Diane Fong, Executive Director of the Bay Area Community Foundation, was this week's guest speaker. She began her presentation by sharing she had a love for music and words which she later passed onto her 3 children. After reciting some of their favorite words, Diane then proclaimed one word she did not 'love' was "philanthropy", but that she loved the concept as she would later come to understand it.
"Let's think about philanthropy like this: the human impulse to show compassion, to progress, to see fairness, to connect with others, and I'm also going to add to love. When I think about philanthropy like that I realize what an incredibly awesome word it is," Diane said.
Having spent all of her adult career in the philanthropic sector Diane eventually found her way to the Bay Area Community Foundation where she says, "Where every single thing we do is about philanthropy, and that it is such an incredibly rich and wonderful opportunity to go to work and be surrounded by philanthropists."
Diane went on to say that one of the three things she's learned while working in the philanthropic sector is that "We are all better together. The reason that is so critical is that the power of a group to do remarkable things hinges on our ability to pull together."
The second and third lessons Diane said she learned was that "Success and change are rooted in two things: Community partnerships that are built on relationships which are rooted in trust."
To make our communities better Diane said, "We will have to collaborate with people across sectors with people we may not have collaborated with before. We will have to work with people who may not think like us, look like us, and who certainly may not act like us. In order to be able to do that there needs to be a relationship, and there needs to be trust."
"Trust is choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions," Diane explained.
Diane listed the four main components of trust: sincerity (truthfulness), reliability, competence, and care (do you have the other person's interest in mind as well as your own).
"At the end of the day we've been faced with a series of choices. Life really is all about choices. So, do we chose to get involved or do we chose to turn away? Do we chose to move forward or do we chose to hold back?"
Diane concluded her presentation by saying, "I hope that you all decide to step up. I hope that you discover, if you don't know already, what makes your heart sing and that you will unleash your inner philanthropist."
For more information on how you can unleash your inner philanthropist please visit the Bay Area Community Foundation website at http://www.bayfoundation.org/.
