Charity Begins at Home
When I think about the concept of charity or nonprofit impact, I don't necessarily think about my professional life. Certainly, with the nature of my business and 25-year career in this type of work, the natural connection would be more to my working time. But in all candor, any professional work I do is a manifestation of what starts at home.
Giving, in its greatest meaning, started very early on in my life by just watching my parents. Coming from a very traditional family, my dad's involvement in charitable activity was more limited, but not less impactful. There was always time to support our church and those in need. But it was my mother and all the amazing opportunities she had to volunteer in the community that was the truest lesson of the concept, by definition, of philanthropy or “love of mankind.” Mom was on various committees and boards always making sure that the Halletts were doing something to make the community a better place. Watching, in my case, was learning.
Now as the parent, rather than the child, my wife and I come to the year-end decision-making process of what we would like to do to make our community a better place. And although I deal with this every day with the great clients I'm fortunate enough to engage with, the truest thought of giving back is found in what we do personally. We'll make decisions over the next several weeks about what's best for us and for the organizations that we love.
But I also feel a responsibility to make sure my children see and feel, at their appropriate level, the need to help others. There are some simple ways, frankly from outside of our own homes. The school is doing a canned food drive to help a local pantry with people who are food insecure. We spent a lot of time talking to our nine-year-old and our six-year-old about this. There were the years, before the pandemic, where we adopted families at the Ronald McDonald House. I would make them come with me to deliver the various presents while my wife took them shopping to explain why we were helping someone else.
At 52 years of age, I am who I will be. While there may be a few opportunities to mold the outer crust of Randall Hallett, most of my moral and ethical fabric has been completed and will be shown by what I do. But if charity truly starts at home, the responsibility I have is much like my parents with me some 40-plus years ago. How do I help my kids understand the good fortunes of life and the responsibility to share? How do I engage them in age-appropriate activity so they can grow with a heart that's filled with philanthropy? If I do this correctly, I win twice with one action. I do things that I believe in and I show my children an example of what they should be in the decades to come.
Don’t we all have much of at least one side of that responsibility, if not both, to do the same?
