When Joyce DeHaan and Jerry Fisher were married 30 years ago, they had “To give with love and joy” etched inside their wedding bands.
[ 
Watch the video]
And while decades of daily wear make the inscription a little hard to read now, the couple has taken that saying to heart in their work and their outlook on life.
Long before anyone talked openly about stress management, team-building, and how to be a better boss, this duo brought two unique disciplines — business and social psychology — to the offices of company executives. A 1976 U.S. News & World Report cover story on their strategy was picked up hundreds of newspapers and magazines. After that, they never needed to market their services or develop a website. Their executive consultant business, which takes them all over the world 60 to 70 days a year, is based solely on word of mouth.
As Joyce and Jerry looked ahead to the future, with no children to provide for, they wanted the fruits of their hard work to help the poor. In their wills they left the proceeds from their estate to an international humanitarian organization that fights global poverty. “We liked what they did and it matched perfectly what we wanted (our money) to do,” recalls Jerry.
Then this energetic and always-optimistic couple had an epiphany, of sorts.
They were asked in 2003 by then-Community Foundation board member Suzanne Gouvernet, whom they knew from the Downstairs Cabaret Theater board, to host a dinner for An Evening Out At Home. The dinner conversation at their lakeshore home in Kent, Orleans County, was eye-opening.
“We had no idea that the Community Foundation existed … that the way they measured things was dramatically different from what we had seen in our nonprofit work with our execs. And we didn’t understand the individual control you could have” Jerry recalls.
Shortly afterward, they worked with their attorney to change their will. Once Jerry and Joyce are gone, a fund in their names will be established at the Community Foundation to help Rochester’s poorest people.
“I have no idea who it’s going to impact, but it will be a project that we would have approved of,” Joyce says.
Jerry wholeheartedly agrees. “We have been helping people for decades and decades and we need to have people who can listen to them and understand their point of view. And that’s what the Community Foundation will do.”
Their decision was further validated a few years later during a trip to Mubai, India. When a fellow traveler from Naples, Fla., asked where they were from and they said Rochester, she got very excited. “You mean home of Rochester Area Community Foundation, the best known foundation with the most efficient administration. That’s the model we’re looking at (for Naples).”
“That totally reinforced how lucky we really are to have the Community Foundation,” Joyce and Jerry say.
Paul Halsch’s life was changed forever on December 21, 1988, when the Pan Am plane carrying his pregnant wife exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Lorraine Buser Halsch, her father and her brother were among the 270 people in the plane and on the ground who lost their lives that day at the hands of terrorists. In that instant, Paul became a single parent and his then-11-month-old daughter, Kelly, was deprived of a life of memories with a mom she would never get to know.
“That first month, there is a lot I remember and a lot I just don’t remember,” recalls Paul, a retired accountant. “I’ve said this hundreds of times, but Kelly was the best form of therapy I could have had.”
With an incredible amount of love and support, the two kept going forward and only occasionally looking back to join other victims’ families at special ceremonies to mark the anniversary.
When Kelly graduated from Our Lady of Mercy High School in 2006, the two faced their first separation as Kelly left for college in California. “You raise your kids not to need you. But that’s easier said than done,” says Paul.
During Kelly’s college years, Paul spent several months of the year on the West Coast to be close to her. He also began thinking of ways to honor Lorraine, a special education teacher with a great passion for life and compassion for others, particularly her students. He talked with Kathryn “Katie” Shirer of AM&M Financial Services Inc. about his goals for the memorial and desire to involve Kelly, and she referred Paul to the Community Foundation.
In 2009, he and Kelly created the
Lorraine Halsch Memorial Scholarship Fund to assist college-bound students whose lives have been personally affected by violence.
“Lorraine died in a horrific act of violence and, with the scholarship, I am kind of tying that theme into helping others who maybe don’t the financial means to go to college and improve their lives,” says the 54-year-old Perinton resident.
Seven students applied for the first scholarship in the spring of 2010. Their personal essays deeply touched the Halsches.
“No matter what, when something bad happens you have to figure out what that means to your life,” says Kelly, now 22 and a recent graduate of Biola University in La Mirada, California. She also learned from the scholarship applications that these students, just four years younger than she, did not let the acts of violence define who they are.
Paul was struck by the students’ desires to succeed despite all the roadblocks they had encountered. “Each one was just a bad story, just a heart-wrenching story. I had to pause after reading each one.”
The scholarship review process also “redefined violence for me,” he says. “Lorraine died in one horrific violent act. For a lot of these kids, violence is not limited to one incident. It can be the whole environment they grow up in that defines violence.”
This fall, two Rochester City School District graduates —from Monroe High School and Wilson Magnet Commencement School — are benefitting from the Halsches generosity with $4,000 scholarships to help pay for college expenses.
The Halsches also have benefitted. The
creation of the fund got Kelly wondering more about her mom. After a four-month mission trip to England, she visited Lockerbie, accompanied there by an aunt and cousin. Paul also has put Kelly in touch with several of Lorraine’s friends.
“We have turned a negative into a positive,” Paul says. “It’s a double-edged sword. I shouldn’t have had to set up this scholarship fund and Lorraine shouldn’t have died.”
But the father and daughter also continue to move on with their lives. Kelly is returning to California to work for her church and resume writing inspirational books. Paul is engaged to a woman from Baltimore he met during his California travels and they are making plans for their new life together.
Bob and Katie Sykes began their relationship with the Community Foundation in 1983, when they donated stock in Sykes Datatronics and created a donor advised fund in their names.
Over the next 20-plus years, this Brighton couple quietly made regular donations to their college alma maters — Bucknell University, Harvard Business School and Wheelock College — and more than two dozen local organizations.
Community giving came naturally to the Sykes, with Bob and Katie seeing first-hand its impact through the work of their fathers. Both were active in The Community Chest, forerunner of United Way of Greater Rochester. Bob’s father, Wadsworth Sykes, collected contributions from friends, neighbors and business associates. Katie’s father, Thomas Jean Hargrave, led the campaign in the late 1940s.
In 2009, the Sykes giving philosophy changed direction. The couple, married for 59 years, closed their fund and diverted the balance into four new donor advised funds, one for each of their adult children and their spouses.
For Bob, this move was “a foolproof way to make sure my family keeps giving when I’m gone.”
The funds, which were a total surprise to the Sykes children — Kate Massie, Peter, Bill and David — came with no strings attached. Bob didn’t want to influence their thinking about how to distribute money from their new funds. Katie says she isn’t asking a lot of questions, but “I’m curious to know what they support.”
David, who lives in Pittsford, embraced the new fund as “a good way to continue on what my parents had been doing already.” He was also excited to learn that this vehicle for charitable giving existed.
Kate, the oldest who lives next door to her parents in Brighton, says that her parents’ giving has been a very personal endeavor. Aside from seeing their names in event programs or annual reports acknowledging a gift or sponsorship, she has no idea what they have supported over the years.
Bob admits that he hasn’t discussed charitable giving with his children or grandchildren, although he keeps a master list of 30 to 40 organizations of projects he has supported.
She views this new fund as a “gift” that will help her and her husband and their four children are more focused and thoughtful in their approach to giving. But that can have ripple effects. “There are a lot of great areas here that have needs and focused giving would close other things off,” she says.
The needs in the community are very evident and Bill Sykes, who lives in Penfield, says it won’t be difficult to “find things worthwhile to support.” After all, his two children have been doing just that with their own money for quite awhile.
For the past 10 years, his now-teenage children have been setting aside 25 percent of their allowance for charity. Every couple of months, after enough money has accumulated, they decide where they want their money to go.
“Sometimes it’s something on their minds — like cancer (maybe a friend or friend’s family has been affected) or leukemia or Haiti (or other national or international disasters). … It’s whatever gets their attention.”
For David, his parent’s gesture prompted him to also think about the future. “I could be doing the same thing for myself and my children.” The giving, he says, “should go on and on.”
Now the Sykes tradition of generosity in our community will be an enduring legacy.
A woman shows up for her annual mammogram at Elizabeth Wende Breast Care, LLC, and, after checking in, changes into a comfy robe. She may settle in with a book she’s brought from home or choose to peruse the selection of handmade earrings, necklaces and bracelets for sale, drink a cup of hot herbal tea while flipping through a magazine or get a chair massage while she waits.
This almost spa-like atmosphere of the Brighton complex is designed to pamper the 200,000 patients of the largest, standalone breast imaging centers in New York state.
“We long ago decided that we would make it a fun place to be. And patients do love it when they come here,” says Dr. Wende Logan-Young, founder of the clinic named for her mother and dedicated solely to providing complete and innovative breast care, which opened in 1975.
In most cases, results of the screening are fine. But when the films detect a problem area, the Elizabeth Wende team immediately assists the patient at the very beginning of the journey through diagnostic tests and treatment, if necessary.
These caring connections with patients and their families epitomize the success of the practice, purchased from Dr. Logan-Young in 2008 by Dr. Stamatia Destounis, Dr. Philip Murphy, Dr. Posy Seifert and Dr. Patricia Somerville.
While the four partners are active with the American Cancer Society and local support groups, they also have extended the facility’s reputation beyond our community. They speak at conferences around the world about new and emerging research and the importance of breast health and regular and thorough screenings.
“Our mission is education for our patients, their families and other physicians,” says Dr. Somerville. That philosophy helped spur the creation of a philanthropic fund at the Community Foundation.
The Elizabeth Wende Breast Care Fund supports care, diagnosis, education and research regarding breast health and cancer. The new fund already has awarded grants to Gilda’s Club, Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester, Hope for Two …The Pregnant With Cancer Network, and the Rochester chapter of the American Cancer Society. “We have always wanted to do a nonprofit arm to help women in the community,” says Dr. Seifert.
This type of fund is beneficial to partnerships because of their particular tax structure. In this case, the four partners — and the public — can make tax-deductible contributions to a donor advised fund that supports a cause they believe in.
“Over the years, patients or their families have asked for a way to contribute a gift in appreciation of our mission of caring, education and ongoing research,” says Dr. Destounis. Now those grateful clients can join with the doctors to make an impact on the fight against cancer.
At her job, Stephanie Samuel would faithfully contribute to the United Way of Greater Rochester every year, but she never got to see for herself how those dollars were used. [ Watch the video]
Amit Trivedi has been active with several groups since moving to Rochester in 2004 to take a job at Xerox Corp., but he yearned for more of a connection to the community. [ Watch the video]
For Teresa Gianni, her goal for volunteering and donating to causes she believes in is quite simple: “I want to make a difference in the world.”
[ Watch the video]
These three young professionals and dozens of others found what they were looking for in NextGen Rochester. This giving circle was established at the Community Foundation in 2009 to introduce philanthropy to individuals at the beginning or in the middle of their careers.
During the inaugural year, the 28 members pooled their contributions in a fund. They made time before or after work to learn more about key community issues and how nonprofit organizations work, all the while looking for ways they could make the greatest impact.
For Amit, a native of Calcutta, India, NextGen helped to increase his feeling of belonging, having lived in Rochester only since 2004.
“I can find out how the community is doing,” says the 29-year-old Xerox engineer. And working together, the members “can help groups trying to make a difference,”
He compared his other volunteer work to owning a house. “If it’s your house, you need to make it a home. Rochester is my home and I have to take care of my home.” It’s through his involvement with NextGen that “I make my home stronger, more warm.”
NextGen did that and more during its first year. After reviewing 134 grant applications and hearing presentations from several groups, members voted to award $9,700 in grants to six nonprofits.
The collection and disbursement of almost $10,000 drove home the giving circle’s strength-in-numbers philosophy. “To give together we can do more than we can do separately,” says Teresa, 37, a software engineer for Rochester Software Associates. “You get so much more accomplished when you’re doing things as a group.”
Teresa, a native of Kenmore, New York, believes she “has always had a heart for helping people.” But until she joined NextGen, that passion was quiet and something she reveled in privately. Now she is one of the giving circle’s biggest supporters.
The first year, she joined at the $500 level. This year, Teresa joined at the $100 level and used the other $400 as an incentive match — she would pay half of someone’s membership if they paid the other half. “I turned my $400 into $400 new dollars and got eight more people involved.”
And the momentum is growing. In 2010, membership in NextGen has more than doubled and creative membership-matching opportunities by Teresa, Amit, and Claudia Burcke and Olga Podzorov, have attracted more than a dozen new people.
Stephanie’s affiliation with Next Gen has been good for her on several fronts. The 42-year-old from Rochester, who has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA in finance and marketing, has been a casualty of the bad economy, losing two jobs in the past five years.
She came to understand that “giving can’t always be cash.” As she looks for work, she volunteers for several organizations to stay on top of what is happening in her community and to support things that she is passionate about.
In 2010, she worked for the U.S. Census Bureau as a partnership specialist, helping to reach the non-reporting citizens in the city’s northwest side. Learning about funding issues during her first year in NextGen helped her better understand this new role.
She also was excited to be part of the first year grant process to see where the money was going and how it would benefit the greater Rochester area.
NextGen is continuing to grow and provide a voice for young professionals who want to know more, do more and make more of an impact.
For Teresa, NextGen catapulted her in a direction she was not expecting. “I call myself a philanthropist because of all of this.”
To find out more, search for NextGen Rochester on Facebook, follow members on Twitter at NextGenRoc or call Stefanie Griffin at (585) 341-4357.