Groups gather to raise level of giving

RANCHO SANTA FE — For the first time, the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe Foundation, San Diego Grantmakers, San Diego Women’s Foundation, San Diego Social Venture Partners, The San Diego Foundation and UCSD Extension teamed up to increase philanthropy in the San Diego region. The recent event, underwritten by The Duddingston Sylvester Group at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, invited families to hear national speaker, consultant, and author Nathan Dungan offer advice about linking financial decisions with personal values.
For more than 20 years, Nathan Dungan, founder and president of Share Save Spend, has been an industry thought-leader on helping youth and adults link their money decisions to their values. He is one of the national media’s go-to experts on personal finances and the effects of mass marketing on money habits.
As Bill Gates and Warren Buffet try to persuade the world’s billionaires to donate their fortunes to charity with The Giving Pledge, Dungan seeks to teach the rest of us how our money-management choices can also have a significant impact. Several philanthropic, financial, and educational organizations teamed up to present “Generation … Give? Inspiring Future Donors and Doers,” at which Dungan shared stories of families who have successfully built a new generation of givers, and offered advice for families looking to do the same.
“Our organizations promote philanthropy as a way of life,” said Nancy Jamison, executive director of San Diego Grantmakers, one of the event sponsors. “But instilling that among young people needs to begin at the family level. The changed economic landscape provides an opportunity for families to reassess their own giving and motivate a new generation of philanthropists.”
The recent recession has made many Americans more conscientious of how they spend their money and how much they save. This event demonstrated that in addition to that balance, sharing wealth is important and can be equally rewarding. All of the partners of the event shared the same value of promoting philanthropy and altruism throughout San Diego.