Inspired Stories: Newsletter Volume 9, Summer 2008

Team Member Upcoming Events Resources Making Change Happen   Team Member Karma Shipman Marketing and PR Consultant Karma Shipman has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 15 years. From establishing charitable organizations for individuals to assessing the needs of established nonprofits to building boards of directors, Karma brings a keen understanding of the philanthropic community. "It has been my sincere privilege and honor to be a part of the Houston community and work with some of the most effective, dynamic philanthropists and charitable organizations. I've learned there is no substitute for education when it comes to being a more effective donor, advisor, and nonprofit organization. Tracy and Inspired Legacies are invaluable assets to this community and beyond. It is a joy to support them as they 'grow great donors and their leadership'!" See also our whole team. Upcoming Events June 19-22 Church Women United conference, Independence, MO 27-28 Training of Trainers in Donor and Legacy Education, Houston, TX July 11-15 Donor and family meetings, Santa Fe, NM 24-25 Facilitating family meeting, Portland, OR 20-22 Momentum: donor and activist conference, San Francisco, CA 31-Aug 2 In Know Vision, advisors conference, Chicago, IL Aug Office will be closed from Aug 12 - Aug 22 for summer vacations! Sept 15-16 PNC Bank for Women's Fund, Pittsburgh, PA 17 St. Paul Community Foundation, St. Paul, MN 18-20 SPAN, Advisors & 5 organizations, Seattle and Tacoma, WA 21-23 Community Foundation, Boulder, CO 24-25 Dallas Association of Fundraising Professionals, Dallas, TX 26 Associated Grantmakers of Boston, Boston, MA View our calendar for more. Resources Tracy Gary highlighted on Charity Focus! Making Change Happen Alliance for Justice www.afj.org The Center for the New American Dream www.newdream.org The White House Project www.thewhitehouseproject.org The National Council for Research on Women www.ncrw.org California Rural Legal Assistance www.crla.org YES! Youth for Environmental Sanity www.yesworld.org See our growing list of organizations making change happen. Receive other Inspired Stories! We welcome your feedback and ideas at any time! To contribute to the next issue of Inspired Stories, please submit by August 15.

View From the Founder
Legacy Tools
Inspired Products
Legacy Partnerships
Letters to Loved Ones
Gratitudes

View from the Founder

Listening, Awakening, and Radical Action

I have just returned from visiting 30 cities and 20 states on our book and listening tour. So much reason for hope. People care everywhere.

The question is, will we join forces to transform ourselves our families and our communities or are we going to let CNN or FOX news and fears about the future take over our lives? It's time for donors, advisors and nonprofits, government and business to put the problems in the center, not profit, not gain, not deductions, and use our collective wisdom to shift things. We are doing it at Inspired Legacies through growing learning communities for donor and legacy education and we are seeing HOPE and RENEWED commitment to justice thrive. I can see it in the eyes of all whom we touch and who touch us. Join us in unleashing generosity.

The good news? Word is out. We are in a major cultural shift. The sleeping giant who may have been in grand denial (or is it attachment to some of our glorious ways of life) has awakened. Now, what to prioritize?

Was it having a woman and African American run for the highest office, and the voters and billboards that said "CHANGE! " or the price of oil, or just our accelerated and unsustainable, ever-so-wired lives, that scream, "STOP." Refigure. Rethink. React and freeze. Or maybe try really redistributing wealth, power, and resources for the common good. There are many ways now.

Pick your path, learning community and get the skills for resilience. Look around you, at every farmer's market and community garden, it is happening now. Recycle, rethink, and reconfigure. Put your faith, trust, and trust funds behind those creating breakthroughs or leading through exemplary productivity and heart.

What does it mean to be leaders in the creation of resilient communities and be more impactful with our money and our time?

We are in new times and must reorganize accordingly.

How can we support each other as resourceful leaders of our communities through these times? How will our favorite leaders and nonprofits and families, and businesses make it through the summer even? How can we extend our care and hearts with so much change around us? What new learning and consciousness can you bring? How best do we prepare ourselves, our families, and our communities for the clear shift that is happening?

These are the questions I hear everywhere. Think how things are accelerating. We must become informed, prepared, and skilled to lead as moral and oh so smart souls amidst what will be surely a lot of fallout. Our faith is essential. But so too, being sure we are not too long in denial.

As Meg Wheatley has recently said: "Whatever the problem, community is the answer." Read on in our Inspired Partnerships below to see our response, and how we hope we can be of service to you during the times ahead.

Thank you!
Tracy Gary
Email me your story: Tracy@InspiredLegacies.org

Legacy Tools

INSPIRING LEADERS: New tools and collaboration for transformational philanthropy. A training of trainers for donor partners, social justice donor educators, legacy educators, and philanthropic advisors 28 registrants from 13 states...It is not too late, you can still join us June 27-28, in Houston.

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Inspired Products

Here is a planning tool that's simple and easy about what may be left for you to do about your legacy or at least, some parts. Add more and let us know. Tracy says, "I developed this questionnaire during the years of my parents' legacy planning about their wishes. I have given it now to over 20,000 people, including advisors, nonprofit leaders and donors. It takes 5 minutes to do. Honestly. Be a legacy mentor, do this questionnaire whatever your age, take some action, keep moving --it's a lifetime work--communicate with your advisors and family and be an inspiration!"
Download questionnaire here.

Legacy Partnerships

Inspired Legacies: Leaders in Community for Donor and Legacy Education

Inspired Legacies is undertaking a new programmatic direction. As leaders, we have worked to build the fields of several communities of interest (women's funds, legacy giving, youth giving, social justice fund).

We are open sourcing our tools (Inspired Philanthropy's tools and worksheets and soon our Youth Giving Circle materials). And we are holding trainings for trainers to enable more communities to realize the whole of their resources.

Without excellent and diverse donor and legacy education, we will not be able to inform donors and volunteers as to what is truly essential and needed.

Imagine no more silos in your community, and instead nonprofits, advisors, government, business, and donors considering problems and solutions needed and putting those in the middle for the common good. This is the wave of the present and future.

New trends include high level analysis being done for family and community foundations and in donor networks like the Women Donors Network or the Tipping Point Network so that leveraged and razor like giving can strategically support what is intended in a timely way. And charity channels and other online social media that bring good works to an engaged public 24/7.

For philanthropy to be impactful, it is time for our field to move from it's heels to it's toes. Will we be on the cutting edge or left in quid pro quo circles of back patting of our same old pals, or will we be true leaders? Nature tells us of how imperative diverse cultures are to our future well being.

As a community, or one that is part of how you stay informed with models and signs of hope and ways to invest your time, talent and resources, we hope we can be a source for how to respond, whatever the call. James Howard Kunstler, the author, most recently, of "World Made by Hand," a novel about America's post-oil future says,

"We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. …we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it - by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don't figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works."

Join us in building in your community a web of key influencers who will be and stay informed as transformative leaders who raise and give money and time and push for policy and cultural change for our commons, for Liberty, and justice for all.

If you want to be connected to others in your community who care about donor and legacy education, email us and we will tell you what we know are resources. Or look to our blog next month.

Meanwhile, our advice: before you leave for summer, extend your love and financial support (in an amount at least equal to the cost of your summer vacation or half of your rebate check!) to the leaders and nonprofits you count on. It's going to be a rough road ahead and we count on you to keep us hopeful.

Letters to Loved Ones

Dear Topher,

On the occasion of your 21st birthday, I wanted, as your only living grandparent, to share a few hopes and dreams with you.

You are a good person, who has always been thoughtful and caring, and I do wish I could cheer you on, always. But as you know the doctors do not give me much more time now.

I know that time together may be what I want (and I hope that happens), but I realized that giving you something else before I give you some legacy gift upon my death would be wisest.

I have decided to give you a gift as a challenge. Call it your odyssey if you want. I have written a check for $21,000 today to you for your birthday. I ask that you spend one thousand of it on someone you love very much, soon!

Within this year, I want you to have doubled the value of the money and to have given at least half of it to someone else to build a dream. I hope you will accompany them and help them achieve that. Additionally, I extend to you my faith in you, my wisdom, my financial team, and all the resources and influence I have.

I ask only that what you do with this challenge gift be for the public good or the commons. We must all now dedicate ourselves to the future of humanity and the greater good of others.

I will be with you on this exciting journey for as long as I can.

May you know how very very much I love you, and how proud I am of who you have become in these first 21 years. May the next year be the best of your life thus far as it will be a year of dreaming, giving, and growing for others. Here's to your good fortune now and then.

With love always,
Your GrandTed

Gratitudes

Once in a blue moon a miracle happens. In October of 2007, just weeks before the publishing of Tracy's new book, Inspired Philanthropy, Ruth Ann Harnisch of the Harnisch Foundation, stepped forward, as Donor Diva's do to make an out of the ballpark grant of $100,000. We could then strategically place 4500 books in the hands of 2500 nonprofit and business leaders in the first months of its publication mid November. She also enabled us to take $25,000 of that contribution and tool ourselves with a PR firm and to impact our messaging and market positioning. And so we have. The results have been breathtaking. Suddenly the field of donor and legacy education is cohering and Inspired Legacies is a hub and resource.

Our second miracle happened when Nancy Frees Fountain, a local Houston member of a family foundation, went to bat for us for our program called Inspiring Our Community, which is for donors and leaders of color here in Houston. This fall, our program and videoing of key leaders will happen because of the Frees Family Foundation's $15,000 lead grant. We are seeking another $10,000 for that program here in Houston.

Thirdly, Luis Gilberto Rivas, our program associate and business manager at Inspired Legacies was celebrated for his dedication to IL for a year of full time work, growing what he calls, "the internal working of Inspired Legacies to be as exemplary as our external work."

And to our new board Chair, Joanne Reich of the United Methodist Church's Ministries with Women, Children, and Families and the Child Protection and Community Assistance Officer, for her stunning leadership and nurturing of our excellence.

To our whole team, board, staff, volunteers and donors, I make a deep bow of gratitude, for agreeing that "growing great donors their leadership" is indeed a valued change strategy and for enabling our boldness as catalysts for the field.

Invest in Inspired Legacies this summer. We seek three families at the $5,000-$10,000 level to join in supporting our Youth Giving Circle materials. See our proposal here! With funding by July 15th, it will be out to the public in September '08 for all to use.

Happy Summer--and rest, too, amidst our collective awakening and actions.