Letter from our Founder & Executive Director and Board Chair

2015-16 was a great year...

Dear Friends,

The year 2016 was one of continued growth for Doing Good Together™ (DGT™), with more families and organizations than ever turning to us for resources on instilling children with kindness and civic engagement. And for good reason. The research is clear that putting a focus on compassion and service is critical to our children’s, and our planet’s, future. Here’s how we expanded.

• DGT was again recognized for its expertise in family giving. Executive Director Jenny Friedman was invited to present at the 2016 National Service Learning Conference; Sarah Aadland, who directs our Big-Hearted Families™ program, was asked to speak at a conference on storytelling hosted by the Minnesota Council on Nonprofits; and the Minneapolis Foundation asked DGT to contribute to its Family Philanthropy Resource Center website and newsletter.
• We continued to earn exposure through new partnerships. These included: Bright Horizons, a national child-care chain, which asked us to help develop a new social responsibility curriculum; the law firm Gray Plant Mooty, which asked us to organize its 150th-anniversary event at TCF Bank Stadium; and The Food Group, a regional food bank, which asked us to create programming to engage more families in the fight against hunger.
• DGT expanded its national reach by adding California’s Silicon Valley and Baltimore, Maryland to the locations where we offer a listing of family-friendly local volunteer opportunities. We now offer this free service in six U.S. cities.
• We added many more resources to our website, newsletter and blog to help families, schools, faith groups and more to practice kindness with children. These initiatives included an original curriculum to teach young children about food insecurity and how they can help; new tools to help families engage in social action; new information for parents on such topics as helping refugees, how not to raise cheaters, tips on embracing failure, the power of family chores, and how to raise an undaunted daughter. We also continued to provide our followers with new book lists that highlight social issues.
• Finally, DGT received a generous grant for a project in 2017 that could further refine our hallmark program for use as a kindness-raising tool by schools around the country. The Albert & Jane Nahmad Foundation has provided funding to pilot our Family Service Fairs in the Miami-Dade Public Schools, the fourth-largest district in the country. (We continued our efforts to attract similar funding for our “DGT–Head Start Project,” to enable us to create a sustainable model for how organizations serving low-income children can give families simple ways to practice kindness and give back to their communities.)

Last year again demonstrated that our world is filled with complex challenges, and that our times require thoughtfulness, generosity of spirit, and a hero’s grit. It is DGT’s belief that children who move into the world ready to make a difference will not only survive, but thrive. Such children represent the very best chance we have to heal our global family. Your support of our work helps prepare children to do just that.

We cannot thank you enough for your belief in our mission.

Warm regards,

Jenny Friedman, Ph.D.                                    Roy A. Ginsburg
Founder and Executive Director                     Board Chair