Philanthropy Front and Center-Atlanta

Philanthropy, Faith, and Individual Giving

The Foundation Center-Atlanta and The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta have collaborated this year on Philanthropy and Faith, a four-part series of conversations on the intersection of philanthropy and faith. The final program, “Philanthropy, Faith, and Individual Giving”, will be December 9, beginning at 9:00 a.m. at Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB). (Coffee and registration begins at 8:30 a.m.)  

Alicia Philipp, president of The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, will moderate a discussion among four of its Fund Advisors. These are people who have set up funds at The Community Foundation in order to give back to the community. The panelists include:

• Dorothy Cohen, Community Volunteer
• Dave Markert, CMO, ScreamFree Living, Inc.
• Wendy Moore, Community Volunteer
• Sunny Park, Chief Executive Officer, General Building Maintenance, Inc.

These philanthropists will talk about how their personal religious beliefs have impacted their decisions to give to those in need in our community. We hope you will join us at GPB for this discussion or share below about the intersection of philanthropy and faith in your own lives.  

Seating will be limited for this event. Please register at our web site's Events Calendar.

If you missed our previous Philanthropy and Faith conversations, you can view videos of the first two sessions at the Foundation Center’s Events Archive:

• How Faith Communities Take Care of Those in Need
• Philanthropy, Faith, and the Environment
• Philanthropy, Faith, and Race (coming soon!)

The Georgia Humanities Council helped to underwrite this series, and to them, we say THANK YOU!

I hope to see you on December 9.

Pattie Johnson, Director, Foundation Center-Atlanta

Philanthropy and Faith: Is There a Relationship?

Are you a religious person, a person of faith? If so, do your religious beliefs impact your philanthropy, how you give, and to whom you give? Conversely, if you do not consider yourself religious or spiritual (there are so many terms to describe what I'm talking about), does that fact impact your giving? Do you think the religious beliefs of well-known philanthropists, particularly those who have set aside great wealth in foundations, impact their grantmaking decisions? 

These questions were instrumental in the development of this year's four-part series, "Philanthropy and Faith", a collaboration of the Foundation Center-Atlanta and The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. We opened the year with "Philanthropy and Faith: How Faith Communities Care for Those in Need" in January and continued the conversation in June with "Philanthropy, Faith and the Environment". If you missed them, videos of both are available at our web site's Events Archive.

Our next topic will be "Philanthropy, Faith and Race" on Wednesday, Sept. 24, from 8:30 to 11:00 a.m. Dr. Robert Franklin, President of Morehouse College and previously the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Social Ethics at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, will speak on the intersection of philanthropy, faith, and race. A discussion will follow.

Please join us for this thought-provoking lecture and conversation. The program is free, but registration is required because seating is limited. A light breakfast will be provided.

Below are two publications related to this topic:

• The Community Foundation published an interesting research report in 2005 on African-American giving and volunteering in metro Atlanta: Giving: A Shared Inheritance.
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy's 2003 study, "How Americans Give", found that race and religion are powerful influences, based on its analysis of tax, labor, and census data. This special report is available in our library. Chronicle subscribers can access it at the newspaper's web site.

I'd be remiss if I didn't say THANK YOU to the Georgia Humanities Council, which helped underwrite this series.

I hope to see you on September 24.

Pattie Johnson, Director, Atlanta office