‘How Change Happens’

“Wow Tom! What a great blog post (Giving With Warm Hands, Part I). So many giving people out there, love to read stuff like this… Btw, wish I lived closer, I’d be coming to your fiesta!!!” Jennifer Sciortino 

Keep the calls and emails coming. 

As Jennifer’s laudatory email arrived, so did an email from Darcy Finlay at the Marin Community Foundation. Finlan’s email bounced to life with the following… 

Don’t you love the statement, ‘the first thing they change is themselves’?

MCF is a leader in community building and supports a world community (geriatric research) as well as providing support for local organizations (the Youth In Arts and the Italian Street Painting Festival, which is coming up the weekend of June 12)…

Continuing the theme of giving with warm hands, building community and change, my first big fundraising success developed from my column in the Marin Independent Journal about Habitat for the Humanity… which was read by some major players at GreenPoint Mortgage… who decided to donate the proceeds of a wine auction to Habitat…

The talk became, ‘So, you do fundraising, don’t you?’ … Voila, I was recruited to help run a croquet tournament for Make A Wish and we did a weekend that netted over $1M for an organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening diseases… 

After that, Slide Ranch (where I spent 7 years as a member of the board of directors)… the last fundraiser there, at the suggestion of Doug Fergusion, was a hike from the Mountain Play, accompanied by bagpipes, to a barbeque hosted by Alice Waters …. ahhhhhh … fondly remembered as a group of us went to see this year’s total fun Mountain Play, ‘Guys and Dolls’ and did a double Stinson Beach hike (down the Matt Davis trail to the Parkside Café in Stinson for breakfast and then up the Steep Ravine trail in time for the play).

Around twelve years ago Sue Beltran and Gerri Dexter recruited me for Hospice of Marin (now Hospice by The Bay) and soon thereafter Mary ‘you don’t say no to Mary’ Taverna asked me to lunch at Fish in Sausalito … where, then and there, on the spot, I became co-chair of the hospice Gala committee with the always divinely dressed diva, Fariba Zolnasr of Old Republic Title Company … which ultimately led to my work as a patient care volunteer at hospice

Community. It’s a good thing. Support it. It’ll change your life!

Upcoming community project: Roundabouts on Bolinas Ave, the border between Ross and San Anselmo. A preliminary rendering by award-winning architect Alex Riley of Inverness is being readied for presentation to town councils by Ross neighbor/activist John Martin. (A beautiful roundabout would slow traffic at critical junctures and provide a measure of safety for our neighbors, including Cedars, Branson School and the thousands of bike riders and hikers who live here).

See? Community building is a beautiful thing.

Real Estate Planning from the Heart Part I – Giving With Warm Hands
Real Estate Planning from the Heart Part II – Giving With Warm Hands
Real Estate Planning from the Heart Part III – Giving With Warm Hands

Posted by:  Tom Verkozen