More and more philanthropists and the organizations they support are looking beyond just meeting the needs in their communities. They are now looking to address the systemic and societal issues that contribute to those needs. Instead of the well-off helping the less fortunate, philanthropy today is improving the community for the benefit of all.
Achieving that goal takes many shapes, and local givers are embracing the idea of doing more than simply writing checks.
Call them philanthro-activists, advocates, social entrepreneurs - the new generation of philanthropists who have come on the scene over the past decade or so are focused on root causes and changing the status quo.
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It's the Friday before Father's Day, and Joe and Ingrid Jackson are on their way to Gulf Shores, Alabama, where they've spent the holiday every year since 2008. That year, in the early morning of Father's Day, Joe Jr., whom they called Joey, passed away from undiagnosed heart ailments at the age of 22.
Joey's friends always meet the Johnsons at the beach for the annual trip, but that's not the only time they reunite to honor Joey's memory.
Joey's friends - from elementary school, Baylor School and up through his college years at University of Alabama - also fly into Chattanooga to attend annual board meetings for the Joe Jackson II Memorial Fund. Established shortly after Joey's passing with donations from family and friends, Joey's last paycheck, and payments from his insurance company, the fund provides college scholarships to several graduates of Hamilton County schools each year. Each student receives $1,000 annually for all four years.
"There was such an outcry from the people in support," Joe says of why he and Ingrid decided to establish the fund. "Those people reached out to us and said, 'How do we keep Joey's spirit alive?'"
"His loss just left such a huge void in my life and I felt like I just had to do something," Ingrid adds. "We've been extremely blessed because we've always had good jobs and were able to send our children to really good schools, and I knew that wasn't the case with a lot of people. So I thought it would be an excellent chance for us to reach out and help somebody else's child, because I think that when we're blessed, we're blessed to help somebody else; it's not to hold onto everything.
"I had no idea how much joy that it would bring me, because it keeps me connected to all of these young people, what they're doing, what's going on in their lives."
In addition to providing funds, the Jacksons also mentor their scholarship recipients, almost all of who are first-generation college students from single-parent families. Throughout their time in school, the Jacksons act as surrogate parents of a sort, offering guidance if the student gets into trouble or thinks they might need to drop a class.
"I think the thing that really has been such a surprise blessing to me is every single one of these kids is involved in advocacy and volunteerism," Ingrid says. "They're all about reaching back, helping their parents at home, siblings that are left at home, so that they can get to school and go back and help them."
"I think they can piggyback off of what we're doing for them and look for avenues where they can do something for somebody else," says Joe. "It's kind of a learned thing once they get involved with the Joe Jackson Foundation."
Joey, who was involved with outreach groups in college, once told his mother that the reason he wanted to give to others was because it was what he saw his parents do. So when students receive the scholarship, they tell them about Joey and his giving spirit.
"They just seem to catch on and continue that legacy, which has been such a blessing," says Ingrid.
One of Joey's friends passed away when Joey was a freshman in college, and at the funeral the father passed out copies of Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life" to all of his son's friends. The 40-day Bible study book outlines what Warren identifies as God's five purposes for human life on Earth.
When Joey's parents arrived at his apartment just after his passing, the first thing they noticed was a stack of copies sitting on his bookcase.
"It just impacted him so much that he continued buying those books and he would keep them, and when he would run into somebody, he would just go to the car and get a book," Ingrid says. "It just shows that he was really concerned about his fellow man. He continued to reach out to people and try and find some way to change other people's lives.
"That's why we do this, because that's what he did."
Four of the scholarship recipients have graduated, and 11 are currently in school. The Jacksons plan to award two or three more students with the scholarship next year, and if they succeed in their plan to increase their fundraising efforts, they hope to raise the amount awarded to each student up to $2,000 a year.
"You wonder when you're doing something if you're making a difference," Ingrid says, voicing a sentiment many have at some point when engaging in any sort of philanthropic endeavor.
She stopped wondering several years ago, early one Sunday morning at the 8 a.m. church service she and Joe always attend. A man spoke about finding Christ while he was in prison, and when he revealed that one of his sons - part of the first generation in his family to go to college - was a recipient of Joey's memorial scholarship, she felt their efforts had come full circle.
That feeling has been further solidified by Joey's friends on the scholarship organization's board. Three of them have children named after Joey, and one asked to bring his son to this year's board meeting.
"I'm so grateful Joey had such great friends, so when Joe and I are not here it can continue to go on," says Ingrid.
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On a Monday afternoon, Society of Work is abuzz with entrepreneurs meeting with clients and people shooting off emails from their laptops in the co-working space located inside the Loveman's building on Market Street.
Kelly Fitzgerald is a supporter of the Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga.This is the second location opened by the business's owner and founder, Kelly Fitzgerald, who's also vice president of commercial brokerage at Second Story Real Estate.
She's not only an entrepreneur in business, but in the social sector as well.
When the Women's Fund of Greater Chattanooga's board was looking for a way to boost engagement among the younger generation, Fitzgerald, 39, was one of a dozen or so young women the organization approached in 2011 to help launch The Nightingale Network. The goal of the collective-philanthropy group is to make a social impact on the community by changing the way it tackles problems. Members' annual dues, with levels ranging from $25-$225, are matched by the Women's Fund and awarded as a grant to a local organization serving women or girls as decided upon by a vote of the membership.
"That's how I got actively engaged in the work that they were doing," Fitzgerald says of the Women's Fund. She is now in her final year on the board after having served as its vice chair and chair over the past two years.
The Women's Fund works to improve the lives of women and girls through advocacy, collaboration and targeted philanthropy. "We recognize that there are several really great organizations in town that are working on the programmatic level. But oftentimes, those problems that they're working to solve, the root of them is systemic; it's in policy. It's because someone wrote a bill that has unintended consequences, because they were trying to solve a problem and they didn't understand the problem," Fitzgerald says.
The Women's Fund looks at policies affecting women and girls and advocates for change on the local and state level by writing or rewriting legislation. For instance, Executive Director Emily O'Donnell wrote a bill that made it illegal for landlords to evict victims of domestic violence for calling police. The bill addressed an unintended consequence of a law that was meant to protect the landlord's property by allowing them to evict tenants who had the police called to their homes. The bill, which was passed unanimously in the Tennessee Legislature in 2016, mirrored a similar exception made for residents of public housing.
That law is a good example of the Women's Fund tackling an issue at the root level, Fitzgerald explains, because if a woman calls the police to arrest her abuser and she and her child are evicted for that reason, she would then need to seek help from organizations such as the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults or the Chattanooga Community Kitchen. By changing the law, they eliminated the need for those services for women in that situation.
"I've just always been a person that has been drawn to root causes, because they feel more impactful to me," says Fitzgerald. "There's always going to be needs for organizations that provide programming and sort of band-aids, if you will, but really attacking the problem at the root cause appealed to me beyond measure."
It's lobbying, to some extent, but she thinks of it more as "consensus building" since the issues reach beyond party lines. "We're definitely bipartisan. Because at the end of the day, it's not about the party, it's about just the unintended consequence - in some cases, unintended consequences. When you look at women and children and their role in our community, it's a huge ripple effect. When women and children are doing well, our communities are doing well, because [women are] care providers on a million different levels, not just children. It's family members; it's a whole host of things," she says.
Advocating for causes such as equal pay for women isn't just about fairness and doing the right thing, she adds. "There's actual economic indicators that point to the fact that if women are paid equal to men, then your economy as a whole is stronger."
Fitzgerald doesn't necessarily consider herself an activist, but she is willing to put her mouth where her money is, so to speak. "I am someone who will fight for what I believe in and speak up in situations that warrant that," she says, adding that the word "activist" is often used to describe people who are at one extreme end of the spectrum politically. What appeals to her about the Women's Fund is that it doesn't lean to the right or left; it's about issues that everyone can agree need to be resolved.
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Mike St. Charles was introduced to United Way the way most people are: through its corporate campaign, in which employees of participating companies can donate a portion of their paycheck to the organization. Now the chair of that campaign, the attorney is embracing the role of educating people on United Way's many facets and how the organization is changing to meet today's needs and donor expectations.
While corporate campaigns are still the main way United Way raises funds, it launched a revamp last year that introduced several new initiatives designed to connect with a variety of donors and their preferred ways of giving, he says. Through its partner agencies, United Way focuses on increasing access to better education, health and stability - all root causes for many of the needs in the local community.
Mike St. Charles is chairman of this year's United Way Campaign.Updates to United Way's website and online giving platforms make it easier for donors to learn about the agencies supported and how their money is used - which is something millennial donors really wanted to see, St. Charles says. The new platforms and collective-philanthropy groups ("affinity groups" in United Way parlance) also give the employees of Chattanooga's many startups, whose companies don't offer corporate campaigns, ways to make a contribution.
Additionally, United Way introduced different types of funds that expand avenues for giving. The new Neighborhood Fund is focused on going into specific neighborhoods that need help and providing that help with a collaborative, comprehensive approach. And with innovative solutions ID'd as important to local donors in a recent United Way survey, the organization has debuted the Innovation Fund, used to fund new ideas worth trying but that haven't yet been proven to provide results.
Through Venture Forward, United Way trains nonprofits in areas such as successful fundraising and building effective leadership, along with providing an avenue for them to connect with one another. The organization is also furthering its efforts to connect local nonprofit leaders through the social innovation hub planned for the first floor of the United Way building. St. Charles describes the space as similar to Co.Lab, but with conversations and collaboration centering on social problems rather than business.
Partnered with about 1,600 nonprofits as well as thousands of churches and community-based organizations, United Way is uniquely positioned to take a collective, collaborative approach to meeting the community's needs, St. Charles says. United Way also has the ability to tackle root causes of community needs by connecting nonprofit leaders and volunteers working on the ground - who best understand the complexity of the needs and all the factors at play - with the capital necessary to produce results.
Small nonprofits with similar missions often compete with another for funds, and they don't always work together cohesively, says St. Charles. United Way is able further its impact by connecting nonprofits with one another, as well as by tracking the data it collects through calls to 211. People in the community can call 211 to request assistance from United Way with various needs such as food or electricity, and United Way connects them with a partner agency that can meet that need. At the same time, United Way collects and tracks data on what needs exist where in order to direct resources to the areas where they're needed most.
All of that has changed the way St. Charles looks at charitable contributions. When he made his first pledge to United Way through his employer, he focused on the fact that 100% of the funds go to the charities, which he saw as a huge plus. "But if you really look at that, I think as I become more involved, it's more you shouldn't really worry about how what percentage of your dollars goes where; it's how great the impact is. And I think that's what I focus on more: What meaningful impact is an organization having on what they're trying to do?"