October is Give month at Microsoft, where employees share ideas for ways to give back time and money to charitable causes important to them. There are events and auctions throughout the month, hosted by passionate employees.
This tradition has helped us as a family define our approach to giving, which in turn clarifies what we value - and that’s the topic for today’s post.
Mind The Beet and the Microsoft Giving Auction: If you are a Microsoft employee, consider bidding on an MTB-themed auction item that we are offering! If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about how toadvocate for yourself or synthesize your career lessons, this item is for you. We’ll feature your career story in this newsletter and you’ll work with us on shaping your message and lessons learned. Bidding ends October 26th. 💵 Bid Now!
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Our Approach to Giving
When we graduated from college, we were both adrift when it came to donating money or time to charitable causes. It was supposed to feel good giving money to charity – but exactly how good should it feel? Where should the ideas on where to give come from? How accountable should we feel for ensuring the investment achieved concrete outcomes?
If you feel something similar, that’s perfectly natural. Just like learning a trade, it takes time, experience, and a network to develop a philosophy and intuition. Here are a few big things our family has learned about our charity as we intuit our way through this:
🤗 Ideas come frompersonal connections. Our donations say a lot about who we care about, as often it’s about supporting a friend or colleague. It takes time to go through enough life to build a network and deal together with crises, but it’ll happen naturally if you are curious and open and care about your community.
🧠 + 💖 We use charity to define what we value. Giving reflects what we value in this world. It’s a cerebral and emotional exercise that helps us make simple statements about the world as we wish it to be. We’ve found it helpful to separate the assessment of impact (will this gift make a difference? Is it enough?) from just the simple desired-world state (does this cause reflect the change we wish to see?). Like the famous parable of the beach full of starfish, change starts with clarity of conviction.
📢 We talk about why we give. We used to find it hard to talk about donations, as there is a bit of taboo when it comes to talking about things related to money. But it doesn’t matter if you donate $5 or $5 million, 5 hours or 500. Because our giving is a statement of what we value, when we talk about it, we do so with passion – why should we hide that? Hearing about people’s own giving stories over the years is how we’ve forged some deep connections.
Our Biggest Causes
There is no better way to get to know our family than to learn about the causes we’ve supported this year. The framework used here to describe this might be a useful model for your own thoughts on giving:
Define the area of giving
Pick a tentpole charity for the area based on both personal connection and what it says about the world you want
You’ll probably end up with a few other charities along the same theme
🩺 Health: ALS
What is it: ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that slowly robs the body of its ability to walk, speak, swallow, and breathe. Every 90 minutes, another person in this country is diagnosed with the disease.
What it says about the world we want: In just the past eight months, two treatments for ALS have been approved – that’s three in the past six years! We want to live in a world where science is supported and medical breakthroughs and research is funded to support
Why it’s personal: This week Helen participated in a walk to defeat ALS alongside with 30+ other moms in my neighborhood because one of our own has been afflicted with this awful disease.
Childhood cancer has touched the lives of some of the people we are closest to and we continue to prioritize supporting groundbreaking research in this area as Research Champions for Seattle Children’s Hospital
BloodworksNW - We both donate blood and money to support our region
Pink Boat Regatta - This charity raises money to beat Women’s Breast Cancer - a cause near and dear to our hearts this year as a close friend has been re-diagnosed with breast cancer.
What is it: A large public university that is the engine of economic opportunity for tens of thousands of people every year.
What it says about the world we want: Public universities are one of the biggest crown jewels of the United States and their unique role in at-scale impact of economic opportunity is unparalleled. Their function as an epicenter of culture, research, and learning only happens with continued investment and support.
Why it’s personal: UCLA was foundational for us. Not only is it where we met each other and some of our closest friends, but it is also where we both came of age and developed our worldviews. It was a step-function experience for both of us. Our giving is focused on scholarships and particular programs that we benefited from when we were students, like the Engineering Student Projects fund. This is the most “Pay it Forward” aspect of our giving.
What is it: This land trust champions conservation and community forests in Eastern Washington – helping protect rivers for salmon restoration or forests for hiking and recreational use.
What it says about the world we want: As Global Warming becomes one of the defining issues of our time and more people live in the state of Washington, our forests and natural spaces will need people to stand up for them. Local and contextual action will be key.
Why it’s personal: This land trust was involved in purchasing a piece of forest near one of our favorite State Parks (Lake Wenatchee). The forest was about to be clear-cut and then sold. The land trust was able to put together a local and national coalition to purchase it at a fair market value from the logging company. While we’ve donated to more global conservation groups in the past, we’ve found a lot more meaning by going local.
Washington Trails Association has done more to create accessibility to nature in this state than any other organization.
The Arboretum Foundation stewards the park where we went on hundreds of walks when our kids were infants, creating a deep connection to the park.
📰 Free Press: KUOW
What is it: Our local public radio
What it says about the world we want: Living in a society with the free flow of high-quality news and information is a privilege. Most people in the world today do not enjoy this privilege and it’s worth fighting and protecting. Recent events have made this all the more important.
Why it’s personal: KUOW was one of our first charities that had such a clear cause and effect to the giving. We experienced the collective benefit of giving every morning and afternoon on our commute (back when that was a thing!). KUOW makes us smarter and so it’s a gift of gratitude most of all.
Adam talks about his entire reading habits and approach to quality journalism in My Information Diet.
🎭 Culture and Sports: Studio East Training for the Performing Arts
What is it: Since 1992, Studio East inspires young people to become confident, compassionate, and responsible through training in the art and craft of theater.
What it says about the world we want: Every generation needs to set the tone between art and science. As we both get older, we’ve appreciated art as a balancing force to some of today’s biggest technological ills and an aspect of our lives that engenders introspection.
Why it’s personal: Our youngest daughter aspires to be an actress and Studio East has been an avenue for her to explore that passion.
Adam has recently joined the Bellevue Arts Museum (BAM) as a board member, as supporting the arts and local artists in our community makes for a more vibrant Eastside.
Theater has been a big part of our lives - both supporting the San Diego arts and Los Angeles arts (where we grew up respectively), we now pass it on and support our local 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle.
Wave Aquatics - A big part of our oldest child’s life is swimming so we support the program that she participates in year-round.
⚖ Justice: Seattle Holocaust Center for Humanity
What is it: A local organization dedicated to fighting hate in all forms and focused on educating students, teachers, and the public about the dangers of intolerance through the lens of history.
What it says about the world we want: “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” – MLK Jr. encapsulates the side of history we wish to be on. Progress is key to the industry we’ve chosen but it’s equally important we make progress on social justice, tolerance, and civil society in equal step with new tech.
Why it’s personal: A few years ago, a work colleague of ours was taking a civic leave of absence to work with this organization and a few others. We thought it was so cool to see someone in our network lean in deeply to causes, interrupting his busy life in a meaningful way.
This year, we’ve also prioritized the ACLU as we feel the need to ensure important battles being fought in U.S. courts land towards the arc of justice.
The Obama Foundation has a focus on providing support for young changemakers in America.
🆘 Safety Net: Mary’s Place
What is it: Mary’s Place provides shelters and services to help women, children, and families on their journey out of homelessness.
What it says about the world we want: Homelessness is both a local and national issue and solutions require a mix of public and private partnership. It is not enough to just say that our tax dollars will solve this problem. This is less about changing the world and more about every generation finding the humanity to invest in the safety net.
Why it’s personal: Mary’s Place has long been a favorite charity in many Microsoft Giving campaign events during October and it was via those events that we were both exposed to the organization.
Hopelink and The Sophia Way are two other similar medium-sized charities in this space that we support.
The United Way – King County has long been a strong regional partner on this problem. We are leery often of the high overhead costs of the larger mega-charities, but this is one of our exceptions given the need for big-picture leadership and regional solutions.
👩 Women Empowerment: Girl Scouts
What is it: The Girl Scouts organization prepares girls to empower themselves and promotes compassion, courage, confidence, character, leadership, entrepreneurship, and active citizenship through activities involving camping, community service, learning first aid, and earning badges by acquiring practical skills.
What it says about the world we want: A lot of progress has been made (especially in the United States), but the work continues. As we raise two strong women in our household, we want them to help build a world where they can be anything they put their minds to and create this reality for themselves.
Why we give: Our youngest daughter got involved in Daisies last year and we can really see how this is becoming to be a formative experience for her. This year, Helen has also stepped up to lead her troop as a way to get involved in the community and in our youngest daughter’s life.
Society of Women Engineers (swe.org) - A famous organization, especially on college campuses, for giving a voice to women engineers and a conduit for leadership opportunities.
Girls Who Code is building a pipeline of future female engineers.
We discovered a great project called Vital Voices this year that champions the unique impact and role that women leaders can have on global problems.
🐶 Animal Rescue: AARF
What is it: Animal Allies Rescue Foundation (AARF) - dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and adoption of abandoned, abused, homeless, and senior dogs and cats.
What it says about the world we want: Dogs have brought so much joy to our lives as we were growing up and as a core value, we try to model to our children that we should lend support to those who need it most - and abandoned animals are incredibly vulnerable and deserve support.
Why we give: A close friend of ours is a volunteer and a huge advocate for dogs - not only is she actively involved with the organization but she and her husband foster dogs in need of homes on a regular basis.
Woodland Park Zoo has been on our donation list every year - we love to go to the zoo and support its efforts to create a sustainable future for wildlife.
🚨 Crisis Response: Lahaina Fire
What is it: This August, a fire destroyed most of the old town of Lahaina in Maui, fanned by strong winds from Hurricane Dora. This devastation came on rapidly impacting not just the town of Lahaina, but Maui as a whole and its heavily reliant tourism economy.
What it says about the world we want: The world is not that big of a place anymore and an impact to a community in Maui felt like it hit very close to home. This almost felt like a neighborly donation and we want to live in a world where we look out for our neighbors.
Why it’s personal: Maui holds a special place for our family as it has been our annual vacation destination for a few years now. Lahaina has been both a place where we have stayed (for two weeks one year) as well as a place we visit annually. So seeing places with so many of our memories burn to ashes hit really close to home.
Rural emergency services play an especially critical role in a large part of the United States, outside major cities. Lake Wenatchee Fire & Rescue is one that we support given our connection to the area.
One More Potential Path to Epic: A DAF
For those later in their career who are looking for a more lasting and bigger way of having an impact, we wanted to share one thing that we did as a family a couple years ago: we established the Harmetz Family’s Donor Advised Fund (DAF).
DAF’s can be used for many reasons but our DAF’s purpose is to put money away every year with the goal of being able to make a single, large donation to a charity upon our retirement. We don’t know the organization or cause we wish to support yet, but we were intrigued by the notion of being able to have a singularly large impact vs. ongoing yearly support.
DAF’s can be set up with most financial advisors. Think of it as an investment account where proceeds can only be used for charitable causes. While there is a management fee on the money, there are several advantages to a DAF:
You can transfer unsold stock into them to avoid paying capital gains on profits.
You get to deduct the funds when you put them into the account, not when you spend. So you can add funds during high tax rate years or otherwise arbitrage over the years.
Profits from investments in the account grow tax-free, although can only be used to donate.
For those with matching gift programs via their work, you get matched by your company upon withdrawal/donation, not when you put the money into the DAF.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully this posts helps you get to know us a little better as you learn about what we value and some of the awesome people we’ve met in this world. The point here is to inspire – feel free to leverage this framework for your own plan even if you support different causes or worldviews.
This framework can be used no matter how much you have or want to give and we aren’t nearly so formal as this write-up implies (indeed, the act of writing this post was 10x more organization and synthesis to our giving than we’ve had before). Just get started.
