non-profiting

I thought I would write a little about my efforts in the non-profit world. Having spent 39 years in the commercial (for profit) world, mostly in the IT Sector, I have spent the last year and a half focusing on my non-profit activities. People like to say ‘giving back.’ Okay, if that works for you. My appreciation for ‘giving back’ started when I was a kid, of course. It’s usually one’s parents who sponsor the development of values such as these. My dad, who worked for a bank and then a benefits consulting firm, spent an enormous amount of his free time building an organization called A Better Chance (ABC). I can only now appreciate how much of an effort that must have been. ABC still thrives today, of course. Dad founded the chapter in Radnor, Pennsylvania. Sounds like a small thing. What he had to do was recruit a board of directors, raise enough money to buy a house in Wayne, Pa that the kids could live in. Then he recruited a ‘Resident Director’ which is the young family who resided in the house and looked after the kids. ABC kids were identified as high-school age boys and girls with potential, but with tough circumstances based on where they live and their family life. ABC gave them ‘a better chance’ by inviting them to move to Wayne (or a number of other chapters), live together and go to school in our rich kids’ town.

Wow, what an impact this made. As a youngster (maybe I was 10-12 yrs old?) I caught on to what Dad was doing and got to know the kids – all of whom were black or brown. On the weekends, one of them would stay at our house and we’d shoot hoops together in the driveway. I still keep in touch with one of the graduates. His name is Steve Rogers. Steve came from Chicago – not the nice part of town – and he went from ABCs Radnor High School to Williams College. He got his MBA at Harvard, made a reasonable fortune as an entrepreneur and then became a professor, first at Northwestern and then at Harvard Business School. Professor Rogers was a very cool guy. And he loved my Dad (who has passed away now, sadly) and gives him some credit for sponsoring a means for getting his life together. Steve has just written a book –

So that’s how my appreciation for ‘giving back’ started out. More about what I have actually been involved in as an adult in the next post…