This is a transcript of unscripted speech, rather than written prose, and therefore should not be relied on for grammatical accuracy. This is not a verbatim transcript. Parts have been slightly modified to improve readability.
Addressing Youth Homelessness—a conversation with Jeff Raikes
FRED: Welcome, and thank you for joining us today for a discussion about maximizing the impact of your philanthropy. I'm Fred Kaynor, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Schwab Charitable. I'm joined today by Jeff Raikes, Cofounder of the Raikes Foundation and a highly respected leader in philanthropy, as well as a champion for helping donors to give with maximum impact.
JEFF: Thank you, Fred. It's a great opportunity to be here with you. You know, there are just so many pressing issues in society that we need to take on, and so my wife and I at the Raikes Foundation, we have a real passion for the impact that can come from philanthropy. And what we have found is that if you give with impact, you find great joy in giving.
FRED: And we also like to try to do whatever we can through our solution to help donors really maximize the impact of the resources, themselves, that they're giving, and we think that as part of that journey, finding the best solution, the best giving vehicle for that purpose is really the best way to do so. Donor-advised funds, private foundations, community foundations, gift annuities, trusts—all of those have very, very valuable roles to play, and they contribute in a very different way individually and collectively to really providing the best platform for optimizing that giving.
JEFF: Another thing that I think it's important to add is the recognition that philanthropy, giving with impact is a journey. Everybody should recognize that. And you want to remember that you want to give with the heart but also with the mind. So let me share a story with you.
My wife, Trisha, was driving on Interstate 5 near Seattle, pulling into Downtown Seattle. She saw an adolescent girl, she guessed maybe 14-, 15-years-old near a homeless encampment being walked by two kind of scary-looking men into that encampment, and it really caused Trisha to pause. You know, what's happening with that young woman, that girl? And that got Trisha very interested in the issues of homelessness in our community, and what we discovered is that there are actually different segments of homelessness. You have chronic homelessness, typically substance abuse; you have veterans homelessness, oftentimes PTSD; you have family homelessness, oftentimes economic dislocation.
But there was this segment, what we describe as youth homelessness—unaccompanied youth out on the streets by themselves, 12- to 25-years-old. And it doesn't get a lot of attention. And why doesn't it get a lot of attention? Well, because the survival strategy for those youth is to be invisible. If they're visible they're at risk of being drawn in to sex trafficking, or drug dealing, or gang, so on and so forth.
So we recognized that the Seattle community didn't have a focus on youth homelessness. That gave us an opportunity as philanthropists to identify where we could use our resources in an under-resourced area to really make a difference. And that's just another example of the journey that people can be on. It's quite gratifying when we see that we are able to make youth homelessness rare, brief, and one time. And that's an example of one of our stories.
What we hope, though, is that by working together we can create thousands, if not tens of thousands of stories for the clients at Schwab Charitable.
FRED: What a great story, and what an incredibly important point that it's a journey. Likewise, from the giving perspective, people, myself included, thought that for many years that really the only way to do philanthropic giving was with a check or with cash, or maybe a credit card. And I've since come to learn, as have many of our donors, that in order to support causes and areas of interest like just what you said, adolescent and youth homelessness, in the most efficient and impactful way possible is by doing so, to your point, in a very thoughtful, deliberate way where they can consider what they give and how they give it, and what vehicle they use to give it, which will ultimately achieve maximum impact and the maximum resources they could possibly bring to bear on those causes and needs that are so important to them. So it's just as much of a journey in terms of what to give as it is how to give.
JEFF: You know, and the great thing about that is if they can be thoughtful and efficient and give with impact, they will find great joy. And as Melinda Gates said to me one time, the most important thing that you need to do in your philanthropy is to find the joy.
FRED: Thanks for joining me today, Jeff. As more of us in the non-profit space work together to help donors give more and give with more impact, the more we can do to truly help donors make an even greater difference in the world. So thank you, again, very much for your time.
JEFF: Fred, thank you. It's a great honor for us to be partners with you and Schwab Charitable. We think that the connection between the two of us is going to help a lot of people in the world make a greater impact and find the joy in that impact.