Blog
Patrick Renn: Insiders Forum Interview
Be the Quarterback of your Legacy
With football season underway, I’ve been thinking a lot about the parallels between the sport and retirement, specifically legacy building. In today’s game, there’s no quarterback with a greater legacy than Tom Brady. Forgive me, Falcons fans, but it’s true, and we...
Keeping Up to Date on Your Giving Capacity
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it because I know it to be unambiguously true, and because I think potential donors always need to hear it: when we know we can do more to make an impact, we want to do more. But, how do we figure that out? It starts with...
The Challenges of Being a Grandparent
If you’re lucky enough to have been blessed with grandchildren, you know how much of a joy they can be in your life. In retirement, being involved in the lives of your grandchildren can be an uplifting role that fills us with a renewed purpose while we work through a...
Living with a Mentality of Abundance
Life is rarely a zero-sum game. On the contrary, humanity has been able to ascend as a species by being able to cooperate more effectively than any other mammal. Yet, it seems to make intuitive sense that if someone else is winning, we lose. Resources after all,...
Philanthropically Funding the Arts, Pt. 2
When funding the arts, tangible feedback is difficult to ascertain aside from naming a theatre, etc. As such, it keeps donors away. They feel like their money can make a bigger impact in other areas. That’s fine and likely true. Another major criticism of arts funding...
Philanthropically Funding the Arts, Pt. 1
My passion is philanthropy. I live by my own philosophy of charitable giving and I have dedicated my career to helping others do the same. I talk about philanthropy interchangeably with charity and giving, though I think among these concepts of generosity,...
Environmental Philanthropy, Pt. 2
In part one, we examined what makes environmental philanthropy quite different from the causes we’re most accustomed to supporting. The micro-causes within causes and the need for widespread support at the community level create challenges that many other nonprofits...
Environmental Philanthropy, Pt. 1
Traditionally, when we think of philanthropy it’s in silos, all funneling top-down to a particular cause. The function serves established causes that have infrastructures already in place to (hopefully) rightly allocate the funding to scientists that are researching a...
Strategies for Impacting Education by Giving
You’ve carefully considered getting involved with education-based philanthropy and are ready to take action. So what can you do? These are a handful of my favorite ideas. Donate to Your Local Education Fund. Most school districts or municipalities will have something...