True Wealth
"Don't ask always what you can get from life, but ask what you can give.
Stand up to your full height and give freely--
            your time
                  your resources
                        your talents
                              your extra clothes
                                    or vegetables from your garden.
Whatever you have. It doesn't matter whether the gift is simple or modest; what matters is that it be given freely, wholeheartedly, without any reservation, without even knowing what the right hand is doing.
Your are not wealthy simply because you have a lot.
You are wealthy when you have given away a lot.
And the more you give, the more you will have to give---not (just) in money, but in the richness of your life.
~ From Like a Thousand Suns: The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living, by Eknath Easwaran

VIEW FROM THE FOUNDERS

Founders' Exchange with Jean Russell and Tracy Gary

Jean Russell: Tracy, what inspired you to bring nearly 100 leaders together for the two events in Northern CA that Inspired Legacies just produced in May?

Tracy Gary: Convening in person and celebrating passages should not be a lost art. It's essential for deepening connections and innovating together. We've been doing these kinds of programs for thirty-five years with inheritors and people with earned wealth. The events had two parts plus oh-so-important social time. Part 1 was a reunion of some 42 of the hundreds, well really – of the two thousand women, who attended programs of Inspired Legacies' formerly named nonprofit, Resourceful Women, which I convened with others between 1981-1997. Other women who were in the programs through 2005 also came. At the reunion, I wanted to honor some of those who had supported and helped build the program and its important curriculum for women inheritors and women with earned wealth.

Now our pioneering program has been replicated at banks and other nonprofits. Our documentation project, interviewing two dozen participating women inheritors and earners so far, shows that the presence of women of wealth in a peer circle does accelerate change and has lasting impact. It was just wonderful to see how much good work and how much creativity most of these women have expressed in their lives.

Jean: It sounds like inspired legacies indeed.

Tracy: Yes, and resourceful women. They are that fully, and that kind of resourcefulness lives on in each of them. We want to keep documenting their stories and would love on-going support for that. Writers Carol Rust and Karen Payne did a great job on our first twenty-four interviews of Resourceful Women, and we see every reason to continue capturing these legacies.
  • Download more information
  • Download Pay It Forward Form

Jean: Tracy, you and those of us on the board, as well as our close advisors like Phil Cubeta, have been working to build and support the next generation of philanthropic advisors and donors. Rarely do they convene together with donors as we did in Part 2. It was amazing to see the cross-pollination and the depth of discussion at the Conversation Café we had with some 50 leaders on past, present, and future trends of philanthropy. What do you think came of that and what are the tangible outcomes?

Tracy: You and Jason Franklin of Bolder Giving, did a wonderful job of facilitating the Conversation Café discussion. (Click here for notes from our gathering.) We are all eager to consider how to better support the field. This is the fifth gathering we have hosted for progressive philanthropic advisors nationally. (Click here to see the list of advisors from around the country that joined us this May.) Mostly, the field is still shaping. The economy for philanthropic advisors in the past couple of years has been rough to many new advisors. Our work is to support the emergent convenings, networking and shared learning.

As for tangible outcomes, we were especially thrilled to do publications for each of the programs. The first was the booklet of Resourceful Women interviews (Download more information). The second invited 33 new and older trusted advisors to write 500-600 word shared articles, accompanied by 44 related content ads. We had about half of the new generation co-writers and leaders at the conference, and we hope to build on their pieces through a series of teleconferences this fall.

Jean: Having worked on productions like this before, I was really amazed at these booklets – so many quickly moving pieces in the production! Congratulations to all the generous souls who made this happen: writers, co-signers of the preface, advertisers, and the design and editing teams. Read these 13 short pieces for summer reading and discuss them with your family and advisors at www.inspiredlegacies.org/TrustedAdvisors. It is wonderful that so many wanted to support Inspired Legacies in creating this publication and sharing it online. We want to reach 50,000 donors and advisors, so please pass it on!

Tracy: Jean, as Co-Founder and Board Chair of Inspired Legacies, what is the aspiration you have for us now? Based on what you have seen in these seven years of collaborating, what do you see as our most inspired next steps?

Jean: One might describe your legacy and ours at Inspired Legacies as a cascade of impacts. To truly support the next generation of advisors and donors, we have to build a field and engage a community of practice where we can exchange perspectives and experiences, and refine them to improve the sector. This is deep systems work, which has few immediate impacts, to evolve the awareness and intention of philanthropic engagement for long-term and broad social change. Philanthropy and finances have been building walls. We are busy at Inspired Legacies bringing those walls down so real connection and relationships can happen.

Tracy: Unleashing generosity is what Inspired Legacies has as its motto, along with "We grow great donors and their leadership." I think these still happen best when donors, advisors and nonprofits are well matched and linked so that decisions can happen with the best-shared thinking.

Jean: Where do you see the field going?

Tracy: I see donors waking up more and more now to needing peer and advisor teams, and coaches, and being willing to pay for them. Just as they have in their other businesses, donors are seeing the advantages of building teams in their philanthropy. The greatest satisfaction in philanthropy comes from these teams and the collective wisdom and impacts these teams can achieve. This is the best way to move us all from individualized thinking and action. This is the wave of the future that is being activated in partnerships now.

Progressive philanthropic advisors are those that prioritize the integration of values into how planning, giving, investing and leadership are accomplished. This is the way that greater impact is and can be made. But donors and foundations must not be fickle. It's key to permit continuity and to face the music when difficulties arise, and not just quit amidst divergent or difficult processes. If we are successful, progressive philanthropic advisors complement our clients with greater honesty so that we can all grow the sector to have the results and strength of character and outcomes we all deserve.

Jean: If you could wave your magic wand and manifest what the field needs, what do you dream for?

Tracy: Without support, how advisors work is often about working with families who are ambivalent about planning and paying for leadership training. We need to find three or more foundations or angel donors to seed us (any part of) $500,000 for three years so we could provide the base support for 20 of our progressive advisors at the part-time base of $40,000 per year level to offer their services to families on a "Pay It Forward" basis. We could then go proactively to donor families and offer our services, rather than waiting for them to come to us. We would coach them and support their working with grassroots nonprofits as well as donors and advisors. We could leverage multi-billions of dollars in remarkable lifetime and legacy gifts, and retool their family giving this way so it's more impactful; all the while building the network of peer support for progressive philanthropic advisors.

We also seek $50,000 to continue interviews, documentation and networking of transformational foundations, donors and nonprofit leaders. Even $450 can buy one interview and another $400 to network these leaders and their work, or to provide video content to new donors and foundations. We'll make these interviews public on our website as we complete them. We would like to raise another $31,000 for these projects and to keep our team thriving this summer. I will be moving around the country so a good time to get some fo the video on these, and for Karen Payne to get the formal interviews by phone. We operate on about $20,000 per month in the summer, at reduced operations, as our public speaking to groups stops in July-mid September so this is a key time for field building work (and vacations!).

Tracy: Jean, what do you think the next steps for Inspired Legacies should be? How can we thrive and also have impact from your perspective?

Jean: As you know, I come at these things from a network theory perspective; and the evolving models of collaboration coming from the technology sector inspire me. I believe our next steps involve the creation of minimal viable product for supporting the network of progressive advisors, while continuing to be a model of the way we want things to be. To scale this work to both trigger more inspired philanthropy from those of wealth, as well as inspire the democratization of philanthropy by informing a greater range of donors to be intention in their giving, I believe we need to:

• Be a locus of support and education for progressive philanthropic advisors
• Open-sourcing our materials, and
• Convene field builders for coordinated network building.
• Continue to document donors and funders doing upstream transformative giving and leadership.
• Pass on, intergenerationally, our knowledge capital about working with women inheritors and their families.

Let's get moving on post conference ideas! Happy summer reading and action to everyone, and please don't forget us with your pre-vacation donations. Like many nonprofits, we do not survive the summer without your interest, care, and support.

May the true joy of giving be with you,

Jean Russell, Board Chair, and Tracy Gary, Director,
and Co-Founders, Inspired Legacies
To contact Tracy: call 415.377.9447 cell or Inspired Legacies Tracy@inspiredlegacies.org
for Pat Tiller, Administration: Pat@inspiredlegacies.org
To send donations by mail:
    PO Box 1693
    Ross, CA 94957
Contact Pat Tiller for credit card payments or see our or our donations link here.

INSPIRED PARTNERSHIPS

A. Bolder Giving
1. See their upgraded amazing site at www.boldergiving.org/
2. Take the Give Half Pledge http://www.boldergiving.org/pledge.php
3. See the The Bolder Giving Workbook
4. Explore Bold Giving (Giving Toolkit)
5, And weekly to keep inspired, or to educate new wealth holders or future inheritors see the Inspiring Stories Library
6. More than Money (13 years worth of magazine articles about money) is archived here too now: http://www.morethanmoney.org/
7. See their Donor Network listing also for great resources for yourself, family or clients

B. Bread for the Journey: www.breadforthejourney.org
Nurturing the Seeds of Generosity in Every Human Heart.
Since 1988, Bread for the Journey has micro-granted over $4 million dollars in 20 communities. Started by Wayne Muller, spiritual leader and author, of A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough and Founding Executive Director Marianna Cacciatore, author of Being There for Someone in Grief, they now have 20 amazing community based chapters. Why not help them have one or build one in your neighborhood. These are for everyone to practice generosity and to open our eyes to our neighborhood need. Especially during these times, Bread for the Journey is key.
1. Read their just out GREAT summer reading, Stories of Kindness
2. Consider opening or contributing to a chapter
3. Give to support Bread for the Journey's great community micro-grants

C. Wealth Legacy Group: http://www.wealthlegacygroup.net/
Emily Bouchard, Managing Director, and Founder and Director, Jamie Traeger-Muney work with inheritors, family foundations, family businesses and advisors on the emotional issues that accompany having wealth.

Inspired Legacies, through Tracy Gary has years of experience working with inheritors. We are exploring a possible partnership.

D. Playback Theater North America: www.playbacknorthamerica.net
At our advisors and donors May conferences, we had such an amazing time having Boston based, Playback Theater representatives, Anne and Christopher Ellinger and their Bay Area new Playback Theatre partners, that we have offered to do outreach for them to come back and work more locally doing donor education this Fall.

If you are a community foundation, staff and donors seeking to have a great and creative way to engage your prospects, donors and donor advisors this late September, October or November let us know. Inspired Legacies and Tracy are working to cook a few venues for Playback Theatre North America. For many of us who live in our left brains it was a total joy to work with their troop on our reflections and stories being played back through their improvisation. We are supporting Playback Theater North America and the Ellinger's bookings and some training in the Bay Area this Fall by mid-August. Contact us or them for more details and stay tuned for exact training or sessions with community, public and private foundations ahead in the Bay Area and nationally. This is a powerful way to integrate and shift our breakthroughs!

Contact: Christopher Ellinger, Email: chrisellinger@gmail.com, or Tracy Gary, Tracy@inspiredlegacies.org and we will set a time and get contracted for you to have a great 1.5 to 2 hour program that will move your donors and staff to heart and action. Call Tracy also at 415-377-9447.

GRATITUDES AND TRANSITIONS

We want to pay special tribute to Barbara Brust of Lucille Design who has worked day and night with me and Inspired Legacies over our seven years of evolution and for many year prior. After years of Jean Russell's leadership as our co-founder and Communications Manager, and team member with Barbara, Lucille Design and Barbara stepped up in January this year to do all our design as well as to continue with our web and newsletter work. Not only was all the invitational work for the May conferences moved to online registrations which took hours of programming but also our interviews of Resourceful Women and all production and the complex layout of 44 ads and 13 articles in our Trusted Advsiors booklet, plus all info for the conferences and our ongoing work with our client and advisors and THIS newsletter redesign is due to Barbara's patience, persistence and remarkable skillfulness, and belief in our work. Thank you. Please know Lucille Design does accept other clients but don't steal her please!

Teamwork in a tiny virtual and global nonprofit is made less challenging by devotion. We would not have produced the Resourceful Women Reunion without the leadership team of Patricia Hobe, Cindy Ewing and Jan Marks. We tip our hat to the inspiration from Michal Feder and Barbara Stuart and the twenty-four women who were interviewed as past members of Resourceful Women, and to the 42 women who came to the conference, and the twelve women and one man who provided seed money for the conference to happen. We were honored to acknowledge the passing of a dozen women whose legacies as Resourceful Women live on in each of us.

Thanks also to writers, Karen Payne and Carol Rust, who spent months shaping the Resourceful Women documentation project and conducting interviews and editing with participants their profiles.

Pat Tiller, our Inspired Legacies' administrative coordinator working from Houston handled every registration and proofing detail with grace and remarkable efficiency.

Thank you marketing consultant, Timothy Feder, for sparking the idea of the ad booklet when our need to showcase our advisors' wisdom and bring forth more supporters was clear. And for your outreach ideas and execution.

Karla Boyd of Namaste Global Vision supported our facilitation between the two days of our two conferences, and did a wonderful job. And the board of Inspired Legacies, especially Jean Russell, Lisa Parker and Heather Gee, not only worked to get, place and design ads, and write pieces for our Trusted Advisors booklet, but continued to believe in the value of this wild dream that was given to us to convene these programs within months of our return to No CA.

Attendees advisors and donors who wrote articles, paid for ads, and came to the conferences, you are the evidence we counted on that the next generation of trusted advisors wanted our networking and chance to exchange more with donors. Onward to a restful summer and the next steps for your own evolution in your leadership. Thank you each and all.