What Makes My Heart Sing

I have been tagged by Tina Su at "Think Simple. Be Decisive" to share what cause makes my heart sing, for Alex Shalman's Caring Compassion Charity project.

The cause I want to tell you about is Impact Austin.  This is a women's philanthropy group where each member contributes $1000 per year toward large grants awarded in our community. Every penny of that money goes directly to the grants-- we raise administrative funds separately.  I wrote a post back in June telling about how we gave away $416,000 this year.  It is an amazing, powerful way for people to come together to make a BIG difference.  We narrow down our grant applicants to finalists and we have an annual voting dinner to decide who is awarded the money. Each year we have given $100,000+ grants towards literacy, health care, girls' empowerment, job creation and training, animal control, and several other very visible projects we can see happening right in our city.  Every time I go to this event there is not a dry eye in the house.  Our money has made a huge impact on many people's lives already, and they come to the voting dinner and tell us what it's meant to them.  Now there is a spinoff group called "Girls Giving Grants," for girls in grades 8-12 who contribute $100 each.  It is incredible!  Click here for a list of resources for starting your own group like this one.  Big, grateful hugs to Rebecca Powers for starting this group here.  She is an inspiration!!

I am tagging my blogger friends to hear what their causes are:

Susan Sabo, Productivity Café.
John Trosko, Organizing LA.
Monica Ricci, Your Life. Organized.
Ariane Benefit, Neat & Simple Living.
Dr. Amie Ragan, Psychology of Clutter.

Comments

[Dr. Amie Ragan]

Lorie,

What wonderful work you are doing. Thank you for tagging me. I'll work up my post. My cause is the Chronic Hoarding Assistance Project. It is a non-profit that I am working on starting with a group of charity minded people in Birmingham. The idea is utilize available community and health care resources to help hoarders get well. We will also coordinate volunteers to help clear out the excess when people are emotionally stable enough to let it go without filling it back up. I'll keep you up on our progress as we develop.

Amie