philadelphia’s Haas family, who have quietly established themselves as a role model of how family philanthropy can work for all levels of society.
The Haas story begins, unsurprisingly, with an exceptional couple. Otto Haas came to Philadelphia from Germany in 1909 to begin expansion of his company, Rohm and Haas. The company, which started as a maker of leather tanning materials, grew to become a massive specialty chemical manufacturer, and Otto found success beyond his wildest dreams. In 1945 he used some of his wealth to start a foundation to address post-war social issues, particularly focused on helping fatherless children. This foundation eventually became the William Penn Foundation, a Philadelphia-centric institution that works on all manner of important causes, including education, conservation, and culture.
The south facade of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is shown June 9, 2003 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Stefan Zaklin/Getty Images)
Otto’s wife, Phoebe Waterman, was every bit as successful and ambitious as her husband. Awarded a doctorate in astronomy in 1913, she became one of the first American women to play a major role in the rapidly growing field of space research. Even after she left the professional world, she remained an asset to science, volunteering as a citizen with the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Her passion for the stars and her family’s endowment to the National Air & Space Museum resulted in the Phoebe Waterman Haas Public Observatory, a fitting tribute to a pioneer of space research.
Otto and Phoebe had two boys, John and F. Otto, and they took after their parents in both brains and heart. They both took major roles in Rohm and Haas, carrying on the family legacy as well as ensuring that it was a company that promoted the advancement of women and minorities. And much like their parents, in time they were ready to step away from the business and put their efforts into philanthropy. Both served on the board of the William Penn Foundation as well as continued the giving tradition in personal ways.
Path Out of the Woods to a Meadow, Pennsylvania. (Photo by: Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The list of organizations the brothers played a part in is almost as long as the list of organizations in all of Philadelphia. John and his wife Chara founded the Stoneleigh Foundation to target the needs of vulnerable and underserved children. F. Otto focused a great deal of his energies on conservation, becoming one of the founding board members of Preservation Pennsylvania, who have since named their annual award after him. And this only scratches the surface of what the pair have achieved.
Philanthropy is a tradition that the rest of the family has carried on. The next generation founded the Wyncote Foundation to tackle social, environmental and cultural issues. What is more, nearly 40 family members share a fortune estimated to be around $3 billion, and already more than half of it is slated for charitable causes. This is not a family that brags or even seeks publicity, but the name Haas should continue to be praised from the streets of Philadelphia all the way to the stars.
Nearly 20 years ago, Ignacio Holtz was suffering from chronic kidney disease.
In desperate need of a donor, his wife, Beatriz, made the life-saving sacrifice of a healthy kidney. Not long after, he joined a Rotary club and was inspired to help others in need.
Since then, Ignacio has founded and dedicated himself to an organ donation program in partnership with the Rotary Foundation. Heart 2 Heart, which is a collaboration between Mexican and US Rotary clubs, designed to save the lives of young people in need of kidney transplants and to help them find donors.
Every day, Ignacio and his team screen donors, recipients, negotiates rates and offer logistical support to those families who need it most. To date, Ignacio’s program has saved over 500 lives.
He still speaks with his first ever patient, then a 15-year-old girl, whose uncle gave his kidney to help her. Ignacio’s program enabled her to live a full and healthy life, and she is now a mother to her own little girl. It is these stories of the young men and women that Beatriz and Ignacio have saved, and the lives they go on to lead, which motivate and inspire them.
A Librarian’s Commitment to Young Life in California
Olga Valencia Cardenas, a librarian at Stanislaus County Library in Modesto, California, started a book club at the local Juvenile Hall and Juvenile Commitment Center for young men a couple of years ago. It wasn’t long before word started to spread out about how popular and successful the book clubs were, and how thrilled the youth were to have their ideas and opinions heard.
For her amazing work, going truly above and beyond her role as a local librarian, Olga was chosen to receive the I Love My Librarian Award, which comes with a $5,000 cash prize. While most people might have used the prize money for personal reward, Olga donated every cent to create a new Juvenile Justice Center Library at the Juvenile Hall and Juvenile Commitment Center. To her, the success of the book clubs showed that the need for a library at the Hall was paramount.
Though the money was obviously important for the completion of the project, none of this would be possible without Olga’s drive to do so much more for the community than expected. Olga is an inspiration to us all and her extraordinary generosity shows that any one person can change the world.
Olga Valencia Cardenas, youth services outreach librarian, Stanislaus County Library.
Of all the donations Vartan Gregorian has received in his years of serving great institutions, one stands out in his memory.
During the nine years that Vartan served as president of the New York Public Library, he would join his old friend and NYPL Trustee, Mrs. Brooke Russell Astor, along with Chairman Andrew Heiskell and other Library leaders at the entrance of the 42nd Street Library to greet members and guests for the annual holiday open house.
Guests ranged from the prominent to ordinary citizens; famous faces and everyday New Yorkers. Some occasionally handed envelopes with checks or cash donations to Library leaders. Vartan would put the envelopes in his pocket for safe keeping.
Vartan fondly recalls one occasion when he later opened the envelopes and found a Social Security check with a note saying, “I don’t have lots of money but I hope this will help.”
To this day Vartan is touched by that giver. That check was a gift of sacrifice out of gratitude and, he believes, the essence of the spirit of true philanthropy. In such small gifts lie the hearts of great givers.
Vartan Gregorian
President and CEO of Carnegie Corporation of New York
Physics classroom in Moscow public school. (Photo by Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)
Dmitry Zimin is many things. A Russian, a scientist, a businessman, and a philanthropist. As a donor, he is exceptional, not simply because of the millions of dollars he has given away to science and education-based projects, but because he is a trailblazer. He created the first family philanthropy in post-Soviet Russia. He had the insight to recognize the positive impact that this could have in Russia, particularly in the realm of science, and the ambition and wealthy to make it a reality.
Zimin’s own scientific work had made him a wealthy man, and he was not interested in leaving all his money to heirs – convinced that it would lead to their ruin. Instead, he retired from his successful telecommunications company, Vimpelcom, Ltd, and used his money to found the Dynasty Foundation. All at once, science in Russia had a major benefactor keen to fund young people engaged in research that could change the world for the better.
During its 13 years of existence, the Dynasty Foundation had an incredible impact on both the academic and philanthropic worlds of Russia, by fostering talented people. Starting in 2002, the Foundation helped provide stipends to university students and young physicists. Zimin was inspired by his early scientific background, lecturing in electrodynamics. Soon it was supporting students and experts doing groundbreaking work, while also increasing interest in science with the general population. They launched their own science program, hosted contests, created a prize for non-fiction literature, and began publishing books, including a Russian language version of the popular Bill Bryson book, A Short History of Almost Everything.
Author Bill Bryson, the best-selling author of travel books, talks to a fan at a book signing. — Photo by Rick Friedman/Corbis (Photo by Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images)
Zimin, 84, says: ‘Memorable donations include some of the lifelong grants we made to people who are now seen as icons. For example, we supported one of the greatest modern-day mathematicians, Vladimir Arnold. He was an extraordinary scientist, a teacher and promoter of mathematics. Memorable donations include some of the lifelong grants we made to people who are now seen as icons. For example, we supported one of the greatest modern-day mathematicians, Vladimir Arnold.
‘He was an extraordinary scientist, a teacher and promoter of mathematics. For example, he published a problem book called 5 to 15, which I would strongly recommend to all children. It contains 100 problems for children to guess the solutions to. We initiated an all-Russia contest to solve problems based on this book, which was extremely exciting.’
Such has been Zimin’s impact on his nation that if you were Russian and involved in science, you were most assuredly positively affected by Dynasty.
Sadly, it could not last. Philanthropy remained a topic that many in Russia were wary of, and in 2015, the Dynasty Foundation was designated as a ‘foreign agent’ NGO by the Ministry of Justice. And while Dmitry did not hesitate in proclaiming this inaccurate, he also did not want to cast a bad light on all the success of the Foundation, so Dynasty decided to close down. But that does not lessen the impact of Zimin’s work – over 3,000 despairing scientists and members of the public signed an open letter protesting the Ministry’s decision, but it seems it was time to move on. Nonetheless, Zimin achieved a huge amount in opening Russians’ eyes up to both science and philanthropy. The impact of the Dynasty Foundation will last through this next generation of scientists, and it is only a matter of time before someone takes up the mantle of Russian philanthropy again, inspired by Zimin’s generosity, vision and practical zeal.
After Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras in 1998, some of the donations that came in included prom dresses. When Haiti was hit by a major earthquake in 2010, fertility drugs were among the items received. And back in 1994, following the genocide in Rwanda, gifts included weight loss drinks and chandeliers.
While probably well intentioned, these examples of inappropriate donations are not uncommon after disasters. In their yearning to help, people sometimes do not donate based on what is needed most and what is most efficient.
The recent disasters wreaked by hurricanes Irma, Harvey, Jose and Maria, and an earthquake in Mexico, have led to an outpouring of support from the United States and beyond. While such tragedies almost always create a need for philanthropy, experts say every act of generosity should follow certain guidelines.
Donations of food and clothing pile up in the parking lot of Qualcomm Stadium’s parking lot. San Diego officials asked for no more donations, having received too much. (Photo by Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images)
The most important one to remember is that cash is usually best.
“What we always say and encourage people to do is cash donations – they are the most efficient way of assistance,” says Safiya Khalid, diaspora outreach specialist at USAID’s Center for International Disaster Information (CIDI). “Unlike material donations, cash involves no transportation cost, no shipping delays or customs. It also enables relief organizations on the ground to spend less time managing goods.”
Money also allows relief workers to buy the most urgently needed items. This is typically done locally, so it also helps boost the local economy, she says. And such purchases are usually financially smart as well. Sending bottled water overseas can be 1,000 times more expensive than producing drinkable water locally, according to CIDI.
Another important factor to consider is the long-term need for funding. Disaster-related giving reached $22.5 billion in 2014, and 73 percent of total funding targeted immediate response and relief efforts, according to the most recent report from the Foundation Center and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. It is worth considering recurring and long-term donations, as funding after a major disaster may be needed for up to 10 years, according to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.
Donors and funders should also consider which communities are most affected by disasters, and what can be done to prevent future ones, according to Ryan Schlegel of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
“We must be ready not just to rebuild houses and bridges, but to rebuild the power and elevate the voice of marginalized communities who were disproportionately impacted by the storms,” Schlegel wrote in a recent blog post.
Figuring out where to donate is not always easy. While American Red Cross often tops suggested lists, a 2015 investigation by NPR and ProPublica found a number of problems with the organization’s work following the Haiti earthquake. And in his book “Doing Good Better,” William MacAskill warns that generally speaking, donating to organizations that are best at fighting poverty and preventable diseases such as AIDS and malaria usually leads to greater returns than donating after disasters.
Karl Shaw of Austin sifts through thousands of pounds of donations Tuesday morning, Sept. 6, 2005, at an unused parking garage in east Austin, Texas. Central Texans gave record amounts of cash and goods over the holiday weekend to aid the 200,000-plus Louisana evacuees in the state. (Photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images)
Whether you decide to donate to a national organization or a small community non-profit, here are some resources to help you give responsibly next time a disaster strikes:
USAID CIDI’s downloadable toolkit on giving includes all kinds of tips, including 100 fundraising ideas and 55 ways to repurpose material gifts. The “greatest good donation calculator” is a fun and informative tool that shows you how much good work organizations could do with the cost involved in sending U.S. items abroad. The center also has a page on the recent Caribbean hurricanes, which includes a list of organizations to consider donating to.
Center for Disaster Philanthropy offers a number of resources designed to help donors maximize their impact from giving during disasters. The Disaster Accountability Project works to improve the effectiveness of relief and achieve greater accountability and transparency in the sector.
