The group's annual awards gala returned to an in-person gathering this month after a two-year hiatus because of the pandemic.

Plus, AFP Detroit also hosted a series of round tables on the impact of philanthropy and how it's changing with the times.

Detroit Public Television is really proud to partner with AFP for the third year to create the vision for this National Philanthropy Day special.

Over the next 90 minutes, we are gonna bring you portions of these really important round table conversations with the city's top humanitarian leaders.

Plus, we're gonna introduce you to this year's AFP National Philanthropy Day Award recipients.

The breakfast round table was held at the Durfee Innovation Society, which was founded by the nonprofit organization Life Remodeled.

AFP Greater Detroit chapter president, Melissa Weisse, opened the event, followed by remarks from Life Remodeled CEO, Chris Lambert, and AFP National Philanthropy Day co-chair, Steve Ragan.

- Our goal has been to come out of the pandemic and expand the conversation about the many humanitarian voices and philanthropic activity in our community.

Hence, the birth of this event.

And I want to thank our vice president of National Philanthropy Day, Paula Rodriguez.

Paula, if you're here, thank you.

I know you're here somewhere.

(audience applauds) And I want to thank our co-chairs of National Philanthropy Day, Eileen Savage from Cranbrook Educational Community (audience applauds) and Steve Ragan from College Possible.

(audience applauds) - Welcome to the Durfee Innovation Society, home to 39 of Detroit's best and brightest nonprofits who are collaborating to be better together and making lasting impact in the surrounding community.

Some of you today may not know who Life Remodeled is, so I would answer that question, if you were wondering, like this, in that we would say there's a lot of talk but not enough walk when it comes to revitalizing Detroit neighborhoods and we are absolutely convinced that Detroiters have all the talent they need, but many don't have access to all the opportunities they deserve.

And so what Life Remodeled does is we repurpose vacant school buildings into one-stop hubs of opportunity for entire families to thrive.

We fill these buildings with the best and brightest nonprofits who are moving the needle on jobs, youth programs, and health, wellness, and community resources.

And those three categories all came from this community and the students next door when we asked what kinds of increased opportunities do you want?

- In 1986, Ronald Reagan proclaimed November 15th as National Philanthropy Day to recognize donors and volunteers across the country that helped in all of our communities.

Six years later, Detroit started organizing its own celebration and it quickly grew to be one of the largest in the United States.

We had a lot of pride in that event.

Every year our National Philanthropy Day dinner sold out and we honored our community's great leaders, volunteers, and donors.

Two years ago, we realized that we couldn't put on the same sold-out dinner and it gave us a chance to address some tough questions.

We loved the event we were putting on, but we'd always struggled with how we could bring more diverse voices and organizations to the National Philanthropy Day table and how we could also have a deeper discussion about philanthropy.

So we reached out to a number of partners, the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, the Ralph Wilson, Jr.

Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and Detroit Public Television, as well as some of our longtime supporters of National Philanthropy Day, Wayne State University, Beaumont, Plante Moran, and the Non-Profit Personnel Network.

And they helped us come up with an idea to turn National Philanthropy Day into a TV program where we could have a deeper discussion and do more storytelling about the work of the people we were honoring.

This year, we were excited to bring back the dinner, but we also recognized that not all of our non-profits were healthy financially and maybe they couldn't participate in the dinner in the same way they had.

So we wanted to do something that was more open to our membership and the community and we also wanted to still continue that deeper discussion about philanthropy.

And so every, I can't thank everyone enough, the panel and the moderators that have come together, and the sponsors, to make this possible so that National Philanthropy Day is more meaningful and reaches more people.

- The first round table explored the changing role of philanthropy in Greater Detroit.

The panel was moderated by Shawn Wilson of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southeastern Michigan, and it featured Wendy Batiste-Johnson from the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Laura Grannemann with Rocket Community Fund, Dawn Lyman of the Barton Malow Foundation, Angelique Power from the Skillman Foundation, and Terry Rhadigan with General Motors.

- I wanna kick things off because you guys are doing amazing, amazing work in the field.

So I wanna give you a moment to brag on what you're doing.

So we can just start with Laura, work our way down.

But, you know, give us a little, you know, insight into what you're focused on and then brag a little bit about something that you've recently done that you feel is really driving impact.

- So I lead the Gilbert Family Foundation and the Rocket Community Fund.

The Rocket Community Fund is really deeply invested in housing stability here in Detroit and also across the country.

And then we work very collaboratively with the Gilbert Family Foundation to execute a $500 million commitment that we made to the city of Detroit, the people of the city of Detroit, over the course of the next 10 years.

So we're very collaborative together, working towards one bigger-picture vision.

Collectively, we work on stabilizing housing first, and so we look at specifically a group of people who are at risk of displacement in the city of Detroit, either by tax foreclosure or from eviction.

And then we actually stay connected to those families over the course of the next year, two years, three years, and make some follow-on investments based on the data that we see coming out of that group of people.