What are your aspirations for generosity? Do you dream of what might be? What you could be doing? How you might do something differently? Dreams always lead to me storytelling – the stories I tell myself. As a kid, I dreamed and devised stories on walks to and from school. When my story hadn’t found an ending by the time I reached my destination, I saved it for bedtime. Sometimes, I spun a story over and over again with different endings. Our dreams are aspirations, hopes, wishes, and yearnings fueled by our passion. The question is, with what endings? Dream with Mickey I recently stumbled ont ..read more

Exactly twenty-two months ago, we adopted a two-month-old corgi. On the drive home, we named her Sophie. Later, while completing her registration papers, I decided that Sophie’s name didn’t do her justice. The application provided a long string of squares to fill in, so I settled on Sophie’s Firecracker Celebration as an appropriate name since we adopted her on the Fourth of July weekend. I had searched for months for a tri-color corgi because I love that pattern, and it reminds me of our first Corgi, Casey. He was a laid-back guy who lived one month shy of sixteen years. He potty-trained quic ..read more

Tiny stacks of 35-millimeter slides covered the dining room table. One by one I passed them through the slide viewer. The story of my parents’ earliest years together unfolded from Okinawa to North Carolina to Colorado and Texas. Pictures are only part of the story.   Several years ago, dad sent me a handwritten letter, more like a long list of notes that wind through place and time. That’s another part of our story. Soon, I’ll be able to view the slides I selected on a DVD. For me, these memories combined with the notes are a part of the family story that has become o ..read more

My date and I headed to the zoo for a fun afternoon. With curiosity as a guide, I expected to enjoy the animals and maybe answer a few questions about a guy I found interesting and thought I might like to keep around for a while. The zoo had areas designed to see the animals in their natural habitat but included a walkthrough area where we could get closer to some animals. I was interested in seeing the teenage giraffe, not quite fully grown but still very tall. Standing on one side of the fence, all 5’6″ of me, my date with a bird’s eye view, and the lanky, long-necked giraffe up close result ..read more

When you hear a suggestion to share your stories with your children and grandchildren, do you hear a voice say, “They’re not interested, don’t have time, and don’t care about my stories?” In conversation with my friend, Joe McIlhaney, M.D., he said what he’d been thinking for a long time – they’re not interested, don’t have time, and don’t care. I challenged him to write down a few thoughts about the legacy I knew he would leave for those of us blessed by his friendship. Joe started with the famous words, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Spoken by the Greek philosopher Socrate ..read more

Roses are still blooming in my yard. Variegated pittosporum is glowing next to drab lantana stems that have died down for the year. What is slow to go dormant or even better is evergreen, provides hope of a forthcoming spring.  It’s like the hope a donor has when donating to a nonprofit organization. Some nonprofits are evergreen-like plants that survive despite the cold. Even when donations are slim, they carry on, sometimes merely existing in survival mode, waiting for better times. How do they survive when donations slow down? Years ago, I answered, “They survive because the need is gr ..read more

I’ve shared this story before, but the message remains important to the heart of giving. Take a moment to learn why ladders matter on Christmas morning and all year round. At six years old, I was sure I needed one, and today, I’m as committed as ever to working my way through this giving ladder. Peeping through a keyhole on Christmas morning, I could see the packages and toys Santa had brought. All under the age of ten, all four of us grandchildren took turns looking through an old-fashioned keyhole big enough to see most of the Christmas tree but not quite all of it. While we took turns looki ..read more

When I was about three or so years old, my family went for a drive in the Colorado mountains. I think we went for a picnic, but what I remember is jumping out of the car, barefooted, heading for a patch of wildflowers. My mother called out to stop, but all I saw were flowers, not the tangle of briars between me and them. Almost immediately I shrieked from the thorns in both feet. My mother searched for each thorn and tried calming me down, while my dad said something like your mother told you to stop. And that’s all I remember. Did we have our picnic after the tears dried? Was I lifted over th ..read more

Why should you give philanthropically and strive to make a difference? The answer goes beyond different vehicles for giving, choosing the right organizations, and even knowing your giving style. Here’s a hint: you need to know your Why. Some years ago, Curtis Meadow, past president of the Meadows Foundation, dove squarely into this question while speaking to a group of philanthropists in Tyler, Tx. Curtis shared a wonderful quote that day by Walter Brueggemann, considered by many as a master theologian and master preacher. He said, “What God does first and best is to trust us with our moment i ..read more

A ..read more