Giving Tuesday: Making a Difference in Your Own Backyard

Discover why giving to local nonprofits matters more than ever. Today we chat with two Greenville County foundation leaders, Meliah Bowers Jefferson of the Jolly Foundation and Andrew Ross of the Hathaway Family Foundation, about the power of individual donors to transform their community. Learn how you can make an impact, whether you have dollars or just time to give. It's not about the size of your gift, but the strength of your heart for your hometown.

Links:

Philanthropic Landscape Study of Greenville County

Meliah Bowers Jefferson

Andrew Ross

United Way of Greenville County's Project Joy

Community Foundation of Greenville

Transcript

Sponsor: This episode is sponsored by Palmetto Project. Forty years ago, South Carolina leaders championed the idea that every social and economic challenge in our state could be solved through innovation. They believed in the power of new ideas to fulfill the promise of our home. Since 1984, the Palmetto Project has listened to and partnered with community leaders and members to transform our state through 330 public-private partnerships. Today, our programs address early literacy for more than 23,000 children through Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, civic engagement, and equitable access to healthcare through the only statewide nonprofit health insurance agency in the country and more. Learn more at palmettoproject.org or at our Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Katy Smith: This episode is posting on Giving Tuesday, a day when people all over the world celebrate generosity by making charitable giving a priority. Here in Greenville County, we have almost 3,000 nonprofit organizations, including health care providers, human service organizations, performing and visual arts institutions, schools and after-school programs, entities for veterans, older adults, preschoolers, and many more. I'm Katy Smith with Greater Good Greenville, and multiplying the good of these nonprofits with the generosity of donors is a huge part of our mission. Today, I will discuss Greenville County's philanthropic landscape with two people who represent our community's generosity: Meliah Bowers Jefferson, Executive Director of the Jolly Foundation, and Andrew Ross, Executive Director of the Hathaway Family Foundation. Both of these foundations and the families that established them generously support nonprofits here in Greenville County, and Meliah and Andrew have been on the front lines of seeing the best of our community at work. A note for all of you, we recently completed a study on the philanthropic landscape in Greenville County that both Meliah and Andrew were part of, and we'll link that study in the show notes today if you'd like to learn much more. We'll discuss the study just a little bit, and we'll hear Meliah and Andrew's thoughts for you as you contemplate giving today and hopefully throughout the whole year.

I'm so pleased to be here with Meliah Bowers Jefferson and Andrew Ross, who are both accomplished individuals and whose bios we'll put in the show notes. And if you take a look, you will know these are the right folks to be talking about philanthropy and Giving Tuesday. Thanks, both of you, for joining me today.

Meliah Bowers Jefferson: Thank you for having me.

Andrew Ross: Great to be here.

Katy Smith: So on this Giving Tuesday and throughout the holiday season, all of y'all listening will be getting many requests for charitable gifts by mail, email, social media, and so on. And there are so many causes you can give to. But Meliah, I'd love for you to start by sharing why you believe philanthropic giving here at home is really important.

Meliah Bowers Jefferson: Well, I think the first thing to note is that giving at home is really where it starts because, as they say, that's where the heart is, right? And if you are living in this community, I think it is very important for you to support the causes that help make this community a place where you love to live. If not, everybody has the same types of opportunities and benefits that many people have or that we see highlighted in those greatest places to live posts. And it's important as a member of this community for you to give back. Our local nonprofits, they know this community. They know our neighbors. And your gifts just support more than the people who benefit from a specific organization.

They really help grow local economy through wages, local purchases, and more. So by giving charitably, you are really undergirding the support system that makes Greenville a great place to live. And, you know, also in our recent study, it found that charitable giving has not kept up with inflation. So now more than ever, your support in this community is vitally important. And so I definitely encourage anyone who is thinking about the way they want to give in the end of this year to consider, strongly consider keeping your dollars here in our community.

Katy Smith: Yeah, thanks so much for that, Meliah, because it is true that inflation has hurt nonprofits. It's hurt families, but there still are folks who are really thriving and are looking for ways to give. And doing so right here can make such a difference. So both of you work for philanthropic foundations, which play a really important role in making large gifts. And if you are listening and not super familiar with the world of philanthropy and nonprofits, we call those from foundations grants or philanthropic investments. But they're really gifts. The general public is likely aware that foundations exist and might think that you big dogs like Hathaway Family Foundation and the Jolly Foundation have got it all under control. What difference does my small gift make? But I know that you would say it makes a really big difference. Andrew, can you talk a little bit about what we learned in the study about why individual givers are so important?

Andrew Ross: Sure. When we worked on the philanthropic landscape study, we looked at giving from the top 30 giving organizations, and that's going to include your foundations, corporate donors, and the like. And we found that our total giving in that group of 30 made up less than a tenth of our county's top nonprofit budgets. So there's just not enough money available from foundations and companies to cover our community's needs. But when you look at that data, individual givers make up 67%, and that's nationwide also is true here in Greenville. But when you add on bequest giving, so giving after you pass in a will, that moves up to 75% of giving. So individual givers are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations. So when a person joins a nonprofit and it's a good match, they can stick with that agency for years, right? 57% of donors last year were recurring donors, meaning they give regular gifts to an agency. So while supporting an agency with funding is great, and that's what we all love to do, there's so many other opportunities for partnership out there. People can volunteer their time and make connections to other like-minded people to join with that agency and a journey of improving our community.

Katy Smith: I love that, especially if you're listening and you think, I really don't have any dollars to give. Giving your time, giving your voice in support of a cause is still a huge and important way to support an organization. So Meliah, I know that while you've always been involved in nonprofits as a donor and as a volunteer, you're fairly new to the career of philanthropy after a career in law. And you've been able to meet lots of nonprofit leaders here in Greenville. I'm wondering what surprised you that you think other potential donors listening today should know.

Meliah Bowers Jefferson: The thing that surprised me the most, and I don't know if surprise is the right word, but I'm just always impressed with the depth of knowledge of our nonprofit leaders.

They not only invest a lot of time in getting to know what is needed here in the community, but they invest a lot of time in understanding how to serve and respond to those needs. So when you are thinking about giving to the nonprofit organizations in our community, I think that you can really feel comfortable that you are giving to organizations that care deeply and that you can trust to really be reaching out and serving the needs of those who need it most.

The other thing that I would like for you to really recognize and think about is there's so many things that happen in this community that are run by nonprofits that we don't even think about, right? A lot of people think that food insecurity or safety from domestic violence or just a number of things, education, like a lot of people think those functions are supported in whole or largely by government. But our nonprofits, without them, many of the needs in the community would go unmet. And so they cannot do their work without support from the community financially, as well as the volunteer time that Katy just mentioned.

So it's just really important for us to understand the role that they play in the work that happens in the community and that we see happening every day and don't really know who's doing that. So please, if you have an interest at all in any aspect of supporting community, a cause. Look for that cause. I promise you, you will find a way to give here in this community.

Katy Smith: That's such a great point. So, Andrew, on the other hand, you have had a long career in nonprofit work. So now you're on the philanthropic side of things, giving away money. What would you like listeners to know about both nonprofit and philanthropic work?

Andrew Ross: Yeah. You know, as the origins of the word philanthropy suggest, you know, what we're doing is loving people, right? And nonprofits, like Meliah just said, are out there every day, helping communities and solving problems. Philanthropy, on the other hand, is we're providing the resources needed to support those efforts. They're both important, but they work best when they coincide. One thing I've learned is that nonprofits aren't just helping people, but they're finding creative solutions to our community's bigger problems. They often see issues and start working on them before anyone else does, as Meliah suggested. But to really make a difference, they need funding and support from individual donors and foundations. From the giving side, I've realized how important it is to just listen to these groups. Nonprofits understand their communities better than any of us. The way I work now is no different than when I was running an organization, right? So when I was running an organization, it was find the best people to work for you and then give them the resources needed to be successful. It's no different than nonprofits now. So it's finding great partners and then giving them those resources to be successful.

Katy Smith: Some people feel so moved to make a difference that they want to start a nonprofit. And while we really applaud anyone's enthusiasm for a better community, there are a lot more effective ways that the majority of you can make a difference than starting your own 501(c)(3).

Andrew Ross: You know, as a person that ran a nonprofit, this was something that came up a lot was I'm very passionate about this particular subject. What should I do? And my suggestion to everyone then was find something that you love and then someone who's doing it well already and then come alongside them and help them complete the task. Starting your own thing is just going to water down more of these resources. And it's us getting more and more applications every year. And it just keeps watering those down because they're all doing great work. But we want to focus our resources on the agencies doing the most good and then trying to combine some of these other agencies to do that work.

Meliah Bowers Jefferson: And then the other thing that I would add is if there's a cause that you're particularly passionate about and you have a skill set that you think could help an organization that already exists to do their work better. It is very important, you know, nonprofits, people don't often think of them as businesses, but it is just another business, a different type of business. And they could benefit from the support of great accountants, great trainers and teachers. They can benefit from great attorneys and having contacts with bankers and just understanding how the world of business works. Right. They can benefit from having contacts with great therapists. So if you have a skill set that could be of use to a nonprofit or a cause that resonates closely with your heart, I would challenge you to think about how you could use your skills to plug into an existing organization and help elevate them to the next level of their work. Yeah.

Katy Smith: Thanks to both of you for pointing these things out. Because one thing I'll just drill down is that if you want to work at a nonprofit that you want to found, you need to really think about, okay, well, what do I want to get paid in this new job I'm creating for myself? And do I have the capacity to raise at least that money year after year from the exact individual donors and foundations that both Andrew and Meliah have discussed? And if you're like, no, I don't want to have that be my job. I just want to start a nonprofit. Then you probably don't need to start a nonprofit. Just go do good stuff with exactly the partners that these folks talked about.

Andrew Ross: Yeah. Like when I used to do volunteer orientations, I remember I would go through my spiel and do the whole tour and everything. And then I would say to each person, I'll say, Yeah. You're not passionate about this, that's okay. Like Meliah was saying, there's tons of other organizations in our community that are doing great work that you can align your passion with, right? Because when you take your passion and these resources and you put them together, that's magic, right? That's when our community starts changing.

Katy Smith: If you're listening and you're thinking, okay, like I'm in, I want to give to Greenville, but I really don't have the knowledge to do this research or the time, or I just want to give broadly. Two suggestions for you. One is the Community Foundation of Greenville is our local community foundation that does a lot of support for nonprofit capacity building and general operations. And you can make a gift to the Community Foundation, which they can help put to best use right here in Greenville. And if you're also thinking, I really want to help very specifically with families getting gifts for their kids or those needs that come around the holidays, the United Way of Greenville County's Project Joy is a great way to get involved, where they help make sure those kids have gifts under the tree that they might be looking for. So we'll put links to both of those entities in the show notes as well. It really is the greatest joy to be able to work in this field. I'm just wondering what else is on your minds as you think about Giving Tuesday, but really this wonderful work in general in philanthropy and nonprofits.

Andrew Ross: Yeah, I think we would both ask for people to just join us in this work. It's such, like you said, a privilege to be a part of an ecosystem of nonprofits and individual givers and foundations and businesses in this community, all working together to complete these bigger issues, like to figure some of these things out, to take care of things like Meliah said, domestic violence, food insecurity, affordable housing, those kind of things. So just to be a part of that is what we ask people to join us in.

Meliah Bowers Jefferson: Absolutely. And I cannot emphasize enough the role that individual givers play in the ecosystem. We get a lot of attention as philanthropic partners or corporate entities that give. You may see announcements in the newspaper and things like that when people give. But what you don't get announcements about are all of you, each person who donates their money, donates their time to really make sure that their neighbors are OK, that their community is OK. And so I do not want it to get lost, although we're the ones here talking about it. Each of you who is listening today, you're the ones who really make it happen. So I want to encourage you to understand and emphasize the role that each of you play in making sure that our nonprofit community is vibrant and able to meet the needs of the people that we love and care about here in Greenville.

Katy Smith: I think that's a great place to stop and really a great place to launch you in your own charitable giving journey and go farther. If you already are a donor, go farther this year.

I'm pleased to say that next year, those of us at Greater Good Greenville will have a great resource for you in a nonprofit directory that will let you research causes you care about and give directly online or link to those nonprofits to learn more. So stay tuned for that, which will be up and running by next year's Giving Tuesday.

Catherine Puckett: Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org.