A Few Stories from the 50% Club
Hal Taussig — age 80
I was a Colorado cattle rancher until age 33, school teacher and college professor until age 45, and then creatively unemployed until age 50, when my wife, Norma, and I founded a travel company called Idyll, Ltd. Idyll serves Americans who want to travel to Europe in more meaningful ways than they can get from the standard superficial tour. We have worked over thirty years to build a model company. Employees are provided above average salaries and benefits, including two to four weeks in Europe to "consume the product we produce." Our office is run on only renewable energy. Plus almost all of the profits go to the Idyll Development Foundation; my wife and I have been living for years just on social security checks.
The Idyll Development Foundation provides low-income business loans to the poor. The foundation has loaned about $3 million since 1993. 50% has been local, in the urban Philadelphia area, 30% national, including Native American reservations, and 20% international. Having lost about $1 million in bad loans, we're trying to learn to be smarter at business. But we're willing to take big risks, and the meaning of my life is about what we're doing to make people's lives better. People praise me for my generosity, but frankly, it's my own way of getting kicks out of life.
Idyll Development Foundation: untours.com/idf
Genevieve Vaughan — age 64
I was born in Texas in 1939. Married an Italian and lived in Italy from 1963-1983. Got a divorce in 1978. When I moved back to Texas, I had already decided to start giving my money to social change projects because I had developed a theory about gift giving as an alternative economic paradigm based on women's values. People did not seem to understand the theory, so I decided to practice it. I asked Dad how much I had, and he said at the time it was 23 million. Since 1983 I have given almost all of that money to create social change, to other people's projects, as well as my own. I created a multicultural, all-women activist private operating foundation — The Foundation for a Compassionate Society, which I fully funded for many years. I feel that as a society we are on the edge of the abyss and we have to do something quick, risk, be a different kind of model. In fact, for environmental reasons I recently sold all the oil and gas investments I had control over. Now I am putting the assets I have left into a partnership with my daughters and am 'retiring' (Though I am still on the boards of two family foundations). I intend to spend the rest of my life writing and speaking about the gift economy.
Find out more at gift-economy.com
Carol Newell — in her 40's
Twelve years ago, I decided to use my $25 million inheritance to help create a more just and sustainable economy in the region I love, British Columbia. I assembled a team of exceptional people to implement a model I call "whole-portfolio activation to mission" — that is, taking wealth to its greatest capacity to stimulate change. The money has more than doubled as I've put it to use, and its impact has brought me enormous satisfaction.
The model, which I've started to promote to others, has three components:
- through investment: to seed and grow businesses with innovative entrepreneurs who share one's vision and values
- through philanthropy: to conserve land and forests, promote environmental sustainability, and develop leadership skills based in partnership and interconnectedness and
- to focus these interwoven efforts in one geographical area.
In retrospect, we've discovered another important component of the model is to provide stable, accessible and intriguing gathering spaces to anchor and strengthen a community's overlapping circles. (See RenewalPartners.org and endswell.org for more.)
After a decade of ultra-anonymity, I now feel compelled to encourage others with wealth to activate their fortunes with similar passion, scale, and strategic focus. I speak to groups of philanthropists, telling my story, and co-host a gathering called Play BIG!
So many of us are hemmed in by traditional rules about money, both spoken and unspoken: you should always maximize profits and build capital; you should never touch the principal, nor talk openly about money, nor do business with friends, nor mix business with charitable concerns. When we escape these limiting precepts, those of us with significant discretionary capital can have the greatest legacy imaginable: to dramatically accelerate innovations in sustainability and social justice. We can begin to reframe the economy to reflect our values instead of our values being driven by the economy.
Jamie Schweser — age 32
I grew up in the punk rock scene. Our slogan was D.I.Y. — Do It Yourself. Since I was 16, I've known that if we want the world to be a more fair place with justice for everybody, we have to do it ourselves.
When I lived in New Orleans, I tutored kids in my neighborhood. Every kid I knew had at least one family member in prison, and going by the statistics for Black males in our neighborhood, most would end up in prison by the age that white kids from Uptown would graduate from college. One kid, Jerry, loved playing music. He'd get the other kids in the neighborhood to form into a marching band and march around my yard. When he was 15, he got busted for drugs and faced 6 years in prison. I ended up going to court with Jerry's mom 8 times, and because a white person who could read showed up, the judge let him out on a probationary program.
When my parents sold their business, I got a million dollars, giving me opportunities they never had. But it's more than I need, which doesn't make me any happier. I give 75% of the money I get from my family to social justice work. I put $500,000 into the Beyond Prisons Fund, and I work with an advisory board of 8 long-time activists to promote alternatives to incarceration.
I'm the Donor Education Coordinator at Resource Generation, a national organization working with progressive young people with wealth. I used to worry that my story might intimidate people. I don't want people to think I'm pushing an agenda. But I think it makes it easier for people to understand what my work at RG is about.