- This month on The Spark, our theme is "Investing for Community Impact".

We'll learn more about an organization working with donors, professional advisors and nonprofits to help strengthen our community through strategic philanthropy and community giving, a nonprofit enhancing the quality of life for thousands of seniors and a nonprofit social enterprise using tea to help empower women in Orange Mound.

We'll also share a special moment from our Spark Awards 2021.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement and leading by example to power the good.

Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The Spark.

- (male announcer) Additional funding for The Spark is provided by EcOp, The Memphis Zoo, My Town Movers, My Town Roofing, My Town Miracles, and by Meritan.

- Ever been excited by a new idea, inspired by watching someone lead by example?

When we talk about creating change, we start by sharing the stories of everyday heroes who are making a difference in their own way so we can learn and do the same.

I'm Jeremy Park, and this is The Spark.

They're strengthening our community through strategic philanthropy.

We're here with the President of the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, Bob Fockler.

Bob, let's start out.

Give us a quick history for the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis.

- The Community Foundation actually has been around since 1969, and I think the history of it is actually pretty important because it was a setup response to the sanitation strike.

As I say, we get a lot of bad things came out of the sanitation strike.

We did a good job of tearing up the city, and coming out of it, civic and community leaders got together and said what do we do to pick up the pieces?

And one of the things they did, they met with leaders from other cities.

And one of the things they decided was to try to drive charitable giving and try to encourage and improve support and grow charitable giving in Memphis, and the best vehicle for that is a community foundation.

So we were founded in 1969.

Our primary job over the last 50 years has been managing charitable funds for individuals, families and organizations.

We currently manage about 1,200 funds.

It looks like 1,200 private foundations under 1 roof.

Last year we gave away about $158 million out of those funds, so it's by far the largest grant maker in the state of Tennessee or in the Mid-South, and it just shows the collective impact of a thousand families coming together and pooling their resources and making a difference in the Mid-South community.

- There are a lot of advantages of working with and through you all to support charitable giving.

Talk about some of those advantages in terms of ease and convenience and the ability to exponentially grow your investment and impact over time.

- The easiest thing to understand is just the convenience of letting somebody else manage the back office for you, and all you have to worry about is where you want to make grants.

So a lot of what we do is take in gifts, invest the funds while they're with us and then handle the check writing fund on the outgoing side.

There's also a lot of significant tax advantages in working in an organized charitable organization.

like the Community Foundation.

There's gifts to the Community Foundation, because we're a 501(c)(3) public charity, are available for the greatest possible tax deduction.

But more importantly for people that are very engaged in their charitable giving, do a lot of charitable giving during the years, if they haven't funded the Community Foundation, they can put the money in, get a tax deduction, it grows tax-free.

So all of the money, all the income that they earn while it's here, they'll never pay taxes on.

As opposed to if they were just making charitable gifts out of their checking account or out of their own investments, they would end up paying taxes on the income of the dollars that they were gonna end up giving to charity anyway.

- One of the other things that I love is that you are really engaging all ages, and you have a program, GIVE 365 that basically is a dollar a day, and you're engaging everyone in the learning process of becoming a philanthropist but also too how to use those dollars together to make an even exponentially larger impact.

So talk about GIVE 365 and how you're really encouraging philanthropy at all ages.

- Yeah, GIVE 365, we started about 11 years ago.

I think when we started it, I think we were really trying to get young professionals involved in philanthropy, just trying to find an avenue that has fairly low entry bar, three hundred and sixty-five dollars a year or a dollar a day.

It has worked.

I think we currently have about 270 families that are involved in GIVE 365, but interestingly, about 3/4 of them are in their 20s, thirties and forties, but about 25% of them are retirees.

We didn't really say GIVE 365, you have to be this tall to ride the ride.

We just sort of threw it out there and we found that it did resonate with young professionals, but it also resonated with retirees that had some time.

It's very participatory philanthropy.

The members pay in, but then they get to decide every year what the theme for their grant making is.

They get to review grant applications and they all get to vote on where the grants go.

So it is very participatory, sort of roll up your sleeves, get involved in the community and get involved with philanthropy.

- You all have played a very active role in the COVID relief efforts.

Talk about working with the city and the COVID relief efforts.

- Jeremy, that's been a pretty important part of our evolution because as I said, our history came from really just managing charitable funds for individuals and families, sort of just doing whatever they needed us to do.

I think that we measure our community impact sort of by the collective efforts of all of those thousand families, but we are the community's foundation.

We do have responsibility directly to the community as well.

Gosh, it's hard to believe now, but since we've all lost the last two years of our lives, but in March of 2020, I was contacted by Doug McGowen with the City of Memphis, and he and Shelby County leaders had been meeting, and they sort of knew what the gathering storm of COVID was looking like and they knew there were gonna be a lot of government dollars available for COVID relief, but they also knew that that wasn't gonna be enough.

So they asked us as a philanthropic leader to pull together private capital to deal with COVID relief.

We had never done anything like that before.

We had never been involved in a community-wide appeal before, but I did agree.

Our board actually got on board with it pretty heavily, and same thing.

We sort of threw the doors open and asked the community to participate.

We asked our donors to participate.

We had obviously good contacts with them, but in the succeeding year and a half to two years, we raised $14.5 million for COVID relief.

We were meeting every week at the very beginning, so we put dollars out.

Dollars were coming in every week.

We were putting dollars out every week.

We did that for about two or three months, and then we went into sort of a recovery and resiliency mode.

We've had a couple different phases of the Mid-South COVID-19 Regional Response Fund, but one of the important things to know is we took in $14.5 million and we granted out $14.5 million.

Every dollar that came in our door went out our door for COVID relief.

- You all have a number of resources that you put out for the community to tap into and use.

Talk about some of those resources and obviously where we can go to find it, so your website, social media, and more.

Where do we go to find all this valuable information?

- Our website is cfgm.org.

We're available on all social media.

One of the important resources that we have though is livegivemidsouth.org, which is a website we created about five years ago to be a resource on community needs.

So it has tons and tons of data on community needs.

It starts with census data, but it has health department and other data on there, everything that anybody would need to know about kind of what the issues are in Memphis, but then perhaps even more importantly, it's a comprehensive nonprofit database as well.

- Well, you definitely do make it easy and you make it impactful, and so greatly appreciate all you and your amazing team do for our community, and thank you for coming on the show.

- Thanks, Jeremy.

Happy to do it.

Really appreciate what you guys do.

[upbeat music] - They're a nonprofit enhancing the quality of life for thousands of seniors.

We're joined by the Executive Director for Golden Cross Senior Ministries, Kristi Owens, and let's start.

Give us a little bit of context for not only Golden Cross Senior Ministries, but Wesley Living as well.

So there's a nice collaboration and tie in there, but give us some history and some context.

- Wonderful, well thank you so much.

2022 is an exciting year 'cause it is the 25th year of ministry for Golden Cross Senior Ministries.

We are a nonprofit serving about 2,200 seniors throughout West Tennessee, Murray, Kentucky and Jonesboro.

We work with an organization, a management company called Wesley Living, who manages 31 affordable low-income senior housing areas.

- And so the individuals that you have a chance to serve and work with, these are seniors.

Give us a little bit, just kind of paint the picture, a little illustration on what they're going through, what they've gone through.

Give us some of their background and story.

- Most of the senior residents that we work with, that we serve, live at or right below the national poverty line.

The communities that they live in through Wesley Living are income-based, and so a third of their income is used towards their rent.

You can imagine if you're only bringing in about $700 a month, 1/3 of that towards your rent, there's just not a whole lot left.

So that's where Golden Cross Senior Ministry steps in to help fill that gap, that void from month to month.

- I know that when you talk about what you do on the programmatic side, physical products and goods and food and furniture and all sorts of things kind of play into that, but go ahead and dive into the programs on your end.

- Definitely.

Golden Cross Senior Ministries is able to provide funding for social and recreational activities for the communities, basically anything that would help enhance their lives.

Without funding from Golden Cross, none of these activities or programs would be able to take place due to HUD regulations.

So we're able to provide funding for educational programming, for social activities such as bingo and birthday parties and arts and crafts.

We even provide funding for field trips where the residents can go to a matinee or go to a farm or go to a museum.

You know, anything that's really going to get them out and get them social and keep them active.

- You also have a move-in kit, and so talk about the move-in kit and what that entails and what that means.

- We do.

Sometimes we have seniors that come to one of the communities that fall into a homeless category, and homeless is a wide definition.

A senior can be marked homeless because they've been removed from their home due to inhabitable conditions.

They are living with family members and the family members say sorry mom and dad or grandma, you've gotta go.

They've been living in nursing homes and the nursing homes say sorry, you have to go.

So those residents are marked as homeless, and when they come to one of the communities, they usually have nothing.

That's kind of hard to imagine what nothing would look like for somebody who's 74, 80 years old, but they really have nothing to their names because they've been living in other conditions.

So Golden Cross Senior Ministries is able to provide them with a move-in kit, which has everything that someone would need to restart in life, pots and pans and dishes and towels and bedding and cleaning supplies.

We're also able to provide the residents with brand new furniture.

We have a tremendous partnership with Hollywood Furniture and Hardware Company down on Hollywood and Chelsea.

Amazing, amazing company.

We want to make sure that the stuff that we're providing for the residents are the same things that you and I would take into our own homes.

We want to make sure that we are treating everyone that we serve with dignity and respect.

- Obviously, financial contributions are key.

You also have other ways that we can help, kind of like with the furniture.

So how else can the community help, especially through in-kind donations?

- Definitely.

We accept donations of daily-use needed items for the residents we serve, as well as anything that would enhance their lives.

So paper products, cleaning supplies, incontinence wear.

Anything that we would use on a day to day basis, and what we do with those is most of the time we use them as bingo prizes.

Who doesn't like a good game of bingo, but also who doesn't like to win something?

And so this way the residents are getting out and they're socializing, but they're also getting what they need without having directly to come out and ask for those items.

- Wrap up with contact information and website.

Where do we go to learn more about Golden Cross Senior Ministries?

- Definitely.

Our website is www.goldencross.org.

We're also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter, so make sure you check us out there at Golden Cross Senior Ministries, and my contact information is Kristi Owens.

My email is Kristi, K-R-I-S-T-I, at goldencross.org.

- Well Kristi, thank you for all you and your amazing team do.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you, Jeremy.

It was a pleasure.

[upbeat music] - The Spark Awards annually recognize and celebrate individuals and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the community.

The 2021 recipient of the Individual Collegiate Award is Matthew Szalaj.

- My name is Matt Szalaj.

I am a Finance Major at the University of Memphis.

I'm involved as the current Secretary of Empowered Men of Color.

Our whole focus is increasing the graduation and retention rates of minority men on campus, and so we have different events and mass meetings in which we go over different topics that are just meant to improve the quality of the students as leaders and professionals.

The other day we had an event with Empowered Men of Color and we just helped teach people how to tie ties, and seeing the excitement on people's faces once they finally figure it out, they're finally comfortable with the tie.

It seems very simple, but to see it in their faces, it's rewarding.

My parents come from very humble beginnings, and so I'm very blessed to be in the life that I have now.

I work as a commercial estate broker in the city, and so I would like to continue my work as that.

I definitely would like to continue my impact on the city.

I've been helped out a lot and guided along the way, and so it feels really good for me to be able to give back the same energy that I was receiving, basically.

Advance Memphis is a really great faith-based nonprofit in the city.

Their focus is uplifting adults in the South Memphis area through establishing economic stability.

I am involved with them.

I am a mock interviewer when they need me.

I help with their interview training, resume training, just helping the adults get back into the workforce and develop them as productive members of society.

There was one instance where I sat down with somebody that wasn't very comfortable.

After the interview, I had them go ahead and practice the interview again.

And then they went on to tell some of the workers at Advance Memphis about how being able to go over the interview again made them so much more comfortable.

They feel a lot more comfortable just in an interview setting now after everything that we discussed.

It's leaving that impact that will carry on after I'm gone.

I'm impacting others that will then impact others, and that just creates a big cycle.

I'd like to thank my parents and everything they've done, of course.

Eric Fuhrman at Car Life Commercial as well as the whole office, Ryan Wade and all of multicultural affairs at the University of Memphis, as well as the people at Advance Memphis for giving me the opportunity to volunteer with them.

[gentle music] - They are a nonprofit social enterprise using tea to empower women in Orange Mound.

We're here with Carey Moore.

She is the founder of the mission and the CEO of the business for My Cup of Tea.

And Carey, let's start out.

Give us a little bit of the backstory for you and your husband launching My Cup of Tea.

- Jeremy, my husband and I have always had a heart for women.

We have four daughters, and raising our own and then with dual parenting, it made me in awe of single-parent homes and people who were raising many girls.

And so we got involved in overseas missions primarily to get to women who were discovering the Lord, but more than that, some of the Western opportunities, and because of some reversals in health about 10 years ago, we decided to put our tent pegs down more locally.

We picked Orange Mound because that was the last community on the long list of places we thought we should go, but it was clear we should come here.

So we bought property here and began to resource women who really didn't want more than a handshake.

What we wanted was to engage some of our friends in sort of a restitution opportunity to relieve some of the gaps in our city, and we ended up quite quickly buying a tea company, which would give the stability of a job.

And then the women wanted more than the handshake.

They were willing to get to know us, and so that's how it evolved.

- You have some Memphis-inspired brews, but tease us a little bit for some of your favorite teas.

- Well, my favorite is called White Orchard, and we haven't put a Memphis label on that, and it's good hot or cold.

It's very popular, but we took the lovely teas of the company we bought and then we branded them so that Memphis could have a hook beyond barbecue sauce.

We named them Memphis Meadow and 901-of-a-Kind and Blue Suede Shoes Blueberry and Bluff City Chai and Memphis After Dark chocolate mint, so they go on and on.

We have about 10 teas that are locally described, but they are still imported from the Far East.

- Talk about the impact for the women.

Give us a little bit of illustration of what these women have gone through and are going through and how important My Cup of Tea is to them.

- There are so many vicissitudes of need in this community, and we are very specific.

We want women, we want women connected here.

The beauty, the dignity of working in something that is so fragrant and lovely and has a panache and air of elegance about it is quite lifting.

It's a beautiful thing just to walk through the door because we always have tea either brewing or being repurposed with our different bags and such.

A great pyramid of efforts is what's going on here, and having women here every day gives us the privilege of being really involved.

They've been left behind.

So many of our women have been left behind with the people that should have been bringing them up.

And so with a huge staff of volunteers and friends, we just build around each woman and try to decipher what the more core needs are.

Through grants and donations, we get a lot of extra help in trying to solve things that a single mom, certainly I would never be able to do without a network.

And so we're ministry as well as a tea company.

- Talk about how we can help, because you are more than tea and so you have different products, but give us an idea of how the community can help support your efforts.

- Well, we welcome anyone who wants to bring an idea or a skill, a resource, because we really are an anchor in this community.

I would say beyond prayer for the youth that seem to have lost their way and for so many of the issues that we read about, they're going on daily here in spades.

So we welcome that.

We want people to buy our tea because that gives us the ability to hire more women.

Our door is open.

I mean, come and shop.

We have a lovely retail area.

Our website is robust and we have very many gift items that people can use, whether they're tea drinkers or not.

We encourage people to come here and see what we're about.

Oh, and we're about to start our tea parties again, so people can sign up for those.

- Wrap up with website and your physical address where we can come see you in action.

- We are located at the corner of Sims and Carnes.

The address is 3028 Carnes.

It's right in the heart of Orange Mound.

The website is shopmycupoftea.com.

It should come up immediately when you Google it.

- Well Carey, I greatly appreciate all you and your amazing team are doing.

Thank you for coming on the show.

- Thank you Jeremy, it's a treat for me.

[upbeat music] - The simple concept of investment is dedicating an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time.

The asset could be our time, money or effort, but the key is that we are committing our resources with the aim of generating specific beneficial gains.

Investing for community impact means that we're taking both a short term and long term strategic approach to bettering our community, so the beneficial gains are geared toward improving the lives of our fellow citizens, providing opportunities for growth and development, strengthening neighborhoods and expanding social services, protecting the environment and building the infrastructure to support a thriving economy today, tomorrow and beyond.

As we saw in this month's episode, we're fortunate to have organizations like the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, Golden Cross Senior Ministries and My Cup of Tea, which are all taking a strategic approach to investing for community impact.

They're investing time, money, effort and even tea to supporting and empowering our citizens, offering wraparound support services, much needed necessities, counseling and jobs, and they're engaging the broader community to help lift and become catalysts in the process.

When we start investing for community impact, we become a spark that changes lives.

So thank you for watching The Spark.

To learn more about each of the guests, to watch past episodes and to share your stories of others leading by example, visit WKNO.org and click on the link for The Spark.

We look forward to seeing you next month, and we hope you'll continue joining with us to create a spark for the Mid-South.

- From our very beginnings in 1954, Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance has been built on the values of customer service, leading with integrity and supporting our community.

We believe in promoting the positives, encouraging engagement and leading by example to power the good.

Lipscomb and Pitts Insurance is honored to be a presenting sponsor of The Spark.

[upbeat music] [acoustic guitar chords]