26. Jessica Farnsworth with '100 Women Who Care' and Combining Charitable Gifts to Make a Meaningful Impact

This week for the podcast I interviewed Jessica Farnsworth who helps run the Utah Valley chapter of '100 Women Who Care'. This organization takes crowd funding to a whole new awesome level! Members meet quarterly to choose non-profits in their local community to give their combined donations to. Each member commits to giving $100 each quarter, so their efforts together really do make a huge impact for these organizations and the people they serve.

Listen to the show to learn more about how this organization works, and also about some of the non-profits they've been able to help.

Links mentioned in the show:
100 Who Care Alliance
100 Women Who Care-Utah Valley
100 Who Care Alliance Instagram
100 Women Who Care-Utah Valley Instagram
100 Who Care Alliance Facebook
100 Women Who Care-Utah Valley Facebook

Non-profits mentioned in the show:
Holding Out Help
Exitus
My Story Matters
Ella Rises
Tabatha's Way

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Transcript

Melissa: You're listening to the Do Something More podcast. And this is episode 26 with Jessica Farnsworth and a hundred women who care, combining charitable gifts to make a meaningful impact. Welcome to the Do Something More podcast, a service oriented show where we highlight the helpers who inspire us all to do something more. I'm your host, Melissa Draper. Thank you so much for being here. Welcome to another episode of the podcast, and today we are going to learn about a great organization called 100 Women Who Care. And I first learned about this organization actually several years ago. I read an article about them in my local newspaper and was just super impressed by this idea of bringing women together to help donate and fund different nonprofit organizations. And so I'm excited to have us learn more about it today with the guest that I've invited to join us today. She works with the Utah Valley chapter of 100 Women Who Care, and her name is Jessica Farnsworth. Jessica, welcome to the podcast.

Jessica: Great. Well, thank you so much, Melissa. Thanks for having me here today. My name is Jessica Farnsworth. I've lived in Utah Valley over 30 years. I am a native Oregonian, was born and raised in Oregon. Professionally, I have spent more than two decades in the human capital and leadership development and business transformation industries, and I've been involved with 100 Women Who Care for the past eight years. I have five kids. I live in Utah Valley in Spanish Fork, married 22 years, and just really excited to be here today.

Melissa: Well, thank you so much. We're excited to have you here, Jessica, and I would love you to just start off with kind of giving us an introduction of 100 Women Who Care, just the basic premise behind it, its mission, and all of those types of things.

Jessica: Sure, I'd love to. So as far as the premise, it's really about creating awareness, educating and providing service opportunities and financial impact for local charities and nonprofits. Our goal is to keep it local and make an impact that we can see in our communities. We do this in terms of 100 Women Who Care chapters by growing these local chapters or giving circles to 100 members or more, with each member committing to donating $100 to a selected local charity once every three months. 100 Women Who Care is actually part of a larger organization called the 100 alliance. There are over 700 of these chapters like ours that are across the country and throughout the world at this point. There's 100 women who care. Men, people, businesses, kids. And it's really exciting to be a part of that here in Utah. I started with the chapter work that was started up in Salt Lake City about eight or nine years ago now and would drive up for our quarterly meetings and then just thought about four years into that know our valley was growing so quickly. Our needs in our communities were also right there with it and thought this would be a great way to rally the forces and start to make an impact like that down here.

Melissa: That's great.

Jessica: Yeah. And I can also share kind of the origins of 100 women, too.

Melissa: It's kind of oh, yeah. Of the original organization as a whole. Yeah, let's hear that. I'd love to.

Jessica: And I think it was almost started by a random act of kindness and then became more formal. So there was a wonderful woman named Karen Dunigan out of Jackson, Michigan, and in 2006, I think she was always actively involved in her community and giving. There was a need in Jackson at that time for cribs, for newborn babies. There was actually an injury and mortality rate that was going up because newborns and these infants coming home from the hospital didn't have cribs. So she decided to do something about it. She said, I know there are enough people in my community that if I joined together on a one night event and we each gave $100, we could start to solve this problem. Well, that night she raised more than $10,000. They were able to buy hundreds of cribs to outfit the community with, and they made an impact in that problem. And that's kind of the origins of the story. And from there the first chapter was born.

Melissa: That's a neat story. I love just the idea of seeing a need within our community, but also the idea of bringing people together to help you solve a problem that seems too big for one person but you can solve altogether. So that's great story. Well, you shared a little about those meetings, so I would just love do you mind going into depth a little more? What does a meeting look like when you get together at those quarterly meetings and what are some of the things you're doing?

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. So the intent of the quarterly meetings is we keep those to 1 hour where we're actually in the meeting, we're all busy, we all want to make an impact. We all want to learn where we can direct our resources. And so we try to keep them very much within the swim lanes of that 60 minutes. Our chapter here in Utah Valley. We meet the first Wednesday of every February, May, August and November from 12:00 p.m. To 01:00 p.m.. And at those meetings, members, nonmembers come, anybody is welcome. We hear from our past winners. It's specifically the winner from the meeting before the charity will come and present and report out on how they are doing with the Impact Award, where they're directing it, the impact that they're making. They might even have one of their clients or members of the community that they serve share their story. It's very inspiring. You walk away from these meetings feeling great. We also hear from three local charities. The requirement is that they be local and serving the needs of utah Valley community members that they are designated 501 status in terms of being nonprofit. And each one of those charities gets six minutes. I know that sounds like a really short amount of time to present the mission of their charity and how they would use an Impact Award to create change and drive a difference in their mission.

Melissa: I love that name of an Impact Award. Instead of just giving money, what you are giving truly makes a difference for not just these organizations, but the people they serve.

Jessica: That's a great call out because in the prep materials, we get over to them beforehand to really help them be clear, concise, and get that message together. We point that out and specifically ask them to come prepared with an Impact Statement. If our charity wins the Impact Award, this is exactly how it will be used. And we try to get them to choose a particular initiative or project that they can really be specific about as opposed to it'll go into our fund for future use. Our members really want to know exactly where the impact is going to be made, when, who it's going to serve, and what that impact is going to be. So it certainly helps people think a little bit differently about what it is they do and how they talk about it.

Melissa: Yeah. And so after those are all presented, everyone votes for who they feel most inspired to vote for. And then do you let them know right there at the meeting?

Jessica: Yes, we actually do. So we use a digital survey, right, like a QR code. And after each of the three charities presents, we then give about a six minute block for Q A from the audience. And there's always great questions. Our members come from so many walks of life, unified by this common denominator of wanting to know more about the needs in our community, wanting to know more about how they can make a difference, and then really asking some great questions. And then after we ask those questions, we do, we vote. We make sure everybody's voted who's there? We typically offer a zoom option as well. We ask that only members who have committed to donating cast the vote and members that are in attendance as well. And then we do. We announce at the end. And it's a great celebration.

Melissa: It sounds like a great meeting that I would love to go to and I'm sure many other women as well. So great.

Jessica: We encourage guests every time. Right. That's one of the special things about these meetings we have. I've had my daughters come, my mother is a member. Neighbors, sisters, friends, other members bring their daughters. It's really fun.

Melissa: Yeah. And not just for that opportunity to donate in that way, but to gather with like minded women and to learn about these organizations that are doing all this good in the community, I think would be a really fascinating part of it as well.

Jessica: It absolutely is. A couple of other interesting points is that we have some great local sponsors as well. There are organizations that have jumped in and given on top of our donations and I can talk about that a little bit later too.

Melissa: Yeah, no, that's great. Go ahead. I'd love to hear more about that.

Jessica: Well, I know that one of our goals, obviously, is to get to 100 members. Now, we started this chapter in 2018. We're coming up on five years and we're right at 70 members, but we're actually really proud of that. There's other chapters that seem to surpass that 100 number really quickly. Like within the first two meeting cycles, chapter I was involved with in Salt Lake City, they are incredible. They're up to about 270 members.

Melissa: Wow.

Jessica: If you do the math on that, they're giving over $25,000 every three months to a local charity. And that's a huge difference.

Melissa: Right, right.

Jessica: So we're right around 70 members and yet for the last four meetings, our average donation has been between 10,000 and $15,000.

Melissa: Wow.

Jessica: And the reason we've been able to get to that threshold, one of the reasons is through the Schultze Family Foundation. The the Schultze family are the founders of Home Depot and they have decided to sponsor and support 100 Women Who Care impact awards across the country. So there's some certain threshold and criteria that the charities need to meet. But after each of our meetings, within a month, we go and apply for this grant and they will match up to $10,000 at 50% as an additional grant for that charity. So we're really grateful for the Schultze Family Foundation as well as Meta. Eagle Mountain has a phenomenal community outreach program. William Marks heads that up and I encourage all of my charities to reach out to him. They've been great partners as well.

Melissa: Yeah, that's phenomenal. Well, it just sounds like it's taken that idea of crowdfunding or something you might find on like a GoFundMe, but it's so much more personable. And I love the community sense, the real community sense of it too, it seems.

Jessica: Absolutely. And it's also called a giving circle.

Melissa: Right.

Jessica: But behind these great ideas there does have to be some structure and we hope that we've provided that. I have a great steering committee that we're all volunteers. We do not have a bank account or a 501 status of our own because our members donate directly to these local charities. If they're writing a check, the check gets written out to the charity. We use an online donation site that is specifically for directing donations to charitable organizations. And so that is the easiest way that our members donate is they become a part of this application called Grapevine and then automatically every three months, all of our donations go into a fund and then that gets directed directly to the charity.

Melissa: Really streamlined process.

Jessica: Yeah, we're getting there.

Melissa: Yeah, that's great. Well, do you have any specific stories or experiences that you've had either yourself or you've seen other women been impacted by being involved with this or even some of the experiences you've seen with the charities and organizations that have come through?

Jessica: Yeah, thank you for asking. I sure do. There's a couple I'd love to share. And before I jump in, I would also add that these charities are so amazing. You can see the winners on our website over the past four years at 100 Womenutahvalley.com, but they start to communicate with each other because we have a lot of directors and founders that are members that have presented, but they're also now members of the group. But they start finding those common synergies of where what they do impacts the needs of what another organization or two or three do. So they start referring their client base or the citizens that they serve to one another. And it's been really fun to watch. So some of that will come out in the story that I share. The first is about an organization they were one of our first Impact Award winners called Holding Out Help. Holding Out Help provides those from a polygamous culture the care, support, and resources to become independent and self sufficient. And so we really got an education about how that works, some of the disruption and trauma that comes along from individuals that are wanting to begin an independent and self sufficient lifestyle. And we learned the story of a young woman who had left the polygamous community and essentially they start over with nothing, including that network of family support that is so important to anyone making a big change in their lives. And so we really learned about her journey and they ended up winning the Impact Award. And our donations went towards and actually fully funded the trade school that she applied to to learn a trade, get a job, and become self sufficient. So we were able to hear from her as part of the Impact Award report out. And that just didn't leave a dry eye in the room.

Melissa: Wow. Yeah, I bet.

Jessica: And then two organizations that came together. One is called Exodus and one is called my story matters. And Exodus provides not only do they support the rescuing and services and support needed to help people get out of the human trafficking cycle, but they also provide service and care for therapeutic recovery and healing and what happens next. But they met one of our other presenting organizations called My Story Matters, which is a phenomenal organization that helps youth, inmates, anyone in the community, really with holistic, life planning and being able to tell their story and why they do matter and how you can really be proactive and take personal responsibility for your story and your future. But they got together and My Story Matters was able to fund several single mothers from Exodus Christmas presents and some dream items they needed in order to start their lives over as well. And they just didn't know each other before meeting one another in this particular platform. So that was really inspiring to hear, how that came about and how some family Christmases were made because of that connection.

Melissa: Yeah, that's great.

Jessica: Yeah. And then, like I said, being able to bring our daughters to see the good that can happen in the community, to see the needs that are tough, but what we can do about it, what we can do together. One time our chapter got together and volunteered at Tabitha's Way, who's been a two time winner. Now we just sorted donations for a couple of hours and we're able to take a tour of the facility. I know a lot of our members go on to do a lot of volunteering at the organizations they learn about. I think it also really helps in that vein as well. How do I direct my resources, not only my money, but my time? Who else? About these resources?

Melissa: Yeah. Which that's obviously a huge theme of this podcast is using any of our resources in the ways that fit and work for us to do good and give back to our community, you're finding.

Jessica: The people that are making a difference, and I love that.

Melissa: Yeah. I had a couple of thoughts as you shared those stories. One is that the opportunity you're giving to see the individual impact? I think sometimes when we're serving or sometimes we're doing general service, we don't always see that, especially if we're doing things in a group sense. But just how you share. You all got to hear in that first story for that individual story, her experience, and that I'm sure impacted all of you as well. So I love that.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. That's one thing we love about the report out is because you do get to hear the individual stories and we love that. There's one I have to share with you, one more about an organization called A Rices. And their mission is to inspire and support Latina youth with hope, confidence and purpose. And one of their initiatives was around their Mariachi program. And within this program, they are essentially teaching Latina youth how to play these instruments, and then they go out and play in the community. And their Mariachi program is intended to strengthen personal identity and create generational and cultural connections. And so our Impact Award afforded them to be able to purchase these instruments for the youth, and they actually ordered them from Mexico. And we got to see the journey of these instruments actually being made. They drove down to some meeting point in Vegas to pick them up, and then when they were and and then we got to hear and see the youth play. It was so fun.

Melissa: That is great. I love that. Yeah. And that was the other thought I had, was there are so many groups doing good in unique ways, and I don't think you always realize how many until you start to be involved in something like this, to see all the very unique ways individuals have found to help their communities.

Jessica: Absolutely. And it's fun to see these organizations grow and evolve over time as well.

Melissa: Right.

Jessica: That's been great.

Melissa: Yeah, that's great. Yes. I've gotten the question many times, well, how do you find Episodes? Are you going to run it out of ideas? I'm like, no, I don't think so.

Jessica: Yeah, if you ever do, all you need to do is call me and I'll give you ten more.

Melissa: I'm sure I just need to go to a couple hundred Women Who Cares meetings, and I'll have a whole new list of people to reach out to.

Jessica: Absolutely. One other kind of cool thing about the quote, Impact Award is, although it's hard because these organizations are all so good, it's hard to choose one a lot of the time, and you hate to have the other two leave empty handed. But luckily, because we have some really generous members as well as another corporate sponder and mortgage educators this last year has done that for us, but they each walk away with a runners up donation as well. So it's not as much as the Impact Award winner, but they do have something to take away, and then many times we're able to invite them back and they come and present again until they do win. So that's great, too.

Melissa: Yeah, that's great. And I would imagine it's a great opportunity for an organization to really narrow down what their mission and purpose is and to narrow down that specific impact they're trying to make can be a benefit. Just doing that can be a benefit for the organization as well.

Jessica: I think so. And it really provides the clarity, I think, that people deciding where to direct their money can choose as well. One other element to what we do that I think is important to point out is sometimes when we hear the word philanthropy, it is a little bit of a word that scares people a little bit or might feel exclusionary. Right. Like, well, I want to give and I want to be involved, but I don't have $1,000. I don't go to Gala's.

Melissa: Not going to go to a $200 a plate dinner.

Jessica: Right. And so being able to kind of look at these potential places where you'd like to make an impact, where you'd like to give, where you can give. Some of our members have said, hey, this is me eating out. Twice a week for lunch, giving that up or something similar, making it kind of doable for them in a doable place and in a reasonable way. It's not for everybody, and it's not for everyone's seasons in their life. And we've had people come and come back, so that's good. But it does seem to make that idea of giving and becoming a philanthropist together really approachable and something that most people can jump in and get started and do if they'd like.

Melissa: Yeah, I love that. In our world today, you truly can give a little and have it make a difference. But I love to see with this organization that you're kind of joining forces to make that kind of have that bigger impact on an organization.

Jessica: Yes. We like to say a lot of times I like to say together we make an impact that we can see in our communities. So that's kind of my mantra for us.

Melissa: Yeah, that's great. Well, do you ever reach out to organizations or do they always come and find you?

Jessica: Oh, that's a great question too. Both. So traditional 100 Who Care chapters actually have their members nominate local charities and have their members present about them. As we started our chapter, we were finding that we just kind of gave it a little boost. Right. And we also have found it a really nice platform to have the founders or the executive directors present on their own behalf. They know their story the best. They can share how and historically, how they've been funded, where their financial support comes from, and really talk in a meaningful way about where these donations would be directed. So we've invited those people to come in, and then we've started kind of mixing it up each meeting, where sometimes we invite back runner ups as well. As for the first time in the last couple of years, at the end of our last meeting, we did have members nominate and we drew out of the hat literally the three that would be presenting in our upcoming chapter meeting in November 1.

Melissa: Oh, I love that. So kind of a combination of both things. And I love that that women can come and share their ideas or the things that they want to donate to as well. Yes, that's great. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation, Jessica. I have loved learning more about 100 women Who Care and the good things that they're doing, and I love hearing those specific stories. I think the final overarching theme I saw was the connection that you're able to make, the connection between women attending these meetings, the connection between groups and organizations, and also the connection of having that impact, I think is so powerful.

Jessica: Agreed with you 100%.

Melissa: So any other final words of encouragement or advice that you would want to give to someone that's maybe wanting to join a chapter or even just someone who wants to be more involved with donating to organizations or helping with philanthropic efforts in their own communities?

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. I think that just the mindset of I can make a difference. I would encourage people wanting to look into learning more about the community, where to direct their own resources, to do your research, try to find others who are like minded, who have similar passions. Volunteer, get a little bit of experience under your belt to see what feels right, where you do want to direct your time, your resources, your money. There are a lot of resources out there to find out how and where you might serve. Just Serve is a great one. We have a really nice collection of charitable organizations that have presented and won posted on our website to take it slow and be very intentional so you can get the most out of your efforts as well. So it's definitely a journey, it's not a sprint. And so just to hang in there until you find the groove that feels right for you, stick with it. There's a quote that I love that says, no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. And I feel like we're able to live that every time we meet and every time we learn about the great difference these charities are having in our communities.

Melissa: Yeah, that's great. What a great quote. I love that. And I love that you mentioned just serve. We have mentioned that on this show before, but I love that we can add the resource of your organization as well and the different nonprofits that you've seen and been affiliated with. So do you want to just end finally by letting us know where people can find you?

Jessica: Absolutely, we can find us. Our website is the number 100 Womenutahvalley.com, and then we also have social media presences that you can look up by our name as well on Instagram and Facebook as well as LinkedIn. And I'd love to share when our next upcoming meeting is, if you would like as well.

Melissa: Yeah, go ahead. That'd be great. Yeah.

Jessica: So our Fall Impact Award meeting is coming up November 1, 11:30, A.m. To 01:00 p.m.. We actually do for those who want to participate, just a luncheon, a small luncheon beforehand, but you're welcome to just come to the meeting from twelve to 01:00 p.m.. It's going to be hosted by Women in Entrepreneurship group at BYU in the Harmon Building. Again. That's November 1. It's a Wednesday and we actually have our three charities that are going to be presenting and it's going to be an organization called Introducing Tomorrow, one called Live Your Dream Foundation and the Gail S. Halverson foundation. So we're excited to learn more about them and hopefully have some of your listeners join us and you as well.

Melissa: Yeah, I was going to say you've sold me. I think I might be at the next meeting. I think this is a great organization. It's right up my alley, but I think a lot of other listeners as well. So thank you again so much for being willing to come on the show today.

Jessica: Absolutely, Melissa, thank you.

Melissa: That was my interview with Jessica Farnsworth and I just loved that interview and learning more about 100 women who care. I think they're truly a unique organization doing so much good. And I love how they've taken that idea of crowdfunding, of having lots of people that can contribute together to a cause to make a difference. But bringing this sense of community with it that you get to get together with other individuals in your community that are like minded and can use this time to connect with them and build that sense of community. And then also, as she mentioned, the sense of community that they're building with other nonprofits, that they're having the chance to also connect with each other and learn how they can support and help in their similar missions that they have. So just a great organization and I loved learning more about it. And we'll include links to all of the websites and things that she mentioned. And as she said, 100 women who care is part of the hundred alliance. So there's lots of different kinds of these groups happening all over the United States. And so if this is something that sounds inspiring to you or something that you've thought about, you can join a myriad of groups to bring again forces together to donate for good causes. And I also love that format of being able to hear exactly where that money went afterwards that is so meaningful for everyone involved. Those giving and receiving. So a great organization, feel free to go and learn more about it with the links I provide in the show notes. So thank you so much for being here, I'll see you next time.