2017-18 DGT™ Annual Report
Doing Good Together’s vision is simple, but also transformative: To help create a world in which sharing kindness and helping others is a routine part of family life. We believe that this work is at the core of creating a just and compassionate world. This report recounts how our unique resources and innovative programs continued to inspire families—both in the Twin Cities and around the country—to pass on the critical values of empathy, engagement, and generosity to their children, while also contributing to the common good. This result is stronger families and stronger communities, both for now and into the future.
Thank you, Donors, Volunteers, and DGT™ Board Members
The unique mission of DGT continued to attract the steady commitment of donors, volunteers, and our exceptional board members. Thanks to their support, more and more families received the inspiration and tools they needed to make kindness and giving a significant part of their children’s early life lessons. Empowering families to live generously requires a broad, sustained effort, and DGT could not have maintained its trajectory or its pace of innovation without the dedication of these individuals.
Debut of the “Just Be Kind” Program
In the fall of 2018, DGT unveiled a new curriculum—aimed at schools, faith groups, youth groups, and community groups—to train people to conduct lessons in kindness. Our Just Be Kind program has already proved to be a welcome resource. The program offers youth leaders across the nation (and the world!) a toolbox of ready-to-use activities and discussion guides to lead elementary-school-age children in big-hearted lessons in kindness and service. Our unique curriculum, which ranges from bullying prevention exercises to service projects to help older adults, also includes a year of coaching service.
Learn more about the Just Be Kind Club…
Miami Project
DGT continued to expand its presence in the Miami-Dade public schools. We concluded a pilot project that brought our Family Service Fair to eight elementary schools. Evaluations from students, teachers, parents, and administrators in this diverse district were outstanding, affirming how effective this DGT-developed event can be in imparting lessons in compassion and community engagement. The next goal is to make the program sustainable so that every school in Miami can offer a Family Service Fair to its families. Because attendees gather to make service projects for local nonprofits, this would also result in badly needed items going to many more people in need. This project, funded by the Al & Jane Nahmad Foundation, will serve as a model for how to bring this meaningful event to other school districts around the country.
Festival of Giving
In September 2018, hundreds of families joined DGT at our inaugural Festival of Giving™ – a one-of-a-kind event presented on Nicollet Island in Minneapolis. Visitors to our big white tent were greeted with kindness activities, fun service projects, multicultural performances, snacks, kindness swag bags, and lots of unique collaborations with local organizations. Check out this infographic to see the results of the big-hearted service projects.
We are grateful to the generous sponsors and volunteers who made this unique event a success, and we quickly started planning for an even bigger and better Festival of Giving in 2019.
Learn more about our Festival of Giving…
Special thanks to these 2018 sponsors…
Partnerships and Sponsorships
As in years past, DGT was honored to collaborate with some awesome partners in fiscal year 2017-18. For example, we participated in the “Season of Love and Kindness” event at the Minnesota Children’s Museum; began work on a curriculum for Harvard University’s “Making Caring Common” program; developed parent engagement materials for a new after-school program called “Stronger to Serve”; and created fresh new “Take Your Child to Work Day” events for several businesses around the country. In addition, we worked with the Minneapolis Foundation to share our family philanthropy expertise with its donors. We were also called on to assist a number of local and national schools, businesses, faith groups, and early childhood programs as they sought to incorporate family service initiatives into their operating strategies.
Trending Topics and New Products
DGT continued to explore timely topics that deserved new “kindness and compassion” resources. Our new materials included ideas for animal fans, and materials to encourage animal advocacy. We also greatly strengthened our booklists. We updated our books on Global Poverty, added a new book category called Peace Makers, and developed new opportunities for learning advocacy on the subjects of Helping the Hungry, Healing the Earth, and Welcoming New Immigrants. In addition, we stocked the DGT™ Store with a series of eBooks, created by our experts, that offer in-depth lessons about big topics like bullying, neighborliness, and environmentalism. Each eBook contains theme-related service projects, conversation cards, and reflection opportunities. Each could be downloaded for free by any member of our DGT Membership Circle.
New City Listing - Oakland/East Bay, California
With the help of our wonderful new Volunteer Coordinator, we began compiling monthly listings of family-friendly opportunities in Oakland/East Bay, California, which we make available for free to anyone who subscribes. This marked the seventh location for DGT’s family volunteering resources—with more to come!
Financials
DGT continued to inspire families to put kindness, compassion, and caring for others front and center—and to provide the resources needed to weave these values into their everyday lives. As a direct result of our work this past year, more community needs were met: more meals served to the hungry, more visits paid to lonely seniors, more trees planted, more foster homes found for rescued animals. And more children were empowered to grow up making a difference. To fulfill this important work, we dedicated ourselves to practicing sound financial, administrative, and organizational stewardship, with money and mission working together to bring our vision to life.